RANSVESTIA

women then just go ahead and be one and forget the surgery. The lack of understanding that sex is not gender (female is not woman) is most clearly revealed in those formerly heterosexual males who have the surgery and then brag that they have become lesbians. How stupid can they be? Again it not the body that determines the classi- fication, it is the head. All they are demonstrating is that before surgery they were oriented toward females as a source of their sexual pleasure and after the surgery they still are. Their heads have not been changed. Interestingly enough neither have their tongues. To be a decent lesbian you have to have a very active tongue and however active it may be after the surgery it was potentially equally so before the surgery since the doctor didn't operate on the tongue. All the surgery really did as far as sexuality was concerned was to remove the threat of maleness from the concerns of the true female lesbian partner. She would no longer have to worry as to whether this visually feminine partner with the active tongue might not on some other occasion want to use his penis on her in the way it is used by the other male animals (and humans). This might promote a better rela- tionship with her but it is a terribly dangerous, painful and expensive thing to do just to relieve the partner.

So far we have discussed two kinds of people who seek surgery, the acutal potential homosexual (a chromosomal male who seeks other chromosomal males for sexual expression. Putting it in terms of chromosomes leaves the person the same before and after surgery, thus eliminating the surgery as responsible for anything new except for the anatomical possibilities) and the transvestic heterosexual male who seeks the surgery as a means of justifying his transgenderal desires (as distinct from transexual) and establishing a new genital foundation for his/her self identity. But there is a third class of people who seek the surgery and they are the only ones who, in my opinion, have much justification in seeking it.

These are the more or less asexual persons (particularly and especially males) who for anatomical, psychological or sociological reasons just never quite make it sexually with women or genderally as "one of the guys" and effective men. Such a person suffers life long from the large disparity between what is expected of him as a man and the level he is actually able to attain. That deficit in performance makes him a burden to himself and while not a burden on society at least a less useful and happy citizen than he should and could be. For

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