RANSVESTIA

need nor justification for having sexual anatomy specified on drivers' licenses, for example, many of these people could, in comfort and peace live out their lives as women without the expense, pain and travail of surgery. As it is they want the vagina as a validation and legitimization of their womanhood so that society cannot deny them the lifestyle they wish to live.

There is one further thing I think needs to be mentioned. Sex reassignment surgery is a communicable disease. Like other such con- ditions it needs a susceptible subject, a causative agent and an ex- posure in order to spread. There are certainly of susceptible subjects among the transvestites and drag queen population. The causative agent is the very idea of surgery and its fantasied results. The ex- posure occurs every time an operated person, a doctor or an organiza- tion publicly speaks about the subject on radio, television or lecture platform; writes about it in magazines, books and newspapers or otherwise brings it to the attention of the public. Such publicity acts like a spring shower on dried ground... hundreds of new shoots spring up... it acts like a trigger mechanism to fire up another whole crop of so-called "transexuals" who fervently say, after reading or hearing about the surgery, "Why that is what I am. Surgery is the answer to my problems." I can speak to that from personal experience, too. When I read about Christine Jorgenson I immediately said, "That's for me." Fortunately I was broke at the time and therefore able to resist the lure of surgery. That gave me 15 years to discover that it wasn't necessary anyway.

In conclusion, I think that professionals in the various branches of medical science dealing with these matters should learn to distinguish between the concept of sex and the concept of gender and thus between the motivations their patients have; should look at the long- term effects rather than the short-term fantasies and demands, and should attempt to minimize the discussion of this type of surgery in the public media in the interest of lessening the number of persons "turned on" to the idea and who then swell the ranks of the "ladies in waiting." For every one person for whom surgery is indicated there are at least nine others for whom it is not and who, if they had never heard, read or seen something about sex surgery would never have "gone the route" themselves. I have watched too many of my friends and acquaintances go down the tubes, breaking up marriages and homes along the way, all to accomplish what? The opportunity to live their own chosen lifestyle which they could have done anyway and been $5,000 or more dollars ahead besides, if someone had helped them to really analyze and understand their true motives and goals.