Sheila Sullivan

ARTICLE

LOOKING TOWARD TRANSVESTITE LIBERATION

Editor's Note: A reprint of this article was sent to me by a reader. Since it did not show the name of the magazine in which it first appeared, I cannot give credit to the source although the name of the authoress is given. It is reprinted here because it shows that others than FPs can perceive the nature of our life style and show some understanding for it. Although it seems in the beginning as though she didn't know the difference between hetero and homosexual cross dressers since she deals with gay attitudes, marches, etc, she really does know it and she later quotes Dr. Benjamin about it. So you can assume that she is using the words transvestites in its proper sense even in the beginning of the article. She makes some very perceptive points, many of which I have been making for a long time so it is nice to see someone else—and a GG at that-bringing them out in a different way.

The presence, or even the thought, of male transvestites, drag queens and female impersonators provokes angry protestations in the feminist and other liberation movements across the country. During a rally in New York for Gay Pride Week 1973, for instance, it was "rumored that if any drag queens appear on the rally stage, the lesbian feminists will trash the place, as they feel drag's insulting to women, and that the gay genital-male leather-jacket-and-boots contingent will also riot, be- cause they feel drag's insulting to men." (Burke, Tom. "Violet Millen- nium or The Invert Comes of Age," Rolling Stone, August 30, 1973, p. 58.) And only after a fistfight with the lesbians were the transvestites allowed to speak. In Homosexual Oppression and Liberation (New York: Avon, 1971, p. 149), Dennis Altman states that "The relationship between gay liberation and those who practice ... transvestism ... usually stigmatized within as well as without the traditional gay world,

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