absorb the ultra violet before it reaches the skin.

Well, you ask, what has all this got to do with cross dressing? I have gone into some detail above to make it clear that DNA does not consist of "genes" that "do" things like making blue eyes in- stead of brown. Genes control the synthesis of proteins which shape themselves so that they are able to assist in chemical reac- tions that would otherwise be very slow or might not occur at all. Such proteins are called en- zymes. Enzymes are specific in what they do and require specific conditions in which to do it and all they do is promote certain chemical reactions and there are hundreds of kinds of reactions going on in our body all the time. The purpose of this discussion was to demonstrate that a gene- tic mutation CANNOT be the cause of cross dressing because genes don't determine that kind of thing.

The second biological cause suggested above was something going wrong in the womb. The embryo, later to be called fetus, develops in the mothers uterus. It is fed through the umbilical cord where blood from the mo- ther passes on one side of a semi permeable membrane while the fetal blood passes on the other side. Food stuffs can pass into the fetal blood supply to nourish it and waste product such as carbon dioxide, urea and many other things are passed in- to the mothers blood stream to disposed of in the same way she disposes of her own waste. The baby floats in a sea of amniotic fluid. Now what can go wrong? Leaving aside mechanical factors such as position at birth, the use of forceps, kinking of the umbi-

lical cord which would bring on a period of oxygen deprivation or other problems involved in the birth itself, there are possible chemical problems. Since the fe- tus grows because its enzymes metabolize the raw materials sup- plied by the mother and there is

a

constant influx of various chemicals across the membrane separating the two blood streams it is obvious that if the mothers blood contains various kinds or concentrations of substances that might interfere with some of the metabolic functions of the fetus its development might be hinder- ed in some way. Thus if the mo- ther smokes, nicotine can pass into the fetal blood stream and nicotine is capable of poisoning some enzyme systems so that they can't do what they are sup- posed to do. If she drinks, alco- hol appears in the babies blood. Babies born to narcotic addict mothers are often addicts them- selves at the time of birth. Vari- ours other conditions in the mo- ther can be transmitted to the baby and the babies normal de- velopment can be interferred with in some way. But granted that things such as described can go wrong while the baby is in the womb it is hard to see how events of this type could have any effect on the young boys de- sire, 5 to 10 years later to put on his sisters panties. The kind of things that could go wrong in the womb are mostly of a class of undesirable substances in the mothers blood which get into the babies blood or the mothers blood is inadequate in some im- portant substances which could stunt the babies development. The most significant to our inter- est are the presence of hormones such as diethystilbestrol or pro-

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gesterone being given to the mo- ther to enable her to carry the pregnancy to term. Since these compounds have a masculinizing effect the clinical damage is done to female infants who come out much more like boys behaviour- ally. But there isn't much evi- dence of harmful effects of these substances on boys. It is true that there is some clinical evi- dence that sons of mothers who were given these compounds suf- fer some sorts of effects but nothing I have read indicates that these drugs have any effect on genderal behaviour. Judging by their effects on females they should simply enhance the effect of the boys own masculinizing hormones. So I think we can also do away with the "something happens in the uterus" explana- tion of later cross dressing.

So next we come to the third biological explanation and that is the matter of hormones. It is well known that 2 things have to happen to a young male, both of which happen to him while still in the uterus. He has to be mas- culinized by the presence of ade- quate amounts of testosterone at the time of differentiation of the genital system since in the early stages of fetal life the potentials of both male and female systems are present in both sexes. Testo- sterone generated by the primi- tive testicular tissue changes the direction of genital development in a male direction. If this does not occur the individual will, even though he is an XY chro- mosomal individual, develop fe- male type external genitalia. It has also been found that he must be "defeminized” in his brain programming. A sexually mature and functioning male animal must not only have developed an