sexual cross-dresser, read the articles you would suppose at first glance that they referred to members of our group, though further reading would leave you disillusioned (I hope). However, any member of the public reading the same thing would immediately relate the contents to homosexual activity and would associate the word transvestite and TV with it. There wouldn't even be the excuse that perhaps the reporter had misused the term because in this case it is the gays them- selves that are using it and thus applying it to themselves. It can have no effect other than leading the innocent reader to assume that this term is part of the "in" terminology of the gay world. What chance will you have thenceforth if such a reader learns that YOU are a "TV"? Will you likely be successful in disassociating yourself from the implications? I doubt it.

Now let it be made clear - as I have always done on my radio and TV (it's OK here I hope . . . ABC, NBC and CBS aren't making any issue of it) shows that in stating the matter as I have that I am not putting homosexuals down. I am aware that many of my readers are very antagonistic and condemnatory of HSS but I am not. To me, HS is their "thing" and they are welcome to it, I'm not going to throw any stones. But it is not my thing nor, hopefully, is it for my readers. Live and let live is my feeling. So while I don't mean to put down the gay world, I have spent years trying in every way I could figure out to separate our group my group if you will permit the somewhat pro- prietary expression from them. I have attempted to establish us as a separate group that is otherwise like most everybody else sexually and otherwise. (Note that I refrain from saying "normal" which is an ego word when applied to oneself and a put down when the prefix ab is used with it for somebody else.)

—

So this isn't just a matter of semantics. Only those who don't really understand what semantics involves use it in such a deprecating way. Semantics is the science of meaning which means therefore the science of communications. Words are messages and to communicate they must mean the same to both speaker and hearer. But more than that words are also tools the tools of thought. You fabricate your concep- tions to yourself in terms of words. Therefore if their meaning is vague to you your thoughts are correspondingly vague and your communica- tions are muddled. I know myself pretty well, by this time. I know what I am and what I am not and I can think clearly about it. I do not care, therefore, to use vague and fussy "thought tools", to make vague com- munications or to implant inaccurate, inappropriate or incorrect

45