Dreadnought (Nemesis, #1)

by April Daniels

“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.

The shelter of boyhood ended, and they called me a young man. For no reason at all, they looked at the things that felt right to me, and they took them. Even down to the way I carry my books and cross my legs. They took it. They took everything. Puberty came, and my body turned on me, too. Watching every part of myself I liked rot away one day at a time, the horrified impostor staring back at me. Watching the other girls, the ones they let be girls, head in the other direction. Every day, torn away further from myself, chained down tighter. Suffocated. Strangled. They’ll make a man of me. Show me how to be a man. Teach me to man up by beating me down. THEY NEVER ASK IF I WANT TO BE A MAN. And now I’m finally free. I’m finally myself, inside and out. So they spit on me. They’re embarrassed by me. They hate me. FOR A MISTAKE THAT THEY MADE. 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.