RANSVESTIA

and as concerned about each other as two sisters might be.

This particular book and person would probably be no more impor- tant to review than many of his/her predecessors were it not just the most obvious case yet of the misfortunes and mistakes resulting from a non- perception of the difference between sex and gender. I say this in the sense that this individual was obviously not homosexual having been a loving husband and father for 25 years, so he didn't make the change in order to have sex with a male. Why then did he? Because he wanted to "be a woman"! Why didn't he just do so then and start to live as one? Because having the surgery enabled him to present himself to his colleagues, friends and reading public as one of that unique and much to be pitied group called "transexuals." This way he could achieve some sympathy and understanding and be able to go on working and writing as “Jan.” Consciously or unconsciously he rejected the solution of just changing his gender role and living as Jan because of a feeling that the world would consider him some sort of a weirdo for doing so. Thus the surgery was in reality just a means of rendering the gender change that he really wanted both necessary and inevitable-and, with all the publicity that sex- changes have gotten over the years, publicly acceptable and justifying the change of role.

What a shame that someone should have to go thru that ordeal, pain- wise, money-wise, danger-wise, and in every other way just to be legally entitled to be "herself." The long article in the New York Times Magazine about Jan Morris makes interesting reading (March 6, 1974 Section 6). It was written by his longtime friend and colleague David Holden. It is very sympathetically written and it covers many aspects of James' personal life and history. But to one more acquainted with this phenomenon -and in this sense I mean myself - it serves to make it very clear that James was not a transexual in any sensible meaning of the word. He was a transves- tite-femmiphile even as you and I. His boyhood, young manhood and life were very adequately masculine. His maleness and heterosexuality were unquestioned. But since by an early age he had had that feeling so well known to most of us of "wanting to be a girl.” It was a secret that he shared with his wife from early in their marriage and because of the type of woman she apparently was she was able not only to understand it and him but to integrate his feminine feelings into family life so that their joint feelings and treatment of their children were perhaps closer than in an ordinary marriage. It is ironic that several references to Jan's awareness of the differences between sex and gender-she uses that exact expres- sion-appear in the reviews about her. She is quoted as saying that she

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