Acceptance-Dreadnought

When I first started reading Dreadnought, a novel by April Daniels, I quickly thought back to a class I took spring semester last year. I wanted to switch out of one of my classes and decided that I wanted to knock out one of my cornerstones. I ended up focusing on my history cornerstone but didn’t want to take a conventional history class—something like the classes that focus on early 13th-century history didn’t interest me—this was because I really wanted to take a class that I would both interested in and engaged with. Since I was switching in to a class late, I had limited options, so the class that I ended up taking was a gender and sexuality studies class. The class looked at how women and sexuality were treated in the past. And how this past has affected current stigmas or treatment, while also looking to find ways to best help accept people and support their choices.

This theme can be seen when reading Dreadnought, a novel in which a boy becomes one of the world’s most powerful superheroes. The main character Danny Tozer has a bigger secret than becoming a superhero overnight. He doesn’t feel comfortable in his own skin, and in fact, the only way he thinks he can become comfortable is by becoming a girl. So, when Danny gains powers from the Dreadnought he is transformed into what he truly feels he is and becomes a girl. The novel then goes on to depict not just one transition, but two in which Danny becomes her true self and a superhero journey. Danny went through many of the same struggles that transgender people have gone through for years in their transition. Experiencing varying levels of resistance and preconceived prejudice leading to discrimination. We see this particularly with Danny’s family and her father in particular.

From the start of Dreadnought, we see Danny struggle with finding a way to feel accepted by herself and others around her. When she gains superpowers, her physical body finally matches the way she has felt for years. She has always felt she is a girl, and she is overwhelmed with a sense of joy (and relief) when this happens. However, she quickly realizes that things are about to change drastically for her. Experiencing a rollercoaster of emotions of joy and fear despite finally being who she feels she truly is. We see her relationship with her family change, relationships at school change, she experiences objectification, and she even experiences resistance from some superheroes who are supposed to be the world’s role models. Daniel’s novel has an underlying theme of striving to be more accepting and open-minded. Along with seeing how staying rooted in preconceived notions can be detrimental. In all honesty, I sadly would have approached this book much differently without taking the class I did last semester. And this book has many of the themes of learning to be more accepting and open that helped me approach this topic in a healthier way. A theme that could help our whole society be better.