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svestia

position on the Kinsey scale) who are the "true transexuals" (if that word must be used) suffer from what might be termed "social dyshphoria." They are uncomfortable, inadequate, ineffective and un- happy in the sex-gender condition they find themselves in because of too great a disparity between expectation and performance.

So, in view of these different motivations and purposes is there any better alternative? For the heterosexual or gender motivated can- didate I believe there is. What the patient (and often the doctor) doesn't realize is that it is perfectly possible to change names, legal identification, passport, bank accounts, credit cards, diplomas and other documents and BE a woman without having sex surgery. I speak from personal, first-hand experience here because that is just what I did six and one-half years ago. It is possible to shift one's identity into the head and away from the genitals and if this is accomplished sur- gery is superfluous because it does nothing for the individual except to enable her to sleep with a male. For a previously heterosexually oriented individual to rearrange that programming so that she could achieve a comfortable and rewarding sexual relationship with a male, let alone a long-term gender relationship with a man in a marital situation is rather unlikely. Such a relationship is difficult enough between ordinary unaltered males and females as indicated by the divorce rate, but for the new woman who has not been indoctrinated with the concept of femininity since she was a baby, it is improbable to say the least. The concern of the new woman should not be so much that such a partner would detect the artificial sexual apparatus after all an orifice is an orifice-but that he would "read" her assum- ed femininity as lacking in depth, naturalness and self-assurance.Thus the long-term prospects for such a "new woman" ought to be examin- ed in depth instead of just assuming that with a new vagina and a new dress all will be well.

What then of Kinsey's 5s and 6s? Such persons' sexual ex- periences have been with other males. They are "penis oriented" which is to say that they look to another person with a penis as a source of their sexual pleasure. This will not change with surgery and of course they do not want it to. All the surgery will accomplish will be to make it possible to receive a penis in front and thus to simulate more completely the accepted biological and social norm for sexual in- tercourse to be between a penis and a vagina. Additionally, whatever guilt there was about being a homosexual previously has now been magically removed and one can have intercourse with a male both

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