so strongly suggested in your letter. These Drs. generally speaking, don't really know too much about the subject and are usually of very little help. That is why I started the magazine TRANSVESTIA about 11 years ago to try to educate the transvestites themselves about the subject and at the same time the medical people.

It may interest you to know that I have myself lectured to medical groups all over this country and several abroad about the subject of trans- vestism. When they are willing to listen to a non-medical person (even though I do hold a Ph.D.) talk on a subject in their own field it is some measure both of their interest and their lack of information. You spoke of being a nurse, yet I'll wager that you were taught nothing about this behaviour pattern in your nurse's training neither are doctors in theirs. You see what isn't understood is that sex and gender are two different things and since they are it is possible to have deviant patterns in both. There are therefore those who deviate in the sexual sphere by acting the role of the opposite SEX in intercourse. These people are of course the homosexuals, male and female. But there are those, too, whose deviation is only in the gender role. They don't try to act like females in a sex act, but they do enjoy utilizing feminine clothes as a means of expressing some of the gender role differences permissible to women but not to men. These people are not psychopathic, they have just come to know that there is more to being a human being than that half encapsulated within the acceptable pattern of a man's role in society. Women's Liberation, incidentally, is an expression of exactly the same sort of thing in the life of women but they do not personify it in clothing. Because it is true that there is a "man" within every woman and a “woman” inside of every man, comprised of those traits, interests, feelings, patterns which our society has arbitrarily divided up and assigned to males and females respectively.

This may all be a bit much for you to digest all at one time but I sin- cerely hope that you will read it calmly -- read it over again -- and try to understand what I've said. I would not take my time from a very crowd- ed day to write to a woman I've never heard of before were I not aware that you are presently in a state of anger, shock and pain. I only want to help you, your husband and your child. I'm doing so voluntarily out of human compassion not for any advantage to me. Since I'm mak- ing this much effort won't you make some too? Please order the book I mentioned and try to learn more about this phenomenon. You owe it to yourself, your husband and your girl. Don't do anything rash and go off half-cocked on a course that you may regret the rest of your life.

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