ABSTRACT
Oyer the last 11 years, I have had the privilege of being welcomed into the transgeuder community in spite of my status as a psychiatrist. I say in spite of, not because of, largely as a result of the grave injustices many transgendered persons have suffered at the hands of some of my ill-informed and, at times, harshly judgmental colleagues. I'm disheartened to say that most of these self-identified patients would have been better served if they had been referred to someone with appropriate knowledge and training in this highly specialized area of human behavior. It was clear from my very first foray into the transgender community (the "CrossPort" support group in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1985) that cross-dressing men and their spouses (I will use the shorthand notation "spouse" for all women in emotionally committed relationships with a transgendered man) were hungry for knowledge and for legitimate, open-minded inquiry into the phenomenon of cross-dressing. What they usually found when they went to a library was anything but open-minded and was often written by "researchers" who had never spent so much as one evening with a support group anywhere in the country, in spite of the fact that hundreds exist (see Appendix I for a listing of sources for information and support). Papers were written from the perspective of a treating health-care professional sitting behind a desk talking to a self-identified patient. Information was then generalized to the population of cross-dressers and their spouses at large, even though the majority of such individuals never seek psychiatric assistance or identify themselves as patients (Brown, 1995).
