RANSVESTIA

People in our swarming society are always moving, not only physically but sociologically, psychologically and philosophically. As we move we run head on into the barriers in each of these areas. For the most part we are reflected back into the swarming mass of conformity. However, there always are some individuals who have enough "escape velocity" to penetrate, climb over, and go beyond these barriers. When someone transcends the barriers of poverty and rises socially he is considered a success. Those who break through the restrictions of law are criminals, of morals are sinners, of sexual behaviour are adulterers or swingers. In short we have names for all those types of people who for one reason or another climb over one or another of our cultural barriers.

But there is still another barrier, that of gender. And at this point I should make very clear what I am talking about, because for a great many people, which unfortunately includes many professionals as well as laymen, the words "sex" and "gender" are two words for the same thing. They thus consider that male and man and female and woman are also synomous and will use them interchangeably in conversation regardless of whether they are talking of sexual, which is to say anatomical-physiological matters, or genderal, which means sociological concerns. So, to get off on the right foot I think it would be appropriate to quote John Money's original definition of gender. He defines it as ...

"All those things that a person says or does to disclose himself or herself as having the status of boy or man, girl or woman respectively. It concludes but is not restricted to sexuality in the sense of eroticism. A gender role is not established at birth but is built up through ex- periences encountered and transacted, through casual and unplanned learning and through explicit instruction and inclination ... a gender role is established in much the same way as a native language." Sex you are born with and gender you acquire so obviously they are two different aspects of human existence.

To make things still clearer, let us look at a human being in what might be called a three dimensional view. It is obvious that one dimension on which people can be measured is that of anatomy and physiology. This continuum runs from complete maleness at one end to complete femaleness at the other. The midpoint on that continuum is that of the hermaphrodite—a person possessing at least some of the anatomy of each sex. But that isn't sufficient to characterize living

82