safe. This is not too far re- moved from a number of well documented behaviours in other cultures in which boys are dress- ed as girls to ward off evil spirits or to avoid being taken into the kings army or whatever), to vari- ous other psychological states which have been reported in the medical literature such as some cases of epilepsy and of brain in- festation with certain parasites which have caused the individual to cross dress. All of these condi- tions have been known to be associated with cross dressing be- havior but exceptional cases never prove anything concerning the ordinary situation. Thus these exceptions do not give any real support to a psychological cause for cross dressing as evi- dent in the usual heterosexual cross dresser.

Of course there is the case of the homosexual drag queen in which the cross dressing is more in aid of the desire to attract another male for sexual activi- ties but whether this would come under the psychological, biologi- cal or sociological catagories would depend on ones ideas of the causes of homosexuality it- self independent of the few who adopt feminine attire and the authorities cannot agree about this among themselves.

So on to the biological expla- nations which is the real reason this artical is written. There ap- pear more and more comments in the various TV publications and to be homest in some profes- sional publications as well that the true explanation of cross dressing lies in this area. Since I beg to differ lets discuss it. For people not in science, "a little knowledge is sometimes a dan- gerous thing" in the sense that

adopting scientific terminology and reading a few popular science articles appears to give them an authoritative position. Genes, genetic mutation and gen- etic engineering are much in the news these days and given the common tendency to latch on to irreversible and unchangeable situations as causes as mentioned for Astrology and Reincarnation, a gene mutation is just peachy keen. If your behaviour can be traced to a gene mutation you certainly can't be faulted for it any more than if you are a red- head in a largely blonde or bru- nette society. You certainly had no control over it and you just have to live with that condition. But people generally don't un- derstand what genes do or how they affect later life. Perhaps if they did the mutation theory would'nt get so much attention. Lets look at it.

Everybody has read something about DNA and knows that it is a long twisted strand of material composed of what are called nu- cleotides together with ribose (a type of sugar) and phosphoric acid. With a little more reading they learn that the function of the DNA in the chromosomes is to synthesize proteins and that proteins are made up in turn. of strings of amino acids. Still more investigation reveals that the par- ticular order in which the four mucleotides are arranged on the string of DNA determines which amino acid will be placed where in the long chain of amino acids which constitutes the protein. At this point general information about the process tapers off. People will talk of the "gene for red hair" or the gene for tallness, shortness, intelligence, sense of humor and a great number of

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other things. As a matter of fact there is not a gene for anything that you see in a finished human, adult or baby. To begin with the word "gene" refers to a certain length of chain of nucleotides al- ways of the same composition together with various other seg- ments which serve to separate that special segment of the chain from the rest of the chain or which serve to “turn the gene on or off". This means that under the right conditions this particu- lar length of the chain will begin the process that leads to synthe- sizing a protein whose compo- sition is determined by the order of the nucleotides in the segment of DNA chain. When this synthe- sis is completed there is a free molecule of a particular kind of protein floating by itself. This protein may be utilized as struc- tural material as in bones, ten- dons, or cell wall, it may become part of the cells immune system or it may become an enzyme and take part in the metabolism of the cell which provides energy for the cells activity from the breakdown of fats, carbohy- drates, or proteins available to the cell.

In either case the protein does its "thing" because of its shape and its molecular energy which is really dependent on its shape. Protein chains as synthesized are very long in terms of the number of amino acids of which they are composed but they don't stay just as long strings. They tend to fold up, twist, and writhe around until they get into what, in lay terms, might be described as the "most comfortable position". When this condition is achieved the molecule has a specific shape. It has depressions in its surface or it has projecting portions or it