RANSVESTIA

free to hunt, fight, think, create, build and achieve and this came to be considered natural and proper for a man. Women, being excluded by necessity during most of human history from enjoying these activities due to their being tied down to child-bearing, rearing and nurturing came to be considered as capable of little else. The corollary to it, in the minds of women themselves, was that that was their complete role in life and they should be happy in it.

Women therefore find themselves limited by two concepts that have formed the backbone of their social existance for generations: (1) That men were not only bigger and stronger but that in most affairs of the world they were superior - by nature, not just by training. (2) That since all females are females by virtue of their ability to conceive and bear children, that was their rightful place and principal duty and obligation in society.

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By the nature of human beings, both male and females have a need to feel adequate, successful and esteemed by their fellows. Men have, since the beginning, accomplished these by fighting, governing, design- ing (machinery and buildings), operating, and manipulating things and people. He who did any of these things well enjoyed the fruits of social approval. Women were left between their biology and the two concepts noted above with only one route by which they might feel adequate, suc- cessful and approved of — namely by catching a husband and becoming a mother. Accepting these definitions of her place in the scheme of things meant also accepting the male's idea about himself. Thus to her he be- came the strong, dependable, decisive, protective lover and companion and more particularly the living proof of her own achievement, i.e., she HAD caught a man and the better the man physically, socially and finan- cially the more effective and successful became her femininity. Converse- ly, not being able to bag a male for a husband, i.e., to be an "old maid" was for generations a fate just below death because it was mute evidence of her failure as a woman.

“All right,” you say, "what has all this got to do with TVism and the purpose of this magazine?" "Lots," I say, because 75% of your are mar- ried currently and more have been or will be and because approximately 1/3 of your wives don't know you are an FP, another 3 know but strongly disapprove and only the final 3 accept your behavior in some de- gree or another. (The statistics come from my survey of 504 FPs made some 7 or 8 years ago and finally printed in Psychological Reports, Vol. 31, pgs 903-17, 1972, for any who may be interested and have access to a library.)

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