RANSVESTIA

say that this problem certainly cannot be shared by the majority-the heterosexual transvestites. Furthermore, in "The Cross Dressing, A Case Study," (Journal of nervous and Mental Diseases 131, 1960, p. 149), V. Grant reports that the "view that the behavior of the trans- vestite may be seen as a defensive turning away-out of inadequacy feeling-from the male role, is ... well supported by much of our data. Yet this data is equally consistent with a quite different assumption, namely, that there is an inclination, a turning toward, the feminine role. The positive aspect is as important as the negative. Our subject takes great and genuine pleasure in every item of feminine clothing. Not only does he want high heels, he wants to walk in them with the grace and poise of a woman. His wanting to be accepted in a feminine role is more than a defense; it has the flavor of a deeply gratifying experience ... The psychoanalytic interpretation of trans- vestism as a defense from castration anxiety fails to fully consider this postive aspect of the experience itself. It may be a passion as well as a compulsion."

And so the feminine male, wishing only to be at peace with the femininity in himself he cherishes, is pressured into the dual life of the transvestite. "[Doctors] can't cure [transvestism] because the trans- vestite has found a part of himself that was stolen from him as a child, and he's not about to give it up. Suppose a prince had a treasure, and during the night, when he was a child, someone stole it and hid it somewhere in a cave. Later in life he found it. He'd say, 'No one will ever take it from me again.' That's the way the transvestite feels about his femininity, and why he's incurable. Society robbed him of a chance to be his full self by seeing it as a sickness and forbidding it. The clothes are a doorway. When you put on the clothes, they entitle you to behave a certain way." (Quote by Dr. Charles Virginia Prince in Karlen, Arno, Sexuality and Homosexuality, New York, W.W. Norton & Co. 1971, p. 368.)

Perhaps if men were allowed to behave this "certain way" without the "doorway" of appearing as a a woman, i.e. without affixing breasts or altering other basic physical characteristics, there would be no transvestities. "Transvestites wouldn't exist if it weren't for the masculine-feminine polarizing of society. The kids are wiping out some of this, and I think transvestism may disappear in fifty years." (Ibid., p. 368.)

Therefore it is putting the cart before the horse to expect trans-

48