RANSVESTIA

legally and morally. It has to be rather ironic that while psychiatrists still debate whether homosexuality is a sickness, a biologically based behaviour or just a socially unaccepted way of life, so many of them are willing to assist in the great cop-out of rearranging things so that the devil can be cheated and what was bad and wrong yesterday will be good, right and appropriate tomorrow. Such operated persons are still "homosexual in the head" for that is where homosexuality is. It is NOT in the penis. That organ is just a mechanical means for sexual activity.

It would be both more honorable and more helpful to the patient if the psychiatrists would encourage the patient to forget about surgery and set about becoming a happy homosexual, able to function free of guilt and comfortably in society. Sex isn't all there is to life nor does one's interest and ability in that area last forever. Age does come and life for elderly single women is not too comfortable for born females. How much less satisfying and financially limited it will be for the sex changed woman when sex is a thing of the past and when she has realized only very few advantages from being a woman for just a part of her life span. This long range few should be given a lot more atten- tion by both patient and professional.

Basically, the problem involved in the whole sex reassignment matter is one of extreme male chauvinism both on the part of the applicant for surgery and of the professional dealing with him. This will sound like an absurd proposition, considering that these in- dividuals wish to leave maleness behind and embrace pseudo femaleness. But it is not, when you consider the essence of the male- dominated society's attitude toward women . . . primarily as products of their anatomy, not as complete and equal persons in spite of, not because of, their anatomy. The newly reassigned female is trying to achieve her womanhood precisely by way of her new anatomy because that is the way HE (before surgery) thought of women. The misfortune is that neither the patient, the psychiatrist, nor the surgeon really know much about womanhood in spite of how much they may know about femaleness. There are very few females involved in the decision- making side of this process and I will venture to assert that even those that are, have not stopped to realize how fundamentally they are programmed in this male philosophy and how truly chauvinistic the whole phenomenon is.

If the medical profession would put some of their energy and professional clout into educating legislatures that there is simply no

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