RANSVESTIA

The notions of sex and gender are basic organic functions. If we accept as a point of departure, that in all of us, both gender orien- tations, masculine as well as feminine, are always present — present with the male sex and present with the female sex, It follows then that in each one of us, regardless of sex, these two gender orien- tations are, potentially or actually, conflicting. The final gender ori- entation, masculinity or femininity, is generally settled in early child- hood years, sometimes because one is dominant by nature, but prob- ably in most cases because the other is suppressed as a matter of assigned gender roles.

If both gender orientations are present in all of us to some though varying degree, it follows further that provoking or upsetting events can under certain circumstances generate cross dressing, in a person of the male sex with a feminine gender orientation not strong enough. to surface otherwise. But it also makes it reasonable that when there has been a powerful feminine dominance in a male person, perhaps from birth, it is futile to look for "reasons".

It seems a word of caution is justified. The importance that can be attached to a specific "event" depends on how strong the feminine gender orientation was to begin with; something no one can in any way measure. Personality scales are not yet even thought of as scales in the continuum. They are strictly positional scales, and the positions are the commonly accepted societal stereotypes and assigned gender roles. Everything in between is suppressed to conform.

It is probable that only in rare cases has an "event" really been of great importance. In the majority of cases, the "event" merely caused something to surface that was latently there to begin with. And in numerous cases, there never was an "event", there is no reason, and there is very little choice.

In my own experience, with no identifiable "event" or reason or episode, just simply under an urge or compulsion I never myself understood, I began to dress in my early teens. It was not really a sudden thing. I had for some years been aware of a strange curiosity about girl clothes and women clothes, though not in a "sexist" sense.

My oldest brother at the time had begun after the fashion of teen- agers to buy sex magazines. I found them disgusting. Perhaps I was

27