RANSVESTIA

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"whatever turns you on”. Obviously an FP husband with one of these women is very fortunate.

So what then can be done about the C, D, and E wives. Since logic and reason cannot attack their emotional problems since they are really stereotypic constrictions and chains laid on them by society in their bringing up, the only other solution is to free them at least to some de- gree from these constrictions. They need therefore to be, yes, let's use the word, "liberated" from the confining concepts of what is “right” "appropriate" "proper" etc. I would suggest therefore that the FP hus- band begin by learning something about women's lib himself. Read books like Germaine Greer's "The Female Eunuch,” or Betty Freiden's "The Feminine Mystique", subscribe to MS magazine, join NOW (the National Organization of Women - men can belong) and in other ways learn exactly how women are tied down and suppressed by the male or- ganized culture. When you have learned something of that you will be better able to understand what's inside your wife's head.

But since you can't just go off and do all this by yourself the main thing is to take her with you, in reading, in joining, in meeting others and in talking between you. You need mutual "consciousness raising" as it is called an increased awareness of exactly what is and has been going on with the "woman question" all these years. If you can get your wife to do this she may well begin to work her way out of the cocoon of im- posed femininity and to feel more secure in exploring her own self a bit. As she becomes more liberated within herself she is going of neces- sity and simultaneously to become more tolerant and less demanding of you simply because the stereotype that makes her what she is requires that you be what she needs you to be. As she breaks one set of limita- tions it automatically will break the other. Could be after a time if she shows any aptitude to study the whole phenomenon of women's status and her own victimization by it that she will ease up on you.

Consider also that for a man the strongest stereotypic binding he is enmeshed in is the need to be masculine, to avoid at all costs any ap- pearance of femininity. FPs therefore may be thought of as the vanguard of men's liberation because we have met our own internal enemy "and she is us" the "girl within". As we are able to escape from the require- ments of masculinity and to be aware that we have made some peace with your own feminine self we too have begun to be Liberated. So don't snicker at "Liberation." Your wife needs it, you need it, everybody needs it. We need to learn to express our free, total humanity and not be limited by the strictures of "masculinity" and "femininity".

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