Dear Editor"

LETTERS

Dear Virginia,

Last month I sent in my application for FPE, but I felt that I owed you a personal note to you to express my appreciation for your efforts on behalf of all of us. I have read several issues of TVia since I first found out how to contact you back in March of this year, and expressing my feelings about what I found in those pages and in your books is very difficult. I had felt alone for so long that it was quite an emotional ex- perience to read your philosophy and of other people's experience. To know that others have exactly the same feelings that I feel goes along way towards easing the mind and erasing the feeling of being a freak.

I guess the reason I decided to write this letter, however, concerns the things I have read in your articles about attacks on you both personally and philosophically. The hurt and bitterness that is evident in those ar- ticles is completely understandable, and you must wonder sometimes if all the effort is worth it. I am really a neophyte when it comes to know- ing who and what specifically you are talking about, but I want you to know that I appreciate your efforts, and I am sure there are many others like me. You have changed my life irrevocably and I can now express my femmeself with greatly diminished guilt feelings. It is extremely easy for people to complain and throw brickbats rather than take con- structive action. I feel that your actions will have impact far into the future as you have focused a light on a condition that was not well rec- ognized outside of those of us that feel it. It has been only recently that the scientific community has taken even a cursory look at FPs as distinct from homosexuals and/or transexuals. Although the heading Transvest- ism has been added to Index Medicus there is still very little published on the subject although it does seem to be increasing. The fact that a dis-

72