I am a retired psychiatrist and would like to know as much as I can about cross-dressing and transvestitism. I have read some of Stoller's books, and find him the most knowledgeable about sexual disorders. Best wishes, Aldo.

Dear Aldo

I'm sorry, but I don't generally regard cross-dressing as a sexual disorder, and furthermore, if Stoller claims this to be the case, then he's wrong too.

Cross-dressing is simply the breaking of an arbitrarily-imposed social convention, which is upheld by nothing more than a fear amongst sexually-insecure males of losing their credibility in the eyes of their male rivals in the pack. It works as follows. No man wants to be regarded as being less than a 'real' man, and if he wears a skirt, that's exactly how he'll be seen - he must be a 'poofter', or a 'faggot', or a 'queer'. Heard these sorts of insults before? I have - every time I pass a group of young men in the street. And if one of the men in the group doesn't join in this abuse, he must be a sympathiser, so he also loses credibility. It's no surprise to me that humans with no pack instinct - children, older men, women, and a young man on his own - rarely abuse me. They have nothing to prove.

My view is that if women can wear trousers, then men can wear skirts, and a 'real' man is one who has the courage to defy the pack, and actually wear one. I don't give a shit about my position in the pack - I know what I am, and that's good enough for me. So if I want to wear a skirt, I do. End of story.

Private e-mail correspondence, August 1999.