With those caveats firmly in mind, I hope you enjoy the paper!
ELB

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Nikolai Gogol: Transvestite Homosexual or Pre-operative Transsexual?

Introduction

Many recent students of Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809-1852) have accepted what Gogol's contemporaries could not: that Gogol had homosexual inclinations. Most of Gogol's readers, critics, and acquaintances chose to believe that Gogol denied himself any serious relationships with women due to his total devotion to social justice and serving mankind (Karlinsky, 16). The homosexual aspect of his life does influence his writing very much, yet I believe that there is more to be learned from Gogol's life and writing which will shed a slightly different light on both. In the twentieth century, society as a whole is more willing to accept variations in sexual orientation, and much is known which was not understood in the early nineteenth century. One of these variations is the phenomenon of transsexualism, in which an individual feels him- or herself to have been born with the incorrect gender (Rancour-Laferriere 1985, 316). Operations are even available for those who complete extensive testing and counseling, so that they may 'become' physically what they believe themselves to be mentally and emotionally. This paper is intended to explore the possibility that Nikolai Gogol was not, in fact, a homosexual who occasionally indulged in cross-dressing, but was actually a pre-operative transsexual.