RANSVESTIA

(husband and father) and as a man (gender — as architect, army of- ficer, respected member of community). Thus you are not inadequate on any score sufficiently to try to deny all of yourself and start over in the hope of accomplishing more in the new sex and gender.

What's with you is what's with me and all the rest - you love, ad- mire and are envious of women and their femininity. It's because you love them that you want to partake of them. But it's not because you envy them their ability to take a penis into their body. If you admire being impaled on a penis that much then you would be a homosexual in your mind already and I don't think you are. Therefore you don't envy them their anatomy genitals, that is, or their physiology- menstruation, etc. Rather you envy and want to be part of their gender - their femininity. This can be done short of surgery as I and as Mary have done it. We know from experience that we are just as fulfilled femininely now after six years as a "male but a woman" as we would be with surgery. The only new thing we could do then would be to be able to go to bed with a guy and have sex with him frontally. As this was not and is not our motivation what is the point of getting the equipment for the act if you aren't going to use it. We have just come to KNOW that being feminine is entirely a psycho-social matter and that one has to learn it with or without surgery and it's no easier with than without so why bother.

So let's change your underlined statement, "I'd like to live and die a WOMAN (not female).” That is what you really feel whether you will admit it or not. It's just that you like most everyone else is so im- bued with the idea that sex and gender are inseparable that you feel that you can't really be a woman unless you are also "female." Well the kind of "female" that surgery makes you is just a male with a hole in front. It doesn't change your chromosomes, your body chemistry nor your 57 years of programming, so forget even the longing for surgery as well as the fact and get about with understanding your real self.

Now did you ever order the Wives book for your wife? If not, you should. It would probably help her to better understand what it is all about.

Next, your offer to help is appreciated but it is not possible to farm out tasks such as writing counselling letters like this. Obviously, you can't put the magazine together for me so there isn't much that you can do for me. You can do things for others by helping find them and counselling them if and when they need it.

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