More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“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
...more
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.
There it is. I don’t feel safe at home. 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.
The justifications, the optimistic scenarios, come naturally to me. Because it’s a skill set. And I’ve had practice.
“First, I wanted to apologize.” Which instantly puts me on guard. In my experience, apologies are weapons.
