RANSVESTIA

but are free to go and do whatever their abilities and motivations dictate - always with the understanding of course that doing so does not tread on the rights of others.

There is an old saying, "don't judge others by yourself" but for years I have been aware of how false that saying is. Actually, yourself is all you have to judge anyone else by. Thus I find myself extracting conclu- sions about other people and their lives from looking at developments in my own.

I find that in my life as it is today I have access to both halves of my total self as characterized by the names Charles and Virginia. That is, I have my masculinity when it is needed and I have my femininity. This leads to a feeling of greater self sufficiency than I would have as either alone. I don't need another woman to provide femininity nor a man to provide me with masculinity as I can take care of both myself.

This observation about my own life leads me to believe that the movements afoot today leading to a greater awareness of the limitations of stereotypes and the desire for greater fulfillment of each individual whether male or female, point to a time in the not too distant future when the human race can settle down to being human not just super animals. When sex will be something to enjoy with another human being at the right time or place on a basis of equality and a joint enjoyable experience. At the present time I have a strong feeling that a great part of the sexual activity between males and females whether in marriage or outside of it is at the bottom a need for the males to acquire femininity symbolically through the closeness of intercourse and for the females to acquire masculinity in the same way. Thus at the root of the act is a need for fulfillment which is covered over with the idea of enjoyment and mutual intimacy. For the most part neither the males nor the females recognize this need because they have both been socialized to think of themselves as complete people and given a whole different set of reasons for marriage and sex.

But with things changing as they are we are moving rather rapidly toward the time when the basis of need will have been removed, and each party will be more whole in his and herself. At that point sex will be more honest, open and equal. And I might point out for better or worse that also at that point transvestites, femmiphiles - call them what you will -- will have disappeared as one of the phenomena of the child- hood of the human species; a compensatory mechanism which will no longer be necessary. Those who look for the day when society will ac-

85