Response to the Commentaries of Drs. Sue Grand and Alan Roland

DR. ROLAND AND OTHERS HAVE NOTED MY IDEAS OF H. AS A beautiful woman, so perhaps I should begin with that aspect of my article. Although my image of H. as a beautiful woman was distinct, it was a complicated construct rather than a singular entity. It was, in general, an association that transcended issues of sexuality and femininity, an image that slid away even as I tried to pin it down. Yet I came to believe that in that recurrent impression, something of importance was being transmitted: an evanescent bundle of shifting clues comprising, as I now think about it, several messages.

I always found H. masculine, but my frequent thoughts of him as a beautiful, unattainable woman felt separate. H. seemed far from exhibiting more of the feminine/maternal aspect of his character. (As Dr. Grand has noted, generic terms such as feminine, masculine, maternal, and even mother and father have vastly divergent subjective interpretations.) Nor did anything he told me of his past—manifest, latent, or derivative—speak of a meaningful degree of maternal care by his mother or any other woman, with the exception of the elderly aunt he lived with for a short time before her arrest. Even on further reflection, it is still my strong impression that rather than dwelling within an extended kinship network, H.'s family lived in isolation, suspicion, and tension.

Now encouraged to associate to Dr. Roland's comments, I would venture the surmise that it was H.'s father who may have given him some essential early physical and emotional tending. I can imagine two unrecognized bonds between them—one as father and true son, and another as males relegated to the ranks of the despised. Though H. for