RANSVESTIA

today, but perhaps the only chance left, our only hope: a sisterhood of all mankind to replace a brotherhood of man infested by greed, hatred, and intolerance.

Another surprise is that there does not appear to be any particular age bracket or age limit for FPia. I suppose it can be supressed in so far as one can ever supress a personality, but at a constant effort and a lifetime struggle. It is senseless to expect that it will "go away". Rather, it seems to grow stronger with the years. If I were to sum it up in just one word, I think I would call it an awareness; an intense, absorbing awareness that never leaves except in moments of complete concentration and distraction. In all my years since my early teens, there has hardly been a twenty-four hour period when I have not in some way felt this awareness.

And yet, I never felt tempted to go through the TS surgery. In the early part of my life, there was no such thing, but even after the surgery became a reality, I never considered it. Precisely why, is hard to say. I am attached to my family, and this is a reason, though it does not answer all questions. What if I had never married? And suppose the TS surgery had always been available, even during my youth, what would I have decided?

I have mentioned that there is only one way I ever reflected over my "identity". I have found myself wondering about the fact that I am not a woman; not wistfully, not in frustration, but in a factual way; something about me that always seemed important; a question worth asking, though there never could be an answer. But I always had with me, and I still have this conviction, that if I had been a woman, I would have been totally incapable of making love to men, only to women.

I could never conceive of ever performing acts of sexuality or sen- suality with a man, only with a woman. And if through surgery, I were to change my sex, I know this attitude would not change. Surgery is a physiological change. I can love only women now, and I could love only women then. And this, perhaps after all, is the difference be- tween femmiphilia and transexuality.

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