"Dear Editor"

Dear Friend,

LETTERS

You may set your mind at rest. Dressing up is not a sin. Your wife, like most of the wives of men like yourself, does not understand the TV syndrome. This is not surprising because most other people including the TVs themselves do not understand the syndrome. When we don't understand a thing, we tend to think it means a lot of things it doesn't mean at all. It is for this reason that your wife thinks you are wallowing in sin. She should know by this time whether there is anything immoral connected with what you do. If there is not, then the dressing by itself is not sinful; unusual, yes; strange, perhaps; revolting to her, very likely, but sinful, no.

Because your wife does not understand the nature of TV, she cannot understand why, if you really love her, you cannot just stop, just as you might quit smoking or drinking, if it threatened the very existence of your marriage. Unfortunately, most of the experts don't understand the nature of the TV sundrome, so you can't blame your wife very much for feeling like she does. My own theory is that the TV syndrome has its beginning in very early infancy at the time the baby is forming the first beginnings of his self-image. On account of factrs over which, ob- viously, the baby has no control he identifies himself in reference to some feminine figure in his environment, so that he says in effect: “that is the kind of person I am." There are various theories to explain why the baby identifies with the feminine rather than the masculine, but whatever the explanation, the baby certainly has no guilt in the process. You will notice that this has nothing to do with sex. Naturally none of this goes on at the level of consciousness, so the baby is not aware of what has happened to him till some time later. Stoller in his book, "Sex and Gender” says that gender identification is complete before the second year of life. What this means in practical terms is that a child

56