RANSVESTIA

but for me it was a waste of time. I am back in skirts at every opportunity taking my walks abroad and trying to be what I feel I am, just another girl in the crowd. I enjoy my alter ego so much I realise now I will never change. I remain an FP because I want to. Has any girl ever made a com- plete reverse, and given up her FP tendencies? At various stages in my life I have tried to overcome the habit but a glimpse of a ducky little pair of panties or satin girdle in a shop window, or a photograph of an artist in drag, and I am away again to buy a mini, a pair of high-heels and the whole lot. I became Jean at the age of four and I will die Jean.

I am satisfied now to have the occasional night at the cinema or theatre, the more regular window-shopping, and the regular nightly walks in my skirts, in the knowledge that whenever or however I became an FP, I will continue one to the end, and should be grateful for the countless thrills and excitement that those other unfortunate males will never know. But when we get back to our house at night, after hours in our skirts, and ask ourselves, what now? There is no answer for those of us who can't face the sex-change operation. We have reached the end, frustration.

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Editor's Note: Although I have commented strongly against aversion therapy in the past this is the first revelation of the raction to it by one who has gone through it. I greatly appreciate Jean's sharing the ex- perience with us.

I think it most important to note her statement that she “really looked forward to my visits to the hospital in order to get into the lingerie which the hospital supplied and to wear it in the presence of the operators If psychiatrists had any real understanding of the basic nature of the drives involved in femmephilia they would never attempt to modify be- havior in this way. All they did was to discover a new and unusual situa- tion in which the victim could display her femme self under justifiable conditions. Granted they made Jean achieve this the hard way, but hard or easy it was achieved and that was the significant thing.

Unfortunately many psychiatrists don't understand the nature of gender and the effects of polorizational upbringing on the child. They see mas- culine and feminine behavior patterns as automatically fixed by the XY or XX chromosomal patterns and that any deviations from these patterns are abnormalities of which one can be “cured."

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