RANSVESTIA

ask them if they are planning on having surgery primarily so that they can have intra-vaginal sex with a male they will usually either strongly deny that as a motive at all or will cop out to some degree with statements to the general effect that "if I find somebody that I love and that loves me I would probably enjoy having sexual rela- tions with him" or "well that's just part of being a woman.

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The significant thing is that these people, and some of you who read this will be in this category, make it clear in various ways that it is not to become a female that they contemplate or have the surgery. They all say, "I am a woman trapped in a man's body." That is not the same as saying, "I am a female trapped in a male body." The dif- ference is not a subtle one but it is lost on most class three individuals. It is also lost on the surgeons and psychiatrists that they deal with too, unfortunately. What it all comes down to is either a confusion between or a denial of the difference between sexual and genderal identity.

People in class two know the difference and consciously elect to change their gender identity without surgery. This is what I did eight years ago. I recognize fully that there is nothing at all that I could do after sex change surgery that I can't do right now except have sex with a male. I also recognize that the desire for that kind of exper- ience is a head trip first. One has to want it before one has it, so that desire has to be present in the head even before surgery, it doesn't come as a result of surgery. Since class two people recognize the dif- ference between sex and gender we can make a conscious decision to become a woman - a psycho-social gender creature and stop there because we have no pattern in our head that leads us to long for sexual interaction with a male. We are therefore women by choice. Having made the choice and living and accepting the limi- tations of that role in society we are able to literally give life to our feminine side in the same social ways that female women do.

Class three persons however, are those that I call women by default. By this I mean that they become women as a result of a phy- sical alteration which leaves them non-males by any anatomical criteria and non-males are, by definition "females" and can therefore "be" women. I put quotes around "female" because becoming a non- male doesn't make you a female. It makes you a chromosomal XY male person with a frontal orifice and with no gonads of any kind. What I'm trying to say is that their womanhood comes about as a by-