Hey 👋
Pre-everything trans girl (she/they)
I’ve been posting a lot about this elsewhere for some time now but i think i might be robotkin I have this cosmic longing to be some sort of humanoid robot, whether it be an android or a full body cyborg. It used to be on and off but now I’ve been feeling this weird robot dysphoria for a long time and it’s starting to get kinda intense, not in the “I can’t stand my breath and heartbeat” sort of way, but more in the “I’ll never get to have what I don’t have” sort of way.
I think the very beginning of my feelings started as a kid. I got really attached to the idea of sentient robots with media like WALL-E when I was four, to the point where I got annoyed with media that depicted robots as unfeeling, docile, and mindless. I really liked the thought of an independent free-thinking robot getting to experience the world with their form and their lens, and find belonging in it. I also had similar interest in cyborgs as well from a young age. Some of my earliest OCs were sentient robots. Others were cyborgs who became such because it was forced onto them, or out of necessity (like losing arms or something in an accident). Sometimes I myself wished I was forcibly converted into a cyborg so that I didn’t have to imagine myself choosing it. For some reason, this whole interest felt like a dirty secret that I needed to hide from my parents and I never knew why. I especially felt that when discovering My Life As A Teenage Robot on a 24/7 internet stream of classic Nickelodeon shows (I’m fascinated with old media). A teenage robot girl who liked to fit in with humans. A robot… girl…? I just wanted to be her and do teenager things so much. I thought I had another fictional crush but it may have been both gender envy and robot envy. I couldn’t let anyone know I felt funny watching this, for cis human boy reasons…
I know that I never really liked my body and it’s likely due to my gender, but I think my robot yearning origins trace back to this and my autism. I also had a fascination with prosthetics at the same time, especially with bionic arms, even if they are rudimentary and were unviable for able-bodied people like me. The thought of clasping your own human and robot hand together felt so nice to me for some reason. It stuck with me for a while.
It kinda existed as a latent, occasional yearning. Then I saw this article from Stained Glass Woman earlier this year (https://stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/panel-lines) that just left me completely frozen. She was somebody whose articles helped me when I was questioning my gender, and here she was talking about this crippling pain she could never fully describe, like dysphoria but for a mechanical body. It’s an extremely depressing article (warning) but it had these extremely vivid descriptions of her ideal cyborg self that made me take a deep heavy breath and go like “fuck. I relate to this. so, so much.” Maybe I wasn’t as dysphoria as her, but she wasn’t alone. Otherwise, I related to everything. She uses the term “altersex” to describe herself in this manner although I mainly associate such feeling amongst those who identify as otherkin, which was still a new idea to me at the time which was only starting to gain some level of acceptance on trans meme subreddits. Still, I stayed away from otherkin discussion because it felt strange to me. If this was me, was I doomed to be a freak? I mean I knew to let them be happy and do what they want, but I was extremely harsh on myself in this regard.
Then, for the past month, I’ve been having increasing amounts of robot envy. It feels like the dam’s cracking. It’s one of the few things I can think of. It’s getting to the point where I’m sad that my arms are not formulated from metal, silicone, and plastic, or that I don’t have any visible robotic joints. In that article I mentioned, the part that hit me the most was that she lamented how few people there were like her. Even others that wanted a robot body largely do so for objective upgrades, like living longer, being stronger, being faster mentally. Like her, being a robot would give me this inner peace, like all the chaos in my brain would go quiet. When I envision myself as a robot, I’m usually more calm and collected, taking newfound pleasures in mundane tasks and feeling a pang over things like accessing my arm panel, swapping out my face plate for a simpler mask plate to not have to worry about what my mouth does, the whirs and hums of the joints and the servos that power them, and a metallic overtone to my female voice as a result from synthetic voice modulation. I’m not human, but I’m still me. I’m the same person, but happier with myself.
The thought of becoming a robot makes my heart race. I just wish it was possible. It might never be in my lifetime. Even if it did become possible, or at least there were future bionic arms with full parity to human arms, I would probably be well behind in line behind countless people who need one more than me: those who are disabled and those who will be doomed to die without a new body. Honestly I wish I could alleviate this “dysphoria” by creating some sort of robot suit of my design. I especially want a screen head even if it’s not part of my goals since it’s more possible with what we have (also that minbitt video where they assembled a wearable screen head may have also been an awakening lol). Maybe I could get tattoos to give my arms and legs the appearance of visible joints. I just don’t know. I feel like I’m a freak sometimes for wanting it this bad and feeling upset that I’m not that. I know there’s plenty of robot girls on trans subreddits but I don’t think I could pull myself to tell my parents about this even though they would accept me being trans. It still feels weird that I want this. I just wish that it was possible, and that I didn’t feel so alone. Anyone feel like this?