Once Upon A Time

I seldom play the man instead of the ball but on some occasions I feel a little piss-taking of the overly pompous is permitted.

 

Once upon a time, there was a brave and goodly knight, Sir Frank the Bold, who was the self-appointed champion of all the oppressed people in the land.

 

Sir Frank could not see an injustice without sallying forth to do battle with it and his struggles with tyranny were known the length and breadth of the realm  - mostly, it must be said, by his own pronouncement.

 

Of all his many foes, none filled Sir Frank's heart with such dread nor strengthened his noble resolve more than the terrible TERFs, who he had come to see as the very embodiment of evil.

 

One of these fearsome creatures, cleverly disguised as an 80-year-old lesbian, founding member of a progressive party and veteran of the Sex Equality Wars, committed the awful, nay, the foul, heretical sin of publishing a treatise that questioned aspects of the prevailing trans orthodoxy.

 

Sir Frank prepared to do battle but before he could enter the affray (he was having a bit of trouble sharpening his pencil, or it might have been his wits - one of the two) various haughty young fellows - who were still peeing in their pants when their nemesis was already a veteran campaigner – declared she was an "enemy of the people" and must be “re-educated”. 

 

The co-Sheriffs, fearful of being tainted by the heresy, removed the treatise and genuflected deeply and often before the altar to prove their piety.

 

Eventually, with his pencil sharpened and his wits gathered, Sir Frank mounted his hobby horse and bravely rode out to face the TERF beast, determined to defend those who the TERFs sought to destroy, the most oppressed and disadvantaged of all the persons in the land. 

 

Wielding his mighty metaphorical pencil like a sword he cut the offending article to pieces – line by heretical line. 

 

The fact that it had already been removed from public gaze took a bit of the shine off Sir Frank’s noble efforts, but undaunted by that, he proclaimed triumphantly to the assembled crowd : 

 

“Behold!! I have slain the beast. Do not be fooled by the guise of an elderly, planet-loving lesbian  – she is the Devil and the Devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape - yea and perhaps out of our weakness and melancholy, for the Devil is very potent with such spirits, abuses us to damn us. For make no mistake, there is none so evil as the TERF and whenever they raise one of their growing number of monstrous heads it must be struck off – without mercy! Or they will destroy us all! Hide under our beds and murder us in the night!  Return us to the dark ages when the land was ruled by dragons!!”

 

“All hail Sir Frank,” the crowd intoned obediently, though some could be seen to be smirking behind their hands and several looked very confused.

 

For his noble efforts in fighting to free the land of TERFs, Sir Frank was granted membership of the Exalted Order of Overkill, and he was greatly pleased.

 

 

PS. Apologies to Mr Shakespeare.