RANSVESTIA

too a woman and I have a right to wear dresses (or whatever)" have not really accepted themselves. They have tried to impose acceptance on themselves by creating a manifest physical denial of their maleness because there are no longer penis and testicles present to force such an admission. But making your body persuade your mind is a cop out, it's not true self acceptance. Since womanhood is a gender matter, it's a head trip not a body trip. And such persons are in effect trying to persuade their mind of the reality of their womanhood by referring to their bodily condition. True self acceptance is just what the words say, "I am what I am. I am a male sexual person who prefers to live out my life in that social role defined as womanhood. I will do this because I want to do it and I will not be troubled by other peoples concepts of womanliness. That is their problem and let them settle it, it's not my problem. I accept the role with both its advantages and limitations, voluntarily and in- tentionally."

The second factor, the external one, is the real payoff. If you look authentic enough, act authentic enough and dress appropriately, the world at large will accept you as just another woman. Within this acceptance you have freedom to do many things, many of them the same things that you used to do as a man but which, because you have sent out the correct visual identifying signals of womanhood, the world will accept as being done by a woman. When the people on the street, the plane, in the restaurant or whereever look upon you as, treat you as, and have the same expectations of you as any other woman, THEN and only then are you a woman. If you can't bring out these responses is other people because of some incongruous dissonance such as size, shape, voice, facial appearance, beard shadow, walk, behavior, gestures, language or a variety of other things, then once again you don't make it.

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You see, surgery is, at the bottom, a form a self persuasion becuase, sexual intercourse aside, the world never pulls your skirt up (or anyone elses) to ascertain whether you are a woman or not. Thus a class two person and a class three person who had had the surgery have exactly the same opportunities to make friends, to do things, to be accepted for what they appear to be. The operation doesn't figure in to this social acceptance at all. In fact if the operatee never tells them but comports herself within the accepted limits of womanhood in her particular community the world will never know that she has had surgery, so what good does it do?

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