The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2657 by Angharad Copyright© 2015 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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“Delia, when Danni first came to me, she was living as a boy.”

“Oh,” she said and became very quiet.

“I was asked to have her and another boy over the Christmas and they grew on us. The other boy admitted to having ambivalent feelings about gender, so we gave him a chance to explore his feminine side. The change was incredible, Billie as a girl became more outgoing and confident than she’d ever been as a boy. Sadly, just as her life seemed to be coming together, she had an aneurysm burst while out cycling with me and she crashed and died.”

“I’m sorry,” she looked very sad.

“I’m told the happiest few months of her life were living as a girl and being a daughter. She’d been abused as a child and spent a year or two in the children’s home, which was where Danielle also lived.

“So two of your children started off as boys?”

“Uh, it depends what you mean by started off as boys, if you mean they were thought to be boys when young, that would apply to several of them. They subsequently decided they wanted to experience living as girls. So after checking with Stephanie Cauldwell, who is a paediatric psychiatrist, we allowed it to happen. Each of them seemed happier, though I was at first against Danni doing it. I was losing my only son—but it was what he seemed to want to do.

“When I found I couldn’t dissuade him, I insisted he live in role for a period of three months. He wasn’t so sure but agreed to it. He’d been sexually assaulted by two Frenchmen while over there on a school trip. He and another boy were caught in a public toilet and assaulted, possibly after the other boy said something to the two men. There was a real brouhaha and the men were tracked down, started a firefight with the gendarmerie and got killed.

“During his time in skirts, Danni with the rest of us went up to Scotland to the Cameron castle, while we were up there we came across a young man who desperately wanted to be a girl. We discovered this and found his father was a total bigot and preached at him all the time. We were able to offer an alternative lifestyle plus somewhere to live away from the family. It seemed to overwhelm her and she hanged herself. Danni was one of those who found her. It’s had a profound effect upon her ever since.

“The other boy who was assaulted in France chopped off his meat and two veg a week or two after coming back to the UK. He survived and we encouraged Danielle to stay friendly with him because he’d need every one he could find. She did and he rewarded her with chloroforming her and chopping off her nadgers in exactly the way most likely to have a surgeon opt for conversion to a pudenda, which was what happened.

“I was horrified, it almost certainly made a return to boyhood improbable if not impossible, though I’m aware that some biological females wish to become male, it’s more complicated in some ways than the male to female.”

“I can’t believe anyone wants to be a man,” offered Delia.

“Except perhaps most boys.”

“Yeah, well I thought that was implicit—except perhaps the ones who come to you.”

“That sounds as if I’m the instigator of turning boys into girls, which I deny categorically.” I hoped she hadn’t meant it to sound that way.

“Uh sorry,” she blushed, “I just meant those who don’t want to be men seem to come to you.”

“Well the house is full, so I can’t or won’t take anymore.”

“So Danni was forced to become a girl?” she said bringing me back to my narrative.

“In lots of ways, yes. It was partly my fault for insisting he live as a girl for three months, and for asking him to maintain a friendship with Peter after he’d modified himself. I assumed that after doing that he might be short of friends, little did I know he’d do something similar to my son.”

“How did he adapt to becoming a full-time girl?”

“It wasn’t an easy path and at one point it felt like she’d gone from being a boy to a female to male transsexual, quite literally a boy trapped in a now girl’s body. It was all a bit fraught.”

“And that’s all over now, is it?”

“For the moment, thanks to football. She was good as a boy but as a girl she’s outstanding and her little brain decided that as she wanted to play at the highest level, she had more chance playing as a girl than she would have done had she stayed a boy, even before she was mutilated.”

“I don’t think I follow you.”

“There are many more good male players than female so the chance of being recognised is smaller.”

“Ah, gotcha. Doesn’t the fact that she was a boy complicate things as a girl, you know in playing for England?”

“Not if they’ve been on hormones for a certain period of time or had surgery because it’s deemed they have no advantage over natural females.”

“What about that South African runner, what’s her name...”

“Caster Semanya?”

“That’s the one—doesn’t she have an advantage over most women?”

“The Olympic people didn’t think so and she was beaten by a British girl anyway. But she was supposed to be intersexed in some way and they made her have surgery to confirm her femaleness, which is to my mind just as offensive as Peter doing surgery on Danni.”

“I presume she agreed to it.”

“If you see your future as an athlete and these people tell you you can’t play unless you have this done—that’s oppression in my book.”

“Not sure I can get my head round that one.” I was about to explain what I’d meant when she stopped me and said, “You know we have a transgender student starting next year?”

My tummy flipped. “No, I didn’t.”

“Here,” she handed me an application form. I glanced through it. At the end where we invite students to write about themselves they’d disclosed they were transgender, going from boy to girl. They said that they would be transitioning from the time they left school as to do so before could affect their exam results.

“Oh well if they have sufficiently high grades, I hope the university policy on equality and diversity will protect them. Where are they coming from?” I’d given the form back to Delia.

“Uh, Bristol.”

“What?” I snatched it from her, they were currently at Bristol Grammar School, my Alma mater—oh boy, sometimes this all gets too close for comfort.

“You missed this bit, he or she is coming here after you spoke to them a couple of years ago—oh, and there’s a photo.” I looked at it and wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be of a boy with long hair or a girl, it was a passport type and didn’t show anything but head and shoulders.

“I can’t see me having much if any contact given I only do a welcome talk to the first years. These days I’m a departmental manager, not a teacher.”

“She’s going to be in my year—so if she’s as nice as you, that’ll be good.”

“You’ve decided to take the offer of a place then?”

“Yes, professor, didn’t I tell you?”