RANSVESTIA

never can come to be stiffled into commonplace middle class medioc-

racy.

Romantic love is really something simple. It means being in love with a person, whoever, and whatever that person is. It is neither love as a sex symbol, nor is it love as a meaningless middle class insti- tution.

Still, at the same time, romantic love is not a puritan creed, not by any means. Romantic love does not mean abstinence; it does not mean that sex is not part of it. Sex is very much with it, because in any warm affectionate relation between human beings, the sexuality and the sensuality are part of the humanity and can not be divorced from it. Sex is part of romantic love, but it is not there as the principal thing, it is there because it can not be kept out. The difference is that it is no longer sex for the sake of sex, or an orgasmic cult. It is doubly precious, because there is much more.

Part of feminine orientation is probably also an almost complete inability I have always experienced to "mix" with other men. I simply do not know how to act, to feel as one with the group, to join the general male attitudes of "horsing around", bragging, story and joke telling, going for a night out with the boys, or gaping into a television set at sports event. I seldom go out, I don't smoke, and I don't drink. I never in my life have been drunk, and to admit that does not seem to embarrass me in the least.

It is not so much that things shock me. As a matter of fact, I have a horror of people who pass out moral cliches and are forever ready to pass judgement. These general male attitudes and preoccupations may be perfectly fine for the rest of the world, but they are just not for me. Something is lacking. I don't fit that image.

I have also in a more general sense become strongly aware of the absurdity of the exaggerated "maleness" of our whole civilization, its merciless scom and arrogance, its icecold cynicism and materialsim. Not to mention the poverty stricken spiritual ghetto in which the patriarchal Christian church has come to dwell; a church run by a clergy become a veritable bastion of male chauvinism and misogyny; a church heaven for man and disaster for woman. And in this same connection, I have strongly perceived the importance of the modern Women's Liberation movement; not just another social movement of

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