| Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue | |
| Author: | Charlie Jane Anders |
| Language: | English |
| Genre: | Science fiction short story |
| Published In: | Boston Review |
| Pub Date: | October 30, 2017 |
"Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue" is a science fiction story by Charlie Jane Anders. It was first published in Boston Review, in their 2017 Global Dystopias anthology.
Rachel is a trans woman who is captured by an agency that forces detransition by means of brain transplants — where she discovers that the person supervising her torture is her childhood friend Jeffrey.
"Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue" won the 2018 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award,[1] and was on the Honor List for the James Tiptree Jr. Award.[2] Gardner Dozois compared it to Kafka's The Castle.[3]
Publishers Weekly considered it "astoundingly good".[4]
In 2020, Anders stated that she has only read the story aloud once, as she finds it too traumatizing; as well, she reported that "other trans people have told [her] that they had to lie down after reading it."[5]
Anders has described the story's genesis as her own anxieties over the then-pending inauguration of Donald Trump.[5]