TRANSVESTIA

We should also be aware that the human mind is quite peculiar and can rationalize all sorts of contradictions. How would you like to associ- ate with someone who continually wears filthy rags and goes for extended periods without bathing? They are not hurting anyone; minding their own business and not creating a disturbance. They are supporting them- selves and their family and all those other good reasons. Those arguments may sound familiar but not quite right under those circumstances. Yet they may be perfectly valid so far as these individuals are concerned. The human mind has the ability to compartmentalize. A set of circumstances perfectly valid in one case is not applicable in another. Yet they can exist simultaneously in our mind. What we would like to do (or have done to us) and what we must do may be two separate contradictions.

The next contention against reality is that the hero(ine) always ends up by enjoying feminization. Naturally she would! The implication is that the hero is always a latent heroine and that it only needed a jolt to bring out the hidden tendencies. Would it be a transvestite story if it turned out otherwise? As with any other fiction, we tend to identify with the central characters. Whether you approve of their actions is immaterial as long as he does things germane to the story and within your expecta- tions. How many of you would be interested in continuing the story if the hero successfully foiled the dominant female, retrieved his own clothes and resumed his old occupation as a bricklayer without the slight- est desire to experience any transvestite temptations. (I have nothing against bricklayers, I could have said Astronauts). Therefore the nature of the story says that he has to like the impending transformation.

Now let's take a different stance. In our society men are the dominant sex. (Or so I am told) Occasionally the methods used to establish and maintain this dominance are crude and obvious, but more often they are subtle and pervasive. The status quo remains even for the individual who lives as a woman outwardly but does not legally change his sex. (The legal aspects of a sex change would be an interesting subject for an art- icle.) For instance, depending upon the state of residency, it may be dif- ficult for a woman to even obtain a credit status. Consciously or no, we as males, have been raised accepting these small but cumulative items of discrimination and utilizing them to our advantage whenever the need arises.

Subconsciously we realize that there is no way in which we can make our socio-economic structure over and give the ladies more recognition. The only way we can equalize things a bit in our stories is allow the wo- man to be overtly dominant and properly puts us little girls in our places.

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