A sad fact
Sir: Nigella Lawson in her review (Televi- sion, 27 August) displays crass ignorance. How dare she aver that the transsexual's conviction of being in 'the wrong body' is a delusion? How the hell does she know? I am the first to admit that it is a mysterious condition that must be virtually impossible to understand by those who haven't experi- enced it, i.e., 99.9 per cent of the human race. Nevertheless it is not a delusion, it is a sad and ineluctable fact.
I suggest that Ms Lawson reads Liz Hodgkinson's Body Shock before she starts pronouncing on a condition about which she obviously knows nothing. Her belief that psychotherapy can relieve the transsex- ual's suffering is pathetic. It is not a state that is amenable to treatment, and if people have the courage to have their bodies surgi- cally altered to be more consonant with their minds, then I admire them. I never had the courage to do it, but from the age of six I have felt that I was a male trapped in a female body and at the age of 66 I still feel that.
Diana Chapman
Rolfs, Tower Hill, Iwerne Minster, Blandford Forum, Dorset
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