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The dirty little secret about growing up as a boy is if you’re not any good at it, they will torture you daily until you have the good graces to kill yourself.
“You think it’s a uterus that makes a woman? Bullshit. You feel like you’re a girl, you live it, it’s part of you? Then you’re a girl. That’s the end of it, no quibbling. You’re as real a girl as anyone.
“Genetics aren’t destiny,” snaps Impossible.
It is a girl’s rage, and it is right. It is necessary.
I will never stop. I will never give this up. I will never be what they want me to be.
They want me to cooperate in my own destruction. They want me to tell them it’s not true. They want me to help them believe the lie. NEVER AGAIN.
I see a world that is terrified of me. Terrified of someone who would reject manhood. Terrified of a girl who knows who she is and what she’s capable of. They are small, and they are weak, and they will not hurt me ever again. My name is Danielle Tozer. I am a girl. No one is strong enough to take that from me anymore.
Life on estrogen: the highs are higher, and the lows…well, the lows really suck.
Making sure you don’t cry is a just skill like anything else, and I’ve had a lot of practice.
I open my mouth to say something, and as I do I realize that like my mother, I can’t give it its name. Not out loud. Not even to Valkyrja. Because if I admit it, if I call it what it is, then I can’t hide from it anymore either. It becomes real in a way I am not ready for. Might never be ready for. There will be no illusions of safety, no peaceful times alone in my room. There will only be times when he’s not hurting me.
“I was never a boy,” I say, sharper than I intend to. “I mean, I was always a girl. But now people can see it.”
“Good. Because that’d be fucking petty, and I’d hate to have to stop liking you.” “So you like me.” “I haven’t shot you yet, so it does stand to reason.”
The anger was there, but I packed it up and stored it away, deep inside me where it piled up into great heaping mountains that I pretended I didn’t have.
What do you think being a graycape means? We ain’t gonna let the law stand in the way of doing what’s right.”
Who cares if I stop looking like a supermodel? I just saved the whole goddamn world.
Saying it out loud gives it power and my nervousness fades away. I feel good. Whatever happens now, I can deal with it. Because I’m Dreadnought. And I think maybe I could be a good person.
