IRGIN IEWS by IRGINIA

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I'M GLAD I WASN'T BORN A GIRL

I'm sure that is a surprising title for an essay to FPs. Most FPs think to themselves at one time or another, "I wish I'd been born a girl." It sounds like a logical expression of feeling and an expected feeling for someone who "enjoys being a girl" in the middle of their life as a man. But there is another side to it that really isn't perceptible from where most FPs stand. It is perceptible to me and I want to elaborate a bit on it.

Earlier in my life I too had those thoughts. Girlness seemed a most marvelous state of affairs, certainly one which was free of all manner of problems that beset boys and if I had been a girl I wouldn't have to bother with them at all. Everything would have been "sugar and spice and everything nice." But would it? During the last 10 years that I have lived, lectured, traveled and read and exposed myself to the world as a woman and been reacted to as a woman, I've learned a few things and learned them in the rather unusual way of being a "male woman.”

To begin with, I've read many of the first books on women's liber- ation, such as The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, The Feminine Mystique by Freidan, The Female Eunich by Greer, and a number of others. My perceptions of the problems girls and women have to put up with were greatly broadened (and it's an appropriate pun). I heartily recommend that all FPs educate themselves in this area and Germaine Greer's book, The Female Eunuch, is an excellent place to start.

Then as most of you know, 10 years ago I decided that I'd had enough of manhood, having participated in all the major forms of it- high school and college athletics, academic and scholastic exper-

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