RANSVESTIA

By 8:45 she had completed the hairdo and I had completed the rest of my makeup and was on my way downtown again to meet Peggy. The symposiums full title was "From Mental Illness to Human Rights A New Approach Toward Mental Health and Civil Rights for Sexual Minorities." I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were approxi- mately 150 professional people representing their organizations already there and had completed their registration. This consisted of confirm- ing their name and organization, filling out a questionnaire and ex- changing this for a copy of the days activities with some reading material attached about the problems that were to be discussed.

The basic aim of this meeting was to present the homosexual and the problems attendant to this deviation as it affects their social life, legal problems, military service, therapy, counseling and case work. The morning panels brought up and outlined these ideas and presented some personal points of view by homosexuals. Two films, "Holding" and "Vir Amat," from the National Sex and Drug Forum were shown. The first was about lesbianism and the second about male homosexuals; both quite well done, excellent photography and very tender in their story.

Following the films, the participants were split into small groups of 10-12 people and segregated by "sex” so that they could "rap" about their personal feelings about homosexuality, lesbianism and gender roles. As a panelist without a sex, so to speak, I was not assigned to a specific group, so I casually strolled into a female group and listened to their comments. Considering the comments made in my presence, I do not believe that I was read and it was most informative on my part being able to hear what this group of women thought about these subjects. The most interesting aspect was the apparent greater understanding and acceptance by "straight” professionals on a most complex subject. Un- fortunately the gender identity area was not dwelled upon too much and since I kept silent to preserve my effect for my panel, I could not keep comments alive on that line when they did come up.

Lunch was served during this morning rap session and after a short break we got back to the formal panels at 1:00 with my panel the second one scheduled. Its title was "Transvestism and Transexualism — A panel of cross-dressers compare and contrast their experiences.” There were five of us identified as follows: Nickie (myself), a straight TV; Peggy, a transexual; Sandi, a gay TV; Kim, a drag queen; and Kuhula, a female to male TS. We were scheduled for 20 minutes and took 28. Kuhula spoke first about what the female to male operation consists of and ex-

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