TRANSVESTIA

too young for sex at the time, but still, what I felt was different. I was vaguely aware that there was something I had to do, and although I have since understood from fragmented recollections, impressions, and dreams of my childhood that it was something that had been with me for some time, it was not until my early teens that I began to dress.

Much is said and thought today about guilt feelings. I never had them; it must be something modern. I found myself in the clothes of my sisters and my mother with many and mixed emotions. Other than un- explainable delight and rapture, I remember I felt a strange mixture of surprise and relief. Why? Why on earth should anyone do such a thing? And what if by accident someone should come and catch me? But guilt feelings I never had.

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I felt surprised, and I felt I was doing something quite strange. But that was not all. I also felt I was doing something that for me — was natural, something that, somehow, it was meant for me to do. I was frightened and shaken, but I was certain. I was certain I was satisfying something in me that must be satisfied and could not be satisfied any other way. I was giving way to a compulsion, and un- doubtedly it was strong. I don't think I could have resisted it, even if I had felt that I should. What I mean about no guilt feelings is, that it has never in my life occurred to me that I should resist.

I suppose, never having experienced guilt feelings is something a psychiatrist would find hard to believe. But I could annoy a psychia- trist a good deal worse than that: I never all my life had any feelings, weak, proud, vague, strong, humble, diffuse, specific, or any other, of being a male. And that is likely to make any self respecting member of the profession blow his mind.

A psychiatrist attaches much importance to a concept called "iden- tity". Every person is supposed to make one thing abundantly clear, namely, what his or her "identity" is. And of course, for a man, that means feeling the appropriate pride in being a male, the master of the world, God's gift to creation. And the male heterosexual TV in particular, is supposed to be strongly aware that he is a male "under- neath it all".

It is strange that even in the modern up-to-date literature one finds. this view strongly emphasized, in fact, emphasized to the point of

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