RANSVESTIA

the new Iranian government in the streets smoking cigarettes, wearing skirts and make-up in an insatiable urge towards total freedom. Our urge is like a weak kitten's mewing inside a locked closet. We are still scared to death to be discovered.

Our transexual sisters are willing to meet the cameras, to make the headlines, but we are not quite willing to follow the example of GG's and transexuals and gays. We are still at the bottom of the accep- tance totem-pole, we are still looking for our true identity, caught somehow between our "he" and our "she." The GG's are telling us that there is no such thing as a purely feminine world ... that the world is a blend of all the masculine and all the feminine dreams and that anybody can tread those heretofore forbidden paths. They tell us that it is their "right" as human beings to explore and live as they wish. How come we do not fight for our "right" to do so? I have yet to see one TV in masculine attire wearing red nail polish. That's a no-no. And like that one, there are thousands of other no-no's that keep us enslaved in our old, ancient patterns of living. We are letting the revolution pass us by, while we timidly hope that the GG's, transexuals and gays will win their battle so that we can gather a few crumbs from their banquet. We can count with the fingers of one hand the number of TV's (with Virginia at the head of the list) who have dared a break-through in radio, television, and other organiza- tions. The rest of us sit back silently and do nothing but wish that something, somebody, would do something for our liberation.

I guess I sound rather pessimistic and despondent, but I think that reality backs me up. Still, I must agree that the joys we savored through our 100 issues are a treasure to be held very, very close to our hearts. It is strange to realize how much envy there is in being a TV. Envy for that part of the GG's life that we are not allowed to invade. The "girl-within" we love so much is really a composite of all those facets of life which GG's were always allowed to indulge in, but were denied to us. Now that the GG is invading our territory and de- genderizing many masculine attributes, behaviours and trademarks, we are still left with the fact that we are not de-genderizing a multi- tude of elements that remain strictly the exclusive domain of the GG. And that is why we envy them. They are the ones who are gaining. They are enriching their sphere of action, while ours remains static, unchanged, perhaps smaller in the degree that they are degenderiz- ing our world. Perhaps in our envy we distorted reality. We wanted the GG to remain the GG that WE dreamed about. We wanted the old

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