The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2674 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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It was after dinner when Trish and Livvie were trying to help Hannah with revision that I heard her say, “Is it true that Auntie Cathy has turned boys into girls?”

“What like she’s some sorta witch?” said Livvie.

“Nah, they’d be frogs,” said Trish chuckling.

“Isn’t that only princes who get turned into frogs?”

“Look I’m serious,” said Hannah, “is it true?”

“Don’t be so dumb, Hannah, how can you turn a boy into a girl?”

“Well I dunno, do I? I’m just askin’ that’s all.”

“Well think about it—you can’t make a boy become a girl—they’d make such a fuss and the police would be called.”

“Yeah, I s’pose, unless he wanted to be a girl.”

“You mean if he was really a girl inside?”

“I hadn’t got that far, but yeah, could be.”

“But that wouldn’t be turning a boy into a girl would it? She’d already be a girl, it would be just helping her.”

“Helping her what?”

“Helping her become a girl, what else?”

“Oh I see. Yeah that’s not turning boys into girls is it?”

“Duh; that’s what we just said.”

“Okay, sorry I asked. Now what about this thing in history...”

I had to admire the way the two girls evaded the questions by subtly altering them. If either of them became lawyers, I wouldn’t want to face them across a court room. Hannah was fobbed off by the change in context, so she didn’t ask the sort of question which could have tied things down. So they ran rings round her instead.

I didn’t know if that would be the end of the matter or not. Arguably, the least feminine was Danielle, our star teen international—at least on the soccer pitch she isn’t very femme. But see her go to school, she’s wearing more layers of paint than a Rolls Royce, all of it administered in subtle tones, from the clear nail varnish on her talons—her nails are quite long—to the invisible foundation and microfine lines around her eyes. Only the lashings of black mascara looks over the top and half her class look the same. The sad thing is she doesn’t need any skin makeup, her skin is gorgeous when she takes off all the emulsion paint. But that’s teen girls for you.

The most feminine is probably Sammi, who is also the most beautiful, cheek bones to kill for, huge eyes and a smashing figure—yet she doesn’t do anything associated with girls as hobbies. She doesn’t sew or knit or read romantic novels—okay, stylised images of girldom—but being a geek, she spends most of her waking moments, when not beautifying herself, seated in front of a computer screen and she is astonishingly clever at what she does—trying to out-think the hackers and cyber criminals trying to insinuate themselves in the bank’s software.

Jacquie of course is a biological female except for the butchery that rendered her sterile. She does occasionally wear makeup and can look quite good when the mood takes her, but she really isn’t a girly girl. Is Julie or even Phoebe? Not really. They always look smart when working in the shop—oops, salon. They’ve really come on in leaps and bounds and their new premises seem to be taking off in a big way.

They can both sew but you rarely see Phoebe with a needle and thread in her hand, she usually sweet-talks me into doing it for her, whereas Julie will do repairs to salon clothing or capes, Phoebe sidesteps it completely. Julie will also do the ironing which Phoebe avoids, though she will put the machine on to wash it all.

Of the younger girls, only Mima plays with dolls regularly, Trish and Livvie have outgrown the practice, leaving Mima to sometimes play with the very young girls and she will play happily with them. It will be interesting to see if she goes into child care as she says she wants to do or if she eventually goes off and does something completely different. They are wont to change their minds, which is one of the reasons they don’t like doing the surgery too early. I don’t know what the reversion rate is and I presume if they’ve undergone the Gender Review Panel, it will be difficult to get a legal reversal as one of the criteria for granting new legal status, is understanding its permanence.

I think all of mine have full status and are post surgical, so only Trish and Danni might need adjustment ops as the vaginal tissue is likely to have scar tissue which doesn’t grow. A complication though I didn’t exactly ask for them to have vaginoplasty, that was the decision of the surgeon having read some of their notes. Both had suffered catastrophic injuries to their penises which were recycled into vaginas and clitorises. Trish was delighted when she realised what had happened, Danni was far from pleased initially, except to say she soon realised that being post surgical meant she could apply to play for England, a situation that couldn’t have arisen beforehand.

All that leaves just me. I can’t comment on how feminine or womanly I am because I’m too close to it. Stella gives me encouraging words every now and again and I really should be over the, ‘I’m not a real woman’ thing because apart from periods or giving birth, I feel as female as any of them and only the radical feminist types are likely to disagree, but then I have little to do with them.

I did have a confrontation with them a year or two ago at the university. Given the way the university protocol supports transgender or other minorities it found itself in great difficulties when one of the minorities was the radical feminist group. The difficulty being that they were attacking everybody else. Once it was realised that the university had a once transgender lecturer on its staff, viz. moi, they sent a deputation to harass me.

Apparently, their intention was to get me to own up to really being a man—like I’m going to do that—duh. I had no idea the attack was coming and had Trish with me. She was down with one of the technicians feeding the dormice when I walked up to see Tom about something and got waylaid in the corridor outside my office. Discussion was impossible, as half a dozen of these stupid women kept shouting me down, calling me a man—it was actually quite upsetting and I was close to tears. I’d have happily talked with them if they’d wanted to listen, but they were spouting such nonsense that I just kept quiet hoping if I waited long enough, they’d leave me in peace.

They didn’t—well they did but only after Trish came bolting up the corridor and screamed at them to leave her mother alone. They of course then harassed her until the woman lab technician who’d been with her appeared and lambasted them for upsetting a little girl—how could they call themselves feminists when they harassed children and female children at that. Wasn’t it obvious if she was my daughter, that I was also female and to push off and play with their vibrators somewhere else.

In under a minute they had gone and Ceri, our technician, walked me up to Tom’s office where Pippa made me a cuppa and gave the still sobbing Trish, a bar of chocolate. After the report of my attack, the dean banned the group, which just drove them underground. They’re still an occasional nuisance even after the leaders were sent down. I’m still an occasional target but I tend to ignore them and push past them or to delete any noxious emails they send.

I like to think I’m a feminist, inclusive of all types who share the belief in equality of all people regardless of sex, gender, race, or sexual preference and so on. They, I consider were more fascist than feminist being exclusive in their approach and therefore elitist, which seemed to contradict their original mission statement.

Universities are supposed to be places of learning but there appears to be a certain type of undergrad who has no interest in learning anything because they know everything they need. Why they bother to grace us with their enormous intellects, I’m obviously too stupid to say.