transfemininity and the allure of the artificial
i don’t think i want to be a robot, but i get it. i feel the draw bone deep. i Understand it.
i say i don’t want to be a robot and i think that’s true. i can’t quite picture myself as an it, i see my body as (mostly) my own, i wake up at home in my the flesh and in my blood.
i read something once that so many trans women feel like open wounds. and i feel it sometimes.. it can feel like there’s a gaping wound, empty and yawning, where a little girl should be. where a solid knowable self should be. sometimes it feels like if i ripped open my own chest there would be a hole where my womanhood should be, right next to my heart.
i dont think im a robot, but ill never be a “real” woman to most people, and how can i be fine with that. i’ve thought about this a lot.. and it makes me want to scream sometimes. i want to scream that i am real too, that just because i chose this body, this self, doesn’t make me less real. i want to scream that just because the hormones in my body are there on purpose doesn’t mean they pump through my blood any different. i want to scream that because i want to be, i am a woman.
but maybe.. maybe the way it becomes okay is by embracing the unreality of my womanhood, by embracing the artificiality of a body i’ve molded for myself. i don’t think im a robot but don’t you understand the appeal of a body that is built and not born?
humans are creatures built to be social, we give our objects names and faces and histories, it is something we do as if on instinct. “doesn’t that flower look happy” we say as if the process of creating energy could bring it joy. we look up at the clouds and say they look “sad” as if the collection of condensation has any will of its own. we look at biology and physics and the simple facts of existence that must be true and give it life, give it reality.
do you get it? do you understand what i’m saying? when so often my self is reduced to the simple laws of its existence, its biology and physics and topography, why can’t i say that these facts look like a woman. so fuck it. i don’t think im a robot but why couldn’t i be? my body is artificial, my mind is malfunctioning, my statements have errors, i can’t quite seem to get the voice right, how can i be sure i am not one? how do i know that if i peeled back my skin i would not find metal casing over wires and pistons and gears.
i think for so many of us there is freedom in this choice. if i must be artificial let me engrave the metal of my chassis or guild the porcelain that covers my mechanical heart. if i must be unreal let my make my unreality my own. you say i am only the nature of my existence so let me show you a body stripped of that nature that is still me. there is liberation in creating a self that is so beautifully artificial, a body of metal or porcelain or plastic painted with flowers or left bare and exposed. a body that, like ours in this life, is one we make our own in a million little ways.
i do not think i am a robot, but if i looked under my skin and found sparking wire i would not be surprised.
