wet diapers, arguments with the man in the Fish market, and money squabbles. By all means the young adolescent should be permitted knowledge that her feelings are beautiful, natural and fulfilling. But....she should know, honestly, what she may have to face for those same feelings, just as a woman contemplating a heterosexual rela... tionship must face the facts of her future.

"I suppose I am, basically, arguing against any form of special pleading for the Lesbian. It is hardly fair to feel that---sirply because of her 'difference' she must therefore be adjudged more sensitive and sheltered from the brutal world. If anything, she needs more rugged honesty, stronger armor against the world, and above all, a total absence of any self-pity or self-deception. Tho woman whose instincts coincide with the sum total of society can sometimes go through life wrapped in the cotton wool of soap-opera dreams, because she is drifting with the currents of our day and age. But the Lesbian-like the woman writer, the career woman, the political theorist, like anyone whose aims and ideals are other than the ideals of complacent faceless millions---the Lesbian is swimming in the dangerous rapids and shoals which mark the outer edges of the known territory. She cannot allow herself to carry the dangerous excess baggage of self-pity, imperfect self-knowledge, she cannot wrap herself in rosy dreams which have no basis in reality.

"THE LADDER is one of the few voices which can help such women wrap themselves in stout armor against the dangers. For heaven's sake, let's not feed them pap instead!

M.Z.B., Rochester, Tex.

"For my part, I disagree or am inclined to disagree with the psychiatrists. Unfortunately so many of these 'wise' people accept without question, as axiomatic, premises that when critically examined are more idle concepts really misconceptions handed down thoughtlessly from generation to generation, in just the same manner as for so many centuries it was gospel to hold stubbornly to the

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