RANSVESTIA

small part of life whether you are talking about what anatomical sex you are, or about the experience of using that anatomy in one way or the other. Females are not that ecstatic about having a vagina, so it isn't the new sex organ that TSs have or even the use to which they put it that contributes most to their pleasure in their new life. It is the fact that they have used the surgery as a means of providing a justifiable reason for being able to be girls, i.e. feminine, 24 hours a day. Although most of them would deny it, it is their achievement of feminine roles to fulfill and men have masculine ones, but that we might have felt using a feminine solution when we were men. cumstance. As a matter of fact, in today's world, it is becoming less experienced as "John" is still coded into their brain. Then when they begin to acquire a whole new library of learning and experience as "Jane" they have access to both sets of experience and they can have the option of how they will handle any particular environmental situation. They can act aggressively and attack the situation in a masculine way or they can decide to retreat from or ignore the situation in a classically feminine way. And interestingly, they can do either one without any feeling of guilt, shame or inadequacy. As their former male selves, and this goes for most of you who read this, too, there are a lot of occasions where if you had an urge to abandon, ignore, or retreat from a situation you would feel uncomfortable and shamed because that is not the "way a real man would handle such a situation." One of the criteria of true androgeneity or gynandrogene- ity is, that of the several types of response that are possible in a given situation any of them can be utilized without having to feel guilty about not living up to a role. Because essentially that is what androgeneity is--the absence of a role to live up to. Women have feminine roles to fulfill and men have masculine ones, bur androgenous and gynandrous persons don't have roles to live up to. There is no such thing as an androgenous role. Such a person is just a human being who is free enough to be able to make a guilt free choice as to which of the several possible reactions to the situation he or she will employ. Perhaps when the implications of that sink in a bit you will not only have a better understanding of the meaning of the words, but a greater ambition to achieve that state.

The other night this was clearly brought out by a group that I called together. Six women; two had had surgery, two were going to have it when it could be arranged, and two (Mary and myself) hadn't had it and didn't want it. But, regardless of the matter of surgery, we had all changed our gender. All six of us had formerly been men and

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