RANSVESTIA

According to their possession of a penis or a vagina at birth, they get shunted into one or the other of two paths of development. This is done directly and originally by parents on the basis of sex determina- tion and indirectly by siblings, peers and all manner of experience as Money mentions in his definition. The end result is that males generally become acceptably masculine boys and men and females generally become appropriately feminine girls and women and each gender more or less accepts the inevitability of this state of affairs not even realizing that many things might be quite opposite in some other culture.

But we don't give much consideration to the converse of that proposition, namely that in becoming walled IN behind these sexually appropriate general walls we are effectively walled OUT of the opposite. Thus to become one kind of person manifesting all the proper patterns, interests, activities, etc. we must give up, voluntarily or involuntarily, all opposite potentials. In effect we all become HALF HUMANS! You won't like that because it offends your own self identity and respect and you feel you would like to argue with me about it. But instead of doing that which would throw this gathering into chaos, just look at the person of the opposite gender sitting nearest to you and then honestly ask yourself how much of what that person feels, does, wears or expresses you could comfortably and equally effectively do. If you are honest, you will have to say not too much of it—especially if you are a man. Why? Because you have no training to speak of in that aspect of human living. Boys are brought up to be non-girls and girls to be non-boys though not nearly so completely. "Tomboy" is almost a word of approval, while "sissy" is extremely perjorative.

So here you are, an interesting and intelligent group of people, but by and large characterized by being only half humans. What a shame! There is so much buried and unused human potential among you. How much more productive and creative each of you might be if it were not for gender barriers from which you tend to bounce off whenever you impact too firmly against them. I can hear a lot of you protesting this very moment in your head, saying, "The hell with her, I'm happy as I am," or "I can be anything I want to be," or the real conservatives among you are thinking, "She must be a radical, pinko, Communist agitator trying to destroy our way of life. It has worked fine for a million years or so, why not let good enough alone." Doubt- less there are other thoughts but I won't try to second guess them all.

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