The Face of TG Storytime Part 10: The "For a Girl" Conspiracy

 The Face of TG Storytime

Part 10: The "For a Girl" Conspiracy

So, I've talked about “For a Girl” a lot. Not just in my review of it, but also in “Shame and Desire” and a few other times in the rest of my blogs. I just can not stop talking about this story. And I think I’ve already established why I keep coming back to it. It’s such a fascinating piece of literature, very evocative of the culture of the 2000s, especially in regards to how transgender people were viewed back then.

But with this post, I’m not going to talk about the quality of “For a Girl”, I’ve done that more than enough. No, I want to discuss the plot, and try to uncover as much as I can about the lore of this universe.

Yep, we’re doing a theory post this time, so let’s get right into it.

The main transformation trigger in “For a Girl” is Gender Biomorphism, a non-contagious disease that transforms teenage boys into girls. And only teenage boys. According to the story, no one over the age of 18 has ever been infected with it, nor has anyone 12 and under. In response to this, the United States immediately went to building clinics to help the victims of the disease cope with the transformation. These clinics are referred to as a Gender Reorientation Seminar, or “GRS” for short. Our main character, Jack Lind, the 12th Grade star track athlete that just broke the 4 minute mile, gets sent to one of these shortly after his infection.

Gender Biomorphism, or GB, has been around for just under three years, as the doctor at GRS states. Since “For a Girl” takes place in 2003, this would mean the first GB cases began showing up somewhere around 2000, but when exactly? Well, in Chapter 4, Sue tells Stephanie she’ll be out of school “in a couple of months”, and it’s very clear that it’s springtime when the story is set. So let’s say the beginning of the story is set in April of 2003. With “Just under three years” probably referring to at least a month under three years, let’s say GB began showing up around June of 2000.

We don’t know how the victims of GB get infected, however the story makes it clear that the disease is very likely man-made, with the main point of evidence being that every victim finishes the transformation with long hair and, as the story puts it, “unusually attractive”. Hell, some women in this universe are actually jealous of how GB girls end up looking.

The assistant stared at me for a moment. "You're very pretty — and I'd kill for those breasts!"

"I'd give them to you if I could, believe me."

"I'm sorry. It's just that you GB girls all come out with such wonderful bodies. Most women would love to look like you."

"Yeah, but the problem is, most men wouldn't."

"I know," she said sympathetically.

Even just the concept of an organism being completely restructured to the extent that GB victims are here is unprecedented in nature. Sure, in real life, HRT can do a lot, but it takes time. It isn’t nearly as fast as the GB transformation is, which is roughly one week.

So yes, the disease is definitely man-made, but are GB girls just victims of a lab leak, or are they being deliberately sought out and selected for infection?

It’s the latter. This isn’t a mistake, people are intentionally infecting these boys with this disease, which is something even the story itself heavily suggests.

Scientists, doctors, universities, federal agents, detectives, law enforcement and intelligence agencies — everyone's trying to figure this out. One key clue was the initial appearance of GB — five different locales at once. I suspect we'll learn the existence of teams that are deliberately selecting and 'infecting' boys across the country — the 6000 so far may be a random sampling of the young male population to measure the success of GB.

There’s even more evidence for this than the story lets on. The fact that almost all infections are contained within the United States, and only a few happen overseas is another strong piece of evidence that people are intentionally selecting the victims. And furthermore, let’s just think about how the disease operates, and who it infects, that being teenagers.

There is a stark age cut off for GB. No one over the age of 18 has ever been infected with it, NO ONE. How does that even work? There isn’t a single disease out there that you immediately become completely immune to the second you go up one year in age. There’s no reason why that would be the case unless the people infecting these boys are deliberately only selecting teenagers. WHY they’re only infecting teenagers is another story, but we can at least prove that that’s what they’re doing.

And they’re only ever infecting boys. “Well of course they are” you might say “it’s a disease that turns boys into girls, why would a girl ever be infected”. But it’s the fact that ONLY boys are being infected that’s more proof this is deliberate. Because if GB was natural, I don’t think it would only infect boys.

As the story says, GB is not only changing chromosomes and reproductive organs, it’s completely restructuring the victim’s bodies to make them more feminine. This is very unlike how some animals change sex in nature, and also unlike how sex changes work for transgender people in the real world. And if this is the case, then what is GB targeting specifically? What is GB looking at and designating as “male”, and “fixing” to be female?

Perhaps an example would work best. Take for instance, an intersex person. Now, there are a wide variety of intersex conditions and they are all very different, but, if someone with an intersex condition was infected with GB, how would the disease respond? Would it do what it does with any other GB victim, and simply change everything about their bodies to match the “normal” cisgender woman? What if a transgender man, who has undergone hormonal replacement therapy, top surgery, and has had a hysterectomy and a phalloplasty, got infected with GB? Would the disease respond as it does with a cisgender man? 

Essentially, how would the disease be able to pick apart who to infect and who not to?

Is it the chromosomes? Well, again, the disease is man-made, and it’s not specifically targeting chromosomes, it’s targeting the entire body. Now, I don’t proclaim to be a geneticist on any level, and I don’t really understand how sex chromosomes work. But I find the idea that a second X chromosome would make someone completely immune from a disease they’d be infected with after birth to be a little far fetched, especially if, again, that disease is man-made.

So, again, I want to ask, how would GB know who to infect and who not to? And the answer is, it probably wouldn’t know. If GB was natural my guess is that it’d probably infect anyone who didn’t have the “normal” cis female body type, and by that I mean:

• XX chromosomes

• A working female reproductive system

• Vagina

• All female secondary sex characteristics

In fact, I’m willing to bet that’s exactly what GB is programmed to do within the universe of the story, and that if an intersex person or transgender person was infected with it, they’d transform in a very similar manner that the victims do in this story. The same goes for adults. There’s nothing inherent in GB that only makes teenage boys affected by it, it’s just that they’re the only people who are being targeted.

Of course, since this is a fictional disease we’re talking about, it’s really hard to judge how it would operate in the real world, but my main point is that the fact that only teenage boys are being infected is a major point of proof that these infections aren’t accidents, they’re deliberate. The story is right in there being teams of people picking out teenage boys to infect with this disease.

But how? And who is doing this infecting? Well, before we get into that, let’s start with who infected Stephanie. And this is a theory I’ve already gone over a lot.

It was the principal.

The person who infected Stephanie had to be someone close to her, someone frequently within her surroundings and knows who she is. And the principal fits this bill perfectly. Not only that, but he has an unsettling obsession and attraction to Stephanie throughout the story, which extends to GB as a whole. Just read what he says during the infamous “principal spanking scene”:

"You are the first GB female I've ever met. But I must say, Stephanie, you do your new sex proud. I wonder if you were always meant to be a girl — you've taken to it quite well. GB may function as a corrective measure — turning boys unsuited for masculinity into the girls they should have been. Perhaps it's for the best — now you are the girl on the outside you seemed to have been on the inside. Certainly you have an affinity for the properly submissive role of a woman."

He has Stephanie laying on his lap, only in her panties as he spanks her with a paddle. He’s clearly aroused by it, evident from the erection Stephanie can feel under his pants. He gets her to orgasm multiple times, and in the process becomes a man who should one hundred percent be put on the sex offender registry. He just goes on and on about how Stephanie is “better off as a girl”, how “she should have always been a girl” and how “it was a mistake she was ever a man”. It’s creepy.

But it also shows a clear fascination for GB and how it operates. And let’s go even further. Earlier in Chapter 7, the chapter where the spanking scene takes place, Stephanie is having uncontrollable orgasms, and is about to have an orgasm right in the middle of class. She rushes out to use the bathroom, but can’t get there in time so she settles for an unlocked storeroom instead. After she orgasms, she gets up to leave the room and wouldn’t you know it, the principal is right there walking in that hall when she opens the door.

It’s almost as if he knew she was going to be there.

But how? And moreover, how did the principal know that Stephanie would just accept being told to take her skirt off? Before this chapter he was established as being a little creepy around female students, but never to the extent of telling one to take off their clothes. Most students would be very creeped out if they were told that by a staff member, and probably call the police on them. The principal isn’t an idiot, surely he knows that just by telling Stephanie to take her skirt off, he is risking his entire career.

So it only makes sense that he would ask her that if he knew she would actually do it.

I think it’s safe to say that the “spontaneous orgasms” side effect of GB was something the principal already knew about, and he knew when said side effect would peak. Having access to Stephanie’s schedule, all he needs to do is wait for her to leave the classroom, because I’m willing to bet he had access to camera footage of almost every single room in the building (or maybe all principals just have that I don’t know I’m not a principal).

The “principal spanking scene” was not a spur of the moment thing, he had it planned. He was waiting for it. He threatened Stephanie’s running career with detention and knew she would take the paddle instead.

This principal isn’t just a creep, he is a serious criminal who should not be anywhere near minors, or anywhere near a school for that matter. He is a dangerous man, and a child predator.

And because of his actions, we can conclude that he knows a lot more about GB than he lets on. It’s as if he somehow knew exactly how Stephanie would react to every one of his actions, like he knows how GB impacts the mind. He seems almost proud of Stephanie when she gets on his lap, like he’s happy his plan succeeded.

I have no doubt in my mind this man is the one who infected Stephanie. No one else fits the bill as well as he does. 

Some might wonder if Stephanie’s coach, Coach Bradford, had something to do with it too, because in the second to last chapter he “playfully” pats Stephanie on the butt and seemed to know Stephanie would still like running as a girl before she herself did. While the former is certainly a very creepy action, it’s not near enough to say he helped get her infected. And as for the latter, he’s been her mentor for years, obviously he wants her to keep running. He cares far too much about Stephanie’s well-being to do something like transform her into a girl against her will, even if he can get creepy about said transformation.

And now, let’s get back to the “how” question. How did Stephanie get infected? When? Why?

This is where we get into what’s basically fanfiction territory so I ask that all of you bear with me.

At her first practice the day after she breaks the 4 minute mile, Stephanie is already showing early signs of GB. Her old running shoes don’t fit quite right and she’s not running as fast as she should. Easy things to attribute to mundane causes without immediately jumping to a gender transformation. It’s not until the next day, when she’s even slower, that she begins to realize something is seriously wrong.

With this, we can conclude that Stephanie got infected sometime between her track meet and that first practice. Considering how slow GB is at first, she probably got infected sometime well before that first practice for those effects to already be showing.

But when would that be? I doubt Stephanie got infected the day of that practice, as she never interacted with the principal at any point. Nothing happens out of the ordinary. Now, from an out of universe perspective, this is because it’s the beginning of the story and the author wants to start slow. She doesn’t want to introduce the principal just yet. But from an in-universe perspective, I think if Stephanie had interacted with the principal that day, she would’ve said it, so it’s safe to say they didn’t.

So she didn’t get infected at school, and she obviously couldn’t get infected at home, so when did she get infected?

The night of the track meet.

Let’s think about this, is it really a coincidence that as soon as Stephanie breaks the 4 minute mile, she contracts GB? I don’t think it is. The principal already knew Jack was a star athlete, one of the best the school had ever seen, and he knew he was on the verge of breaking 4 minutes. Not only that, but he knew when the track team would have meets, and he knew who the competing schools would be. He knew that another star athlete from another school, Kevin Tilden, would be there in the race, and that Jack would try really hard to break 4 minutes because of it. He was waiting for it to happen, and when it did, he made his move.

But how did Stephanie get infected? The principal wasn’t at the track meet, and it was an away meet too. He’d have no way of knowing she broke 4 minutes until the next day.

This is where the fanfiction comes in. The principal didn’t infect Stephanie on his own, he had help. I’ve already said that Coach Bradford probably had nothing to do with infecting Stephanie, nor did any of the coaches. Again, these people care way too much about the well-being of their athletes to do something like that. And if one didn’t, Stephanie probably would have told us.

My guess is that it was one of Stephanie’s teammates who got her infected. Now, all the main characters in this story are the best of the best when it comes to track. But obviously there are more athletes on a team than just the best ones. It was one of the lesser good kids, the ones we never see in the story, that did it. They had help from the principal, and were told to infect Stephanie if she broke 4 minutes. She did, and so they carried out their plan.

Why they would intentionally sabotage her like that I have no idea. That gets WAY too much into fanfiction territory. Maybe they were jealous of how good she was, maybe they had some beef we never hear about, or maybe she did some perceived wrong against them in the past and this was their way of getting revenge. Hell maybe this kid was a female athlete and infected Stephanie because they thought she didn’t respect girls enough, I don’t know. The point is they did it. And I imagine this is an athlete who already had some good relations with the principal beforehand. He’d never risk revealing how people got GB to the public, so he must’ve chosen someone he knew wouldn’t tell anyone. And maybe threatened to kill them if they did reveal anything, I mean, I can see him doing that.

While I can’t say for sure how Stephanie got infected, I can take an educated guess. The kid probably wouldn’t want to do anything too conspicuous, so they were probably given water spiked with the thing that causes the transformation. They poured this water in a cup, and gave it to her to drink shortly after she finished the race, where she’d be tired and a little delirious, accepting any water she gets handed to her. Thus, the principal’s plan is complete and this kid gets whatever satisfaction they wanted.

Since Stephanie ends up becoming an Olympic athlete after the fact, getting a ton of attention and praise from around the world, I’d say she was the one who got the last laugh.

Let’s finally answer the question of “why”? Why Stephanie specifically? Why did the principal choose Stephanie, out of any of his students?

The answer is quite easy, attention and publicity.

I don’t think the principal had any special interest in Stephanie before he wanted to infect someone with GB. He didn’t seem interested in any of the male students. But when he got the means to infect somebody, Stephanie, or Jack, immediately caught his attention.

Most high schools don’t really get that much attention unless some huge controversy hits them, especially in a small town like the one the story is set in. I imagine that three years after the fact, any random student contracting GB is not going to attract headlines. But if one of the best athletes in the school’s history contracts GB right after breaking the 4 minute mile, THAT might catch some eyes. Not only that, but if Stephanie wants to compete again as a girl, then a huge legal controversy will hit the school and, even if just for a couple months, the principal’s school is known by many across the nation, and he gets exactly what he was craving.

If you read the story with this perspective, the principal becomes like an evil mastermind. A bit overdramatic yes, but the point is that he orchestrated a lot. He knew everything that would happen if Stephanie got infected, and he revelled in the attention he received. We can only hope it was enough to satisfy him.

It also means he likely didn’t care about whatever kid he was working with to infect Stephanie, probably abandoning them right when he became focused on her .

Oh, and no this kid was not Andy Marks, if you’re wondering (the rapist character who turns out to be trans in a plot twist wow this story did not age well). She clearly had no idea how people contracted GB, and, judging from that plot twist, if she was given the means to infect someone, she probably would’ve gone with herself.

In fact, if I am allowed one time when I can venture into full fanfiction territory, I like to think that, after the events of the story, Marks pieces together that the principal infected Stephanie, then confronts him about it and asks him to change her too. The principal agrees on the condition that Marks fakes her death because having two students transform in his school within just a few months is going to raise suspicion. Once Marks is changed, the principal takes her out to the middle of nowhere and abandons her, leaving her to fend for herself as she tries to create a new life. That would be my pitch for a sequel to “For a Girl”. And it would work within the universe too, as we never hear about what happened to Andy Marks or the principal at the end.

That’s about the most I can deduce from the story just by using what it gives me. Everything else would mostly just be guess work and get into real conspiracy territory. However, I will try my best to piece together what I can.

Is the principal one of the big masterminds behind GB? Personally, I don’t think so. I think a group of people wanting to evade the US government would want to cover their tracks a lot, with many degrees of separation. The principal clearly has some idea of how GB works, but not enough to develop the disease himself. In all likelihood, he attained a dose of it and was told he could infect whatever teenage boy he wanted.

Since infections occur all throughout the US, here’s how I’m going to assume GB is distributed. A main, central group of people creates the disease. This group is scattered all across the country, coalescing in multiple different stations within the states, and are all connected to each other through one big network. After creation, these doses are handed out to a distribution group. Their job is to choose a teenage boy to infect, and then have that victim stored in a computer base so they can keep track of their victims. The principal is probably part of that second group, the distribution group. And I imagine he’ll be helping to infect a lot of boys with GB in the future.

Regarding how GB is made, I have no clue. That goes way too much into speculation and isn’t really a part of any actual theory I could make. But one question I could answer is one the story itself brings up, does GB make its victims look like celebrities?

A couple times in “For a Girl” it’s stated that Stephanie bares a resemblance to the actress Michelle Tractenberg, who played Dawn in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (2003 Michelle Tractenberg, that is). Considering how insane most of this blog must sound, you might be surprised to read that I think this is most likely a coincidence. No person aside from Stephanie mentions this supposed resemblance, and even she admits that she still sees her old self in her new appearance. Not only that, but no other victim of GB is stated as looking like a celebrity.

The groups infecting boys with GB already have an extremely taxing job. They need to create and distribute GB, selecting specific teenage boys to infect and not mess up once. They have to keep track of multiple groups across the country all while trying to evade the US government. Do you really think they’d want to add “attain DNA from celebrities” to their list of tasks?

I don’t think it’d be a stretch to say that Stephanie may have looked sort of like a male version of Michelle Tractenberg as Jack. She probably never noticed the resemblance until she was a girl, where it would be much more apparent. There are a ton of people out there who look like celebrities, after all.

And now the big question, why? Why are these groups infecting boys with GB? What’s the point? Is it how they get some kind of sick satisfaction? Is it one big joke? Is it a deranged science experiment? Hell, what if this “group trying to evade the US government” IS part of the US government itself?

Well, I can’t answer all those questions definitively, but I’ll try my best. I think this group is trying to test how much they can modify the human body. Making this disease in the first place likely took a long time, and judging from how it takes until 2008 in this universe for a version of GB that turns girls into boys to show up, I’m guessing it took multiple years. They’re determined. 

And they didn’t just want to test how much they could modify the human body, they wanted to test how society would react. Particularly, the people in power. That’s why they only ever infect teenagers, because adults have power. These groups want to see how people in the government will respond to widespread body changes that don’t affect them and they have no control over. That reaction will be different if a person in the government gets infected. Also, infecting someone within the government will only make them try even harder to find where the disease is coming from, which is the last thing these groups want. 

By only infecting teenagers, these groups can easily pass GB off as an age thing rather than a power thing. It’s something no one in the government ever has to worry about. And so it’s easier to evade them.

I don’t think the groups infecting boys with GB are actually part of the government. Not just because that was likely not the author’s intention, but because I doubt all these institutions would be trying as hard as they are to find out who’s behind GB if even a few people in them knew what was really going on. I wouldn’t put it past the government or the CIA to do something like this, but I don’t think they had a part in this.

Regardless, with how successful all these transformations are, the groups behind GB are definitely working on something big at the end of the story. Whether it’s a cure for cancer, a way to increase the human lifespan, or a way to create real life superheroes, they’ve got a big project ahead of them. 

And with how little regard they have for the well being of other people, and the implications that come with them literally being able to alter the human mind, I would be terrified if I lived in the “For a Girl” universe.

Holy shit, that was an insane blog. Anyway, that’s it for today. If you have any theories on “For a Girl” yourself, or disagree with what I’ve said, please say so, I’d be very curious to know. Until then, have a nice day, and I hope the next TGST review won’t take as long as the last one. Bye!