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Y is in her sixties. The average age is high in this organization. Ob- viously it takes time to learn to accept oneself if you are a transvestite. But to accept oneself is the advice that the very few psychologists who know anything about transvesitsm give to their clients. It has to be we the outsiders - who have to alter our opinions. The more the circum- stances are known, the fewer the prejudices. This is a favorite subject for discussion among the transvestites. All of them have at one time or or another been called hermaphrodites, or homosexuals -- people cannot get it into their heads that an ordinary boy might like to play a girl or woman now and then.

But how can the man in the street understand sexual deviations, when the medical reporters do not. Only a week ago there was a big article on the front page of one of the biggest Swedish newspapers telling about refined methods for curing patients with schizophrenia, nervous fear, sex criminals and homosexuals. The homosexuals in this country have always preached that they feel happy with their state of mind. They do not want to be cured, and neither do the heterosexual transvestites.

We have to understand that we must not be indignant at the ordinary transvestites. In most cases their transvestism is without any erotic color, it is nothing to laugh at, and nothing to be afraid of. Women are able to wear close-cropped hair and trousers without any twittering behind their back. I am sitting here dressed in trousers and a sleeveless jacket, with unmanicured nails, which a transvestite would never accept, listen- ing to Christina. She is the newest member. In her late fifties, for the first time in her life she is among like-minded people.

"I am happy here. You are so nice you listen to me.” she says.

There are many Danish transvestites here too. Copenhagen is a vital FPE center and the social groups are more variable in Denmark. The Swedish members are mostly well-educated, middle class people. The Danes are everything from general laborers to highly-educated university graduates.

The secretary-general for the Nordic FPE is called Annette. On ordi- nary days she is a busy businessman with a big family and a "normal" home life. The mother organization of FPE is American and its founder and "patron saint" is Virginia Prince, loved and admired by all trans- vestites. Several years ago she was here in Sweden and there was a press conference at Grand Hotel in Stockholm.

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