RANSVESTIA

partner. But living as a woman, my femininity only exists, as does that of any other woman, in relation to masculinity. One cannot be either masculine or feminine by oneself because they are terms defined in relation to the opposite qualities. So, as I often answer the question about my interest in men when addressing a class of students — I enjoy men's company but not male company. By this I mean that as a woman I enjoy the relationship with a man, but when he turns from being a man (gender) to being a male (sex) I am no longer interested.

I write these words partly just to relate some of my own ex- periences, but partly in the hope that you who read these words will re- examine some of your own attitudes as men, not as FPs, and try to ferret out some of the more subtle male chauvinistic attitudes that you have within you. All men do have them and only in the real macho types is it on a conscious level. Your society has socialized you during your for- mative years to look upon certain things in certain ways. You now do this automatically. You don't think about them, you don't question them, you simply have them, express them and act on them.

How deeply such attitudes are embedded was revealed to me by an experience in Germany when I was driving from Vienna to Ham- burg in 1973 (as reported in TVia No. 81). I stopped in the town of Wurtzburg at the German Auto Club office to get some information about the things to see in Nuremburg, the next city up the road. When I had gotten the necessary information I asked the clerk, "Oh, is there a place around here where I could cash a travelers check?" He pointed across the street and said, "Certainly, right over there." I turned and saw a great big building about four stories high and half a block long, with no windows on that side but gigantic letters proclaiming "Deutsches Verein Bank." Immediately, I was aware that if I had ask- ed the question as Charles I would have felt pretty silly because the building and sign were so obvious that a man should certainly have been able to see it and not ask such a stupid question. I would have felt that the Auto Club clerk would have regarded me as pretty dopey for asking. But simultaneously I was aware that I didn't have to feel silly or put down or anything because I was a woman, and men expect women to ask dumb questions and to be sort of stupid, "after all, what do you expect, she's only a woman." I just knew that he wasn't surprised at the question coming from a woman and wouldn't put me down for asking it, so I didn't have to feel awkward.

Well that concept of "she's only a woman, what do you expect?" is the tap root of all male chauvenism. Somehow women just don't have

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