RANSVESTIA

type gender identity. Such potentials were submerged and rejected because of the learning processes described above which activated, encouraged and developed that part of our total human self which our particular society believed were appropriate to penis-people. The potentials remained there below the surface, however, until some event brought them to our attention. We experienced something new, it was pleasurable and satisfying and we developed it over the years until here we are adults of various ages who upon occasion enjoy bringing this half of ourself into real time and three-dimensional exis- tence in place of a fantasy life in the back of our head or in wistful day dreams. We are in short "femmiphiles" or to use another term I coined many years ago "Femme Personators" meaning one who "per- sonates" or brings life to his femmeself (as distinct from female im- personator).

At this point in life we begin to be faced with choices and decisions which can be simplified into three classes. The first class consists of those who continue to live and function as men in their daily social and business activities but who, when circumstances are favorable, enjoy giving life to their femmeself through dressing and acting (to some degree) as girls and women do that is to say the regular transvestite or femmiphile.

The second class which is not large consists of those of us (and in this case the "us" refers to persons like myself, Mary and some others) who, because we find ourselves in circumstances that permit it, decide to live twenty-four hours a day as our femmeself. That is, to live as women openly and in society.

The third class which, to my thinking, is unfortunately much larger than it should be, consists of those who have undergone or who seriously plan in the near future to undergo sex change surgery.

Now after all this, we come to the meat of this essay and the reason for the title. Let us deal now with classes two and three, persons who have decided that they have lived enough of their lives as men and that they would be happier living the rest of it as women. let me recall to your minds the distinctions between sexual and genderal identity, namely that one is based on anatomy and the other on psycho-sociological factors. Interestingly enough very few of the persons who put themselves in class three say bluntly that "I want to be a female." What they do say is that "I want to be a woman." If you