The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2956 by Angharad Copyright© 2016 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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“Right folks, if everyone can get back to their seats.” Debbie paused for a moment. “Our last speaker is a mother who has four transgender daughters, so I thinks she’s something special, please welcome, Cathy.”

I counted about thirty people there with a few more dashing in either from the toilets or the bar. “Good afternoon,” I said and received a rumble back which I assumed was a reply.

“I’ll start off by confessing that I can’t have children or shall more correctly state I can’t conceive my own children despite the most advanced techniques, so I was hoping to adopt. My first foster child was foisted upon me by someone who I can only surmise decided her daughter would have a better chance at life with me than with her. She told me she had to leave the country to deal with an injured hubby and I foolishly offered to have her little girl while she was away. She’d been involved in a road traffic accident and was at that time unable to walk. However, she found some shoes of mine, red ones with high heels and her desire to try them was greater than her injuries or so it seemed because an hour or two later she was tottering about in my shoes.

“When I took her in for a check-up the paediatrician was astonished and asked me to see if I could do the same with another little girl. She’d had a head injury and although everything seemed healed she wasn’t able to walk. Believe it or not the red shoes worked again and with a couple of days she was walking as well. The second child was biologically a boy but identified as female. That was several years ago and she has never appeared as a boy since. She goes to school as a girl and is doing very well, she’s very bright—as transgender children often are.

“The third one was discovered lying injured on a rubbish heap. For some reason one winter’s early morning, I found myself driving down near the docks and spotted something unusual lying on top of a pile of rubbish. It turned out to be a young woman who was wearing bleached blonde hair, a very short skirt and over knee stiletto boots. She looked like a tart who’d either got herself blotto or beaten up. It was a cold morning so I couldn’t leave her lying there and as I’d forgotten my mobile, I picked her up and was going to take her up to the hospital but she begged me not to, so I took her home if only to get her warm and give her some food and a drink.

“It transpired that she was also originally a boy who was living with unhelpful parents and had gone clubbing having changed at her friend’s house. She was picked up and by a punter who on discovering her true sex, beat her senseless.

“Before someone suggests I get a kick out of changing boys into girls, I have to say all these girls were already presenting as female when I met them. The next two are different. They both arrived as boys.” There was a ripple of noise on hearing the previous statement.

“The first was less masculine than the other and recognised the first transgender girl who they’d teased somewhat in the same children’s home. However, once I laid firm boundaries that if they tormented her, they’d be back to the home the next day—they’d come to stay with us over Christmas. I assumed they were ordinary boys and was pleased as it would help the younger girls learn how to form relationships with boys but within a year the younger boy was encouraged to wear skirts and act like a girl by my daughters and took to it very well. I did try to dissuade her but she insisted she wanted to be a girl. She certainly seemed happier as one, although I think we all preferred her to stay as a boy—we had enough girls. Then her experiment with new gender roles stopped when she had a brain haemorrhage and died while we were out cycling. It broke my heart and I still feel a void there. My only consolation was that she had been happier the last few months of her life than she had been the whole of her earlier life, this wasn’t just my opinion, her psychiatrist and the family GP all said so as did her teachers.

“The other boy who came to stay, was all boy—or so I thought—although he was in danger of being overwhelmed by all the girls, he soldiered on seeming to enjoy himself and he actually got into a couple of fights over his sister—the one who died. All my adopted children decided they would become brothers or sisters to the others and largely it has really worked.

“As a boy, he was confident, sporty and seemed to like girls then when he was twelve he was indecently assaulted while in a public toilet in France, on a school trip. His friend was similarly attacked. The friend on returning to the UK castrated himself, removing his penis as well as his testes. Because they’d gone through quite a lot together my son, with my support continued the friendship. I learned afterwards that the friend was calling himself by a girl’s name and that he and my son had been dressing up as girls and using makeup.

“When I found out at first I was disappointed, I had plenty of girls and didn’t need any more. So I tried to discourage him while encouraging the friendship—in school they were being described as gay and various other untrue names. Then my boy decided he liked wearing dresses and makeup. I wasn’t very happy but having given the others room to explore their identity, I had to do the same for him.

“We went up to Scotland and he couldn’t decide if he wanted to dress as a boy or a girl. Seizing the initiative I made him dress as a girl for our stay. When there we discovered another transgender girl and I tried to help her escape her transphobic parents. Sadly it didn’t work and she took her own life. My son decided as a homage to her he would stay in role as a girl until we went up to her funeral. I tried to talk him out of it but he insisted.

“The other child who’d been assaulted in France, with whom he’d been in regular contact invited him over one morning and after knocking him out removed much of the meatus of his penis and also his testes, destroying the tissue so it couldn’t be rebuilt.

“The surgeon seeing this child wearing makeup and with massive damage to his genitals did a vaginoplasty, assuming he wanted to be a girl, except at that stage he hadn’t made up his mind and required some intensive therapy to deal with the shock.

“She has since realised that she is a very pretty girl and enjoys flirting with boys. She seems to have a very much better life than she did as a boy.

“The final one, is a university graduate who was referred to see me as I’d helped some others, including my own girls. My other daughters helped her become a very clever and extremely beautiful woman.

“That’s my family or some of it, any questions?”