RANSVESTIA

one is to achieve the surgery, so everybody says it. 3) It legalizes the cross dressing, the use of ladies rooms and every other contingency that one might get embroiled with legally, and 4) it both forces and enables the individual to rebuild her own self image as a woman.

For the relatively few of us "transgenderists"—people who live full time in the opposite gender to that expected of their anatomical sex-certainly reasons 1 and 2 are out completely. We have come to realize that in this day and time it is what you look like and how you comport yourself that determines whether you make it legally or not. We have learned that legality is really not a big problem if you look and act the part. Naturally if you don't do one or the other something might develop such as in using ladies rooms. But if you can't look the part without the surgery you surely can't look it afterward since the surgeon is not operating on your face. And moreover, if you could learn to comport yourself like a lady after you've had surgery you could certainly do it equally well before it-if you wanted to. I have, as many of you know, traveled to many foreign lands and done a variety of things in this country as a woman and no one ever threatened to lift my skirt up to see if I had a right to be wearing or acting as I was acting or doing what I was doing, etc. So surgery really isn't necessary for reason number 3 although I will admit that for some who really don't pass very well for one reason or another, having that "ace in the hole" (if you'll pardon the pun) may enable them to get the last laugh on the police when the matron informs the arresting officer that "this person is a female." But why not stay out of trouble in the first place?

So this bring us to #4, which is really the biggy. the matter of one's own self image. As I have probably said before, I think a lot of people going through the surgery bit are male chauvinists. Now at first blush that sounds like a somewhat crazy thing to say and to those who are already committed to the procedure it will rouse their dander considerably, but think on it a minute. The one largest com- plaint that women, active in Women's Liberation, make about men is that "they treat us like sex objects." What they mean in simple and direct language is that since females have an orifice between their legs which is specifically designed to receive an erect penis, that is the principle utility females have for males. Oh yes, the males have to treat the females like ladies and go through various socially prescribe routines and to be acceptable as people in other ways, but when the chips are down that orifice is the basic thing that determines a

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