I've recently returned home from my second Beaumont Society weekend at Rotherham. As expected, it was great fun - and, of course, the staff in the hotel were extremely pleasant and helpful, and the food and entertainment were both excellent. I was also pleased to finally meet one of my long-term e-mail correspondents and his/her (?) wife. In addition, I was fortunate enough to spend 90 minutes on Saturday afternoon in the company of Personal Shopper Jayne Carr in Debenhams in Meadowhall, who persuaded me to buy a gorgeous silver-sequinned designer mini-dress as a Christmas present to myself - not that I needed much persuasion! However, had I not been so self-confident about my transvestism, my weekend could have been ruined by an incident which, sadly, originated from within our own membership.

For the record, I'll declare here and now that I have a great deal of fun with, and a very healthy attitude towards, my transvestism - a fact which my friends in my local Felixstowe Girls Group know only too well! I'm also highly motivated to try to improve the public perception of transvestites and transvestism by going out dressed in public whenever I can (although I'm less than totally passable), without being embarrassed about what I am, or about what I'm doing. In addition, I go along with Eddie Izzard's belief that all men already have the same clothing rights as women, but that for some reason, the vast majority choose not to exercise those rights.

Following my emergence from the closet in March 1996, I started, like my contemporaries, by doing the best I could to portray a convincing feminine image. At the time, my gender was bipolar - either 100% masculine or 100% feminine - and never anything in between. However, after about 18 months, I became increasingly aware that, while dressing up was fun, I needed something more, and eventually, my gender came to rest at some point between the two extremes. My male side began to gender-bend - I'd had my ears pierced some time previously, and now I began to wear larger and larger hoops, finally moving to drop ear-rings. With this came heavy silver jewellery, the daily use of mascara and perfume, and the occasional coloured nail polish. Last summer, I wore a blouse and a sarong to rehearsals of the amateur theatre group I play for (before David Beckham had thought of it!), and I've recently worn a pleated skirt and high heels to one of their after-show parties. I don't do these things specifically to attract attention; everyone who knows that I cross-dress also knows that my primary motive is socio-political - I like presenting myself this way, and I feel comfortable doing so, so why shouldn't I, just because I was born with male genitals? Now, I know that some of my friends both inside and outside the Beaumont Society find this behaviour unusual, even odd, but that's the way I am, and they accept it. After all, it harms no-one, and it's not indecent, so where's the problem?

And so it was that, on Friday 20th November, I set out for Rotherham in male mode, wearing my favourite drop ear-rings, mascara and perfume, and with my nails already painted to save time later, but also sporting an 18-inch black-and-white pleated skirt and black semi-opaque hold-ups - with the lace tops well-hidden, I should add! I considered that, as I was going to a transvestite conference, no-one would bat an eyelid once I got to the hotel, but I was expecting to encounter some hostility at filling stations along the route. In the event, this didn't happen - but I was wolf-whistled a couple of times! So imagine my surprise when, that evening, I discovered that my unconventional apparel in the hotel lounge earlier in the day had become a hot topic, and furthermore, that Janett Scott had received a number of complaints that I'd been improperly dressed. It had been unfairly left to my good friend and Beaumont Society AO Mary Johnson to pass on the message that my behaviour was "unacceptable" (sic).

When I finally established that this wasn't Mary's idea of a joke, my first reaction was one of disbelief - not so much that someone might mistake me for being an improperly-dressed female instead of an unconventionally-dressed male, but because the complainants were themselves other transvestites. I was also angered by the route which their complaints had taken to reach me. Of course, everyone's entitled to their own opinions, and to voice them in a suitable forum - we allegedly live in a democracy - but these people didn't have the guts to come to me directly, choosing instead to take the easy option to ensure that I received their gripes anonymously. So if the people concerned are reading this, and would like to discuss the issues with me, I'd be very happy to do so, but I'll treat any criticisms received anonymously via an innocent third party with the contempt that they deserve.

As it happened, the issue which prompted the complaints wasn't to do with the fact that I was improperly dressed in the hotel, but rather the implication that I must have driven to the hotel wearing those clothes. But why should that be a problem? We in the Beaumont Society have no reason to believe that the general public are any more offended by this 'partial cross-dressing' than they are by 'traditional' transvestism. It's interesting to note here that the pages of transvestite magazines frequently contain articles which seek to justify transvestism on the basis that it's the equivalent of women wearing trousers, shirts, and other traditionally-male attire. However, this argument is flawed, since few women dress in men's clothes to hide their biological sex, whereas transvestites use women's clothes and accoutrements specifically for that purpose - indeed, the highest accolade a transvestite can achieve is to pass as a woman! No. The equivalent of a woman wearing men's clothes but still looking like a woman, is a man wearing women's clothes but still looking like a man - in fact, precisely what I was doing.

Undoubtedly, as transvestites, we face enormous pressure from our contemporaries and peers to conform to a stereotypical image - namely, to emulate the female form, appearance and mannerisms as best we can. But why should we necessarily follow this route? Like many before me, I spent the first 35-odd years of my life denying that I was a transvestite - as far as I was concerned, my feminine side didn't exist. When I 'came out', I felt pressure to conform, and spent the next 18 months denying my masculine side instead. In effect, I followed all my predecessors, and moved out of one closet straight into another! Well, I now realise that that way's not for me - I'm tired of denying this bit or that bit of my personality because it doesn't fit with the norms or beliefs of some arbitrary group of people. Don't get me wrong: I adore my female creation, but she has a place in my life just like everything else. To quote the song, "I am what I am", and I refuse to cower full-time behind a wig and make-up because the sight of a balding man wearing a skirt makes some people feel uncomfortable.

So what does the Beaumont Society have to say about this? Well, according to the Constitution, the Society was formed (amongst other things) as a support group for transvestites. I now find that, because my particular way of expressing my transvestism doesn't conform to the rules as arbitrarily interpreted by some Society members, my behaviour has been deemed by those members to be "unacceptable". And if I persist in this "unacceptable" behaviour, do I risk having my membership suspended? I sincerely believe that the Society would be more effective if it recognised and encouraged all expressions of transvestism and cross-dressing, and campaigned for the right of each and every transvestite to present himself as he pleases (subject to local judicial and religious laws, of course). Unfortunately, the Constitution is silent on this matter.

As a closing observation on this rather distasteful episode, I would like to ask this: if the Beaumont Society tolerates this sort of fascism, bigotry and bitching amongst its own members, how can it possibly succeed in defeating these selfsame attitudes in the outside world?

Regards

Graham, aka Sally Watson (S5489)

Beaumont Society Letter, Volume 7 Number 1, March 1999.