i actually cried a bit reading this... it's another part of me that i feel very alone with, even as i know that if we feel some way, with 8 billion others out there, surely someone else feels something similar?
i think for me it goes as far back as Pin Bot and The Machine: Bride of Pin Bot pinball machines... something about seeing the "face" open up, and the artwork really did something for us
doll... botgirl... i think i understand the desires even if we don't have the same (impossible) end goals
I understand. I dream and my dreams have claws and teeth. I dream and have gills and tail. in my waking life my arm brushes an oak tree and I remember what it was like to have skin of bark. the closest thing I have to remember myself by is a piece of smut about a girl who was turning into the forest. I wish I was her, minus the creepy shit. my life is good but I am still sad.
Many years ago, I read that both the fastest and most efficient land animals are the same sort of cyborgs, a human with a bicycle.
For me, skates, bicycles, and motorcycles don’t get names - they are body parts despite requiring maintenance and being subject to upgrades and tinkering.
None of my computers, not even the smartwatches, have ever felt like body parts - I don’t know if that is interface or form factor, but they always maintain separation.
Cars, too, get names and separate identities.
I wouldn’t be first in line to become a full-conversion cyborg, but in the first 20 would be nice . . .
A mature, Alita level technology would be amazing.
Thank you so much for sharing. It’s nice to, even parasocially, know someone else like me.
At multiple points in this article, I felt the now-familiar drop in my chest of "ah shit, I recognize those feelings." That pang in my chest when I see (or read) illustrations of characters like Dresden Codak's Kimiko. The inexplicable quiet comfort of flipping open an arm panel to adjust something. Illustrations, because they can't exist. But also, for me, of what might be considered its conceptual opposite—something fey, wild—in either case not-quite-human. At times I imagine silicone and metal, at times plants and mist. In any case, meat feels an odd choice of material to make a person. What I want isn't coherent or stable; certainly in part due to plurality, perhaps in part due to bipolar disorder. In part because my body is a bit broken, and I'd like to be more abled and less in-pain. But also, on a fundamental level, something in me simply rages against being trapped in a singular form. I get why Imaginos is both completely wrong and the closest thing, and feel the same. I want the ability to just... be... different.
By much pain, patience, and cash, I am closer to myself than I ever have been, and as close as I probably can ever be. Like you say, there is both joy and pain in that achievement. I have deep gratitude and deep frustration with the state of modern technology and medicine; things are so much better than they could have been in times past, and so much worse than they might be in the future. I have tasted seizing agency of my self, and I greedily want more. At times I feel at peace and at home, and at times I feel wistfulness or melancholy or anger or agony. I am sorry that agony is clawing at you.
Wow. Thanks for sharing such an incredibly personal experience and keeping us educated. I wish I could give younger you a hug and some reassurance that things will get better, if you'd want one. I love your work already, and this article speaks to me on a personal level. The concept of being altersex is new to me outside of passing glances of fanfic discourse about Salmacian characters, and I had no idea that the term was so broad (or even that there was a term for it). I'm incredibly grateful that you took the time out of your day to write about it.
While I wouldn’t consider myself altersex, I do already consider myself alterhuman (otherkin & fictionkin, to be more specific) and it’s interesting getting to hear your experience! It’s rare to see someone write about things like this, and of course, you write it better than I could have ever hoped. This piece is incredibly poetic and powerful, and it's amazing what you do with words.
I just wanted to express my appreciation for you for once, as I have used your writing extensively to educate myself and help myself while questioning my gender. I ended up not putting a label on it, but funnily enough, some of that dysphoria was likely just due to being physically human in general. The crushing feeling over knowing that you will never get the body that truly speaks to and represents you is unfortunately all too relatable. Nevertheless, I'm glad that modern medicine has advanced enough that so many people can have bodies that they enjoy existing in. (Unfortunate how some want to take that away!) Also, I will definitely check out that Goltz zine!
Thank you so much! Apologies if the response comes off as insensitive or clunky, as this is my first time really writing a comment like this, and I had to edit it several times. I am, perhaps, a bit young for this publication, but I wouldn't want to stop reading your writing! Keep up the great work and stay healthy and safe! :)
As far as we're currently aware, we're not altersex. And yet.
This is deeply familiar in a lot of little ways, all at once. It's a struggle that etches familiar lines into our minds.
The chaos and the maelstrom, the entangled mass of feelings and everything else. We mightn't see eye to eye on the details, but the patterns are very much familiar to us.
Thank you for sharing some of yourself with all of us. 💜
... There seem to be a fair few voices to this article, if nothing else. It's... comforting, in a way. Thank you.
Thank you so much for sharing this deeply personal piece, Zoe. This article, especially the beautiful imagery you used to describe the flashes of your perfect self, helped me understand better what you've hinted at before. I can only imagine how difficult your experience must be.
Sending you a big hug of support and friendship. 🫂 💙
Do you think it would help you or hurt more if you commissioned some artwork to give you a more concrete representation of your needs? I think the flashes you described could make lovely pieces of art.
Hurt. It hurts too much to even try to imagine it as a whole body already--I don't need to see the entirety of what I can't have. And besides, part of it is swappable components, so static aren't couldn't capture it anyway.
Oh, I can certainly understand that feeling. I apologize for bringing it up. I wish I could do more to help you than just offereing support and trying to understand.
I grieve for you. I can understand the feeling of something impossible sinking to the bottom of your stomach like a stone, mourning what will never be. I grieve for you with my insides. Does that make sense? Like a sob trapped inside.
It sounds like there's WAY more pain in there than you ever let on before.
🫂
Sorry kids hated you and adults were worse than useless as a school kid. I get that, a little bit (approx. 1:1 fight:friend ratio here from what I remember). My kids' mom homeschools them to avoid that.
I have seen a lot of Ghost in the Shell (not everything) so at least I get that reference, even if it's not really right. Personally I would refuse cyberization in that universe, though. Also I love Die Krupps but don't relate to their song Robo Sapien (that's a plug, they're legends regardless). I guess we'd be persons but no longer human? Which is precisely your wish? Lots to ponder (in essays I don't probably have the patience to research and write) on what makes a person a person and a person human, or not. You're right though, difficult to imagine such a creature, though you've provided hints here.
Still searching for my own authentic self...if there's only one? What if Tina (I still have her account active!) is just as real as Ann? Less apparent since I went back to oral vs. sublingual estradiol which I think contributed to my plurality posts, but that's a separate discussion.
What if the authentic me requires quitting my job? How will obligations be met? What if my authentic self is a 5'1" 110 lb. AFAB go-go dancer? It's just as impossible to shrink me (except my breasts) down from 5'10" 215, after all.
Finally yeah I do have to retract my comment about memory being unreliable since mine is spotty and tends to contain mostly "bad" memories, for whatever reason. anti-rose-colored glasses syndrome?
I know this wasn't written to seek sympathy, but to speak truth into the world and provide, as best you can, a glimpse of something just beyond the edge of what can be grasped but which you nonetheless /know/ to be true and real and right and also, in this time, in this place, as your moniker relates - impossible. It is not trans, though there is that admixed. And while I cannot say I fully understand (and who among us /ever/ fully understands another?), there are glimpses and resonances - the way the Light catches my shards for a flickering moment a sympatico to yours. What is human, not just woman, but to ever long for what can never be realized and is held all the more dearly for it? To be younger, stronger, wiser, more respected, less noticed, to be finally left alone, to never be left alone again - each of us carries some, and some carry each. I know, to my bones, my body will never be "female" in the way my wife's or daughter's are - no matter how well I "pass," how many procedures I may choose to have, how carefully I regulate my hormonal deficiency. But then, my wife is diabetic, and her body will never regulate its hormones as mine or our daughters' do. I will never have a prom in a gorgeous gown in the flush of my youth - but I have devoted daughters who share this life with me that, in this world, I don't see that I would have had had my body been what I wish it /could/.
I guess what I'm struggling to find words to express is, there is connection even in disconnection, and understanding even in the incomprehensible, and care even in ignorance. We all suffer the pain of imperfection and unrealizability - that we suffer each of us uniquely and constrained by our own skulls does not diminish the empathy we owe and the shared reality we bear for one another. Thank you for sharing, as always. And for whatever it may be worth, the love, respect and care of an internet stranger.
Thank you for this article. I cannot say that I fully understand or have felt what you described being altersex as. But the other feelings, the storm inside, not knowing how to explain, and on some level the feeling of wishing for the impossible, are things I can relate to. And so I imagine this was not easy to write. Not at all. That is where my thanks come from, because delivering this piece of yourself for us to see is something we had no right to ask of or expect from you, and you chose to do so anyway. Whether you did it for yourself, because you felt you needed to, or for our benefit, doesn't matter much. You did it, and because you did it I gained a new perspective on a topic I'm unfamiliar with, so thank you.
My main takeaways from this are that the human experience is always more varied and complex than one can ever expect, and that I'm so very sorry this specific part of you is hurting you because it's currently impossible to make it a reality.
Not for the first time I wish everyone was free to become who and what they want - even if that means having a body that is not human. I wish I had the power or the means to help you and others like you. Honestly I don't quite understand the difference between what you described and transhumanism, save maybe for the raw want/need for it to be A Thing That Exists And Is Possible that you expressed (do you think that's what trans people with dysphoria felt when there were no procedures to help them, only a couple centuries ago?), but I don't have to understand to know that I'd want you to have what you want. If nothing else, I hope I can offer you these thoughts at least.
I also dream of being made of completely different stuff. I used to dream of steel, and then titanium, and now it's atomically precise lattices of carbon, boron and nitrogen, coated with flourine, assembled and repaired atom by atom by tiny machines with precise applications of electrical potential. Skin covered in fractal, microscopic scales, atomically smooth, near frictionless flourinated graphine on the outside, capable of lifting to reveal fractal carbon nanotube hairs that can stick to any surface, over layers of reconfigurable diffraction gratings capable of appearing as any color, beneath which are the tiny fractal channels carrying the tiny machines which keep everything in peak condition. I'm sure it will change as I learn more about the world, that's how it seems to work for me. Somehow, it doesn't feel impossible. Everything seems to hinge on knowledge, so if I just understand the process of gaining knowledge so well that I can fully externalize it, then the path will be revealed.
One of the things I always wonder when I hear about other altersex people (although I'm not sure how I feel about the term for this purpose?) is like, how specific is your conception of ideal self? Do you think you're looking for a set of simple properties, or an aesthetic, or specific features? When I've thought about this for myself, it seems like mostly I am interested in a set of simple properties and a small list of vaguely defined features. When I've heard altersex people talk about themselves in the past, they tend to focus on specific features they wish they had and a vague desire not to be human, but I wonder if there are underlying principles to it as well.
I don't think you could say anything universally. A number of the things I need would most realistically and effectively be achievable with a machine body, and the feel, emotionally, of the rest is right for me. I'm sure plenty of altersex folks, like Salmacian people, are able to describe and envision every aspect of their altersex natures. Still others might be, for instance, aphantasiaic, and be unable to visualize things at all.
Sometimes I dream of being a Mind or ship avatar from the Culture series by the author Iain M. Banks. Particularly the character Amorphia in the Excession novel speaks to me. The name alone is so beautiful, contains such meaning. To have this deep connection with other Minds and ships.
I don’t feel I am altersex. At least, I think I don’t. I didn’t know the term before this article, so thank you for sharing this knowledge. Currently I am contend with my evolving feminine body. You have my sympathy and compassion and I hope one day we can all shape our bodies to be what we want and feel deeply inside of us. To live as our true selves in freedom. 🦋
shit, Doc, thank you for putting your literal essence into this. thanks for being around and being visible, it's not the first time something you've written and shared has felt so important to me.
there's something, well a lot of somethings, here that resonates really deeply with me. my mind kept being drawn back to the course of these past few months, reading a new indie rpg called Girl Frame, and feeling this uniquely alien yet familiar *yearning*, really intensely too, like to the point where i tried explaining what i was feeling to people i normally wouldn't, just to try to understand it more myself. it, predictably, didn't go well 100% of the time. there are aspects of it that *REALLY* don't resonate with me at all and i find personally uncomfortable, in a bad way, but that i think highlights just how strongly i feel pulled to the parts of it that do.
i don't think i'm fully ready to really dig too deeply here, i don't know what it'd take for me to be ready, but to borrow from your beautiful metaphor, i'm not sure if i should wait for parts of *my* stained glass self to set before i go looking to fit or even break new pieces of myself in.
gonna go wash my face and pull myself together a bit i think
This was beautiful (to me). And very powerful. Thank you!
The concept of altersex is something entirely new to me, and while I relate to many of the things you express (aspects of the pain, longing, the struggle to define- put into words- express concepts that can't be expressed by keyboard or spoken language), those feelings for me have actually subsided significantly since realizing I was trans and having transitioned. My body today is so much more 'me' than ever, and its given me a feeling of singularity/unity that I had never experienced before. (My body now isn't my perfect image/ideal, but its such an improvement.)
Not sure if you have ever read the 4 book Hyperion Cantos series by Dan Simmons (Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion), but I feel there are aspects of what you describe in that series over the timeline, and how some of the main characters shift in their identity and appearance. I know when I first read the series (as a very dysphoric and disassociating teen in high school not understanding why I felt how I felt), the way the author describes beings and individuals through the story line gave the shifting, undefinable but so definitely 'me-but-not-identity' that was my desperate dissociative self insightful creativity into what I otherwise could be. This served as an effective coping mechanism to avoid dealing with the unexplainable difficulty I had living in my actual body. (At the time, I didn't realize how desperate this dissociative 'not-identity' was, it felt rational and secure to me, but I knew it wasn't 'me', it wasn't what others saw when they looked at me (but even what I actually was wasn't really me either when I had the courage to look at my own reflection or a photograph). But I can look back and see how she helped get me through the bullying, the let-downs and disappointments, the depression and worse.) If you haven't read them and like science fiction, I highly recommend them.
That shifting 'me-but-not-me' identity today? Well, she's/its still with me, but now feels like a creative halo through and around my identity, rather than the desperate life raft it was back then. She'll always be a part of me, but I'm so grateful that my transition has given me that sense of unity with my self and my body.
I don't know if what I experienced was similar to what you experience. I just want you to know that I saw my not-identity in what you wrote
i actually cried a bit reading this... it's another part of me that i feel very alone with, even as i know that if we feel some way, with 8 billion others out there, surely someone else feels something similar?
i think for me it goes as far back as Pin Bot and The Machine: Bride of Pin Bot pinball machines... something about seeing the "face" open up, and the artwork really did something for us
doll... botgirl... i think i understand the desires even if we don't have the same (impossible) end goals
🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂
I understand. I dream and my dreams have claws and teeth. I dream and have gills and tail. in my waking life my arm brushes an oak tree and I remember what it was like to have skin of bark. the closest thing I have to remember myself by is a piece of smut about a girl who was turning into the forest. I wish I was her, minus the creepy shit. my life is good but I am still sad.
Yeah. Yeah. 🫂🫂
🫂
Many years ago, I read that both the fastest and most efficient land animals are the same sort of cyborgs, a human with a bicycle.
For me, skates, bicycles, and motorcycles don’t get names - they are body parts despite requiring maintenance and being subject to upgrades and tinkering.
None of my computers, not even the smartwatches, have ever felt like body parts - I don’t know if that is interface or form factor, but they always maintain separation.
Cars, too, get names and separate identities.
I wouldn’t be first in line to become a full-conversion cyborg, but in the first 20 would be nice . . .
A mature, Alita level technology would be amazing.
Thank you so much for sharing. It’s nice to, even parasocially, know someone else like me.
Yes. Yes, Wren, I know exactly what you mean.
At multiple points in this article, I felt the now-familiar drop in my chest of "ah shit, I recognize those feelings." That pang in my chest when I see (or read) illustrations of characters like Dresden Codak's Kimiko. The inexplicable quiet comfort of flipping open an arm panel to adjust something. Illustrations, because they can't exist. But also, for me, of what might be considered its conceptual opposite—something fey, wild—in either case not-quite-human. At times I imagine silicone and metal, at times plants and mist. In any case, meat feels an odd choice of material to make a person. What I want isn't coherent or stable; certainly in part due to plurality, perhaps in part due to bipolar disorder. In part because my body is a bit broken, and I'd like to be more abled and less in-pain. But also, on a fundamental level, something in me simply rages against being trapped in a singular form. I get why Imaginos is both completely wrong and the closest thing, and feel the same. I want the ability to just... be... different.
By much pain, patience, and cash, I am closer to myself than I ever have been, and as close as I probably can ever be. Like you say, there is both joy and pain in that achievement. I have deep gratitude and deep frustration with the state of modern technology and medicine; things are so much better than they could have been in times past, and so much worse than they might be in the future. I have tasted seizing agency of my self, and I greedily want more. At times I feel at peace and at home, and at times I feel wistfulness or melancholy or anger or agony. I am sorry that agony is clawing at you.
I share a lot of the feelings you describe. For what it's worth, I'm glad... and I'm sorry. 🫂
Hi Doc,
Wow. Thanks for sharing such an incredibly personal experience and keeping us educated. I wish I could give younger you a hug and some reassurance that things will get better, if you'd want one. I love your work already, and this article speaks to me on a personal level. The concept of being altersex is new to me outside of passing glances of fanfic discourse about Salmacian characters, and I had no idea that the term was so broad (or even that there was a term for it). I'm incredibly grateful that you took the time out of your day to write about it.
While I wouldn’t consider myself altersex, I do already consider myself alterhuman (otherkin & fictionkin, to be more specific) and it’s interesting getting to hear your experience! It’s rare to see someone write about things like this, and of course, you write it better than I could have ever hoped. This piece is incredibly poetic and powerful, and it's amazing what you do with words.
I just wanted to express my appreciation for you for once, as I have used your writing extensively to educate myself and help myself while questioning my gender. I ended up not putting a label on it, but funnily enough, some of that dysphoria was likely just due to being physically human in general. The crushing feeling over knowing that you will never get the body that truly speaks to and represents you is unfortunately all too relatable. Nevertheless, I'm glad that modern medicine has advanced enough that so many people can have bodies that they enjoy existing in. (Unfortunate how some want to take that away!) Also, I will definitely check out that Goltz zine!
Thank you so much! Apologies if the response comes off as insensitive or clunky, as this is my first time really writing a comment like this, and I had to edit it several times. I am, perhaps, a bit young for this publication, but I wouldn't want to stop reading your writing! Keep up the great work and stay healthy and safe! :)
I'm glad it helped,and that little zine really is wonderful!
As far as we're currently aware, we're not altersex. And yet.
This is deeply familiar in a lot of little ways, all at once. It's a struggle that etches familiar lines into our minds.
The chaos and the maelstrom, the entangled mass of feelings and everything else. We mightn't see eye to eye on the details, but the patterns are very much familiar to us.
Thank you for sharing some of yourself with all of us. 💜
... There seem to be a fair few voices to this article, if nothing else. It's... comforting, in a way. Thank you.
Thank you so much for sharing this deeply personal piece, Zoe. This article, especially the beautiful imagery you used to describe the flashes of your perfect self, helped me understand better what you've hinted at before. I can only imagine how difficult your experience must be.
Sending you a big hug of support and friendship. 🫂 💙
Do you think it would help you or hurt more if you commissioned some artwork to give you a more concrete representation of your needs? I think the flashes you described could make lovely pieces of art.
Hurt. It hurts too much to even try to imagine it as a whole body already--I don't need to see the entirety of what I can't have. And besides, part of it is swappable components, so static aren't couldn't capture it anyway.
Thank you, though.
Oh, I can certainly understand that feeling. I apologize for bringing it up. I wish I could do more to help you than just offereing support and trying to understand.
I appreciate it, Morgan. 💜
I grieve for you. I can understand the feeling of something impossible sinking to the bottom of your stomach like a stone, mourning what will never be. I grieve for you with my insides. Does that make sense? Like a sob trapped inside.
It makes a great deal of sense.
Wow, where to even begin?
It sounds like there's WAY more pain in there than you ever let on before.
🫂
Sorry kids hated you and adults were worse than useless as a school kid. I get that, a little bit (approx. 1:1 fight:friend ratio here from what I remember). My kids' mom homeschools them to avoid that.
I have seen a lot of Ghost in the Shell (not everything) so at least I get that reference, even if it's not really right. Personally I would refuse cyberization in that universe, though. Also I love Die Krupps but don't relate to their song Robo Sapien (that's a plug, they're legends regardless). I guess we'd be persons but no longer human? Which is precisely your wish? Lots to ponder (in essays I don't probably have the patience to research and write) on what makes a person a person and a person human, or not. You're right though, difficult to imagine such a creature, though you've provided hints here.
Still searching for my own authentic self...if there's only one? What if Tina (I still have her account active!) is just as real as Ann? Less apparent since I went back to oral vs. sublingual estradiol which I think contributed to my plurality posts, but that's a separate discussion.
What if the authentic me requires quitting my job? How will obligations be met? What if my authentic self is a 5'1" 110 lb. AFAB go-go dancer? It's just as impossible to shrink me (except my breasts) down from 5'10" 215, after all.
Finally yeah I do have to retract my comment about memory being unreliable since mine is spotty and tends to contain mostly "bad" memories, for whatever reason. anti-rose-colored glasses syndrome?
Hope you find a way to be ok through this!
I know this wasn't written to seek sympathy, but to speak truth into the world and provide, as best you can, a glimpse of something just beyond the edge of what can be grasped but which you nonetheless /know/ to be true and real and right and also, in this time, in this place, as your moniker relates - impossible. It is not trans, though there is that admixed. And while I cannot say I fully understand (and who among us /ever/ fully understands another?), there are glimpses and resonances - the way the Light catches my shards for a flickering moment a sympatico to yours. What is human, not just woman, but to ever long for what can never be realized and is held all the more dearly for it? To be younger, stronger, wiser, more respected, less noticed, to be finally left alone, to never be left alone again - each of us carries some, and some carry each. I know, to my bones, my body will never be "female" in the way my wife's or daughter's are - no matter how well I "pass," how many procedures I may choose to have, how carefully I regulate my hormonal deficiency. But then, my wife is diabetic, and her body will never regulate its hormones as mine or our daughters' do. I will never have a prom in a gorgeous gown in the flush of my youth - but I have devoted daughters who share this life with me that, in this world, I don't see that I would have had had my body been what I wish it /could/.
I guess what I'm struggling to find words to express is, there is connection even in disconnection, and understanding even in the incomprehensible, and care even in ignorance. We all suffer the pain of imperfection and unrealizability - that we suffer each of us uniquely and constrained by our own skulls does not diminish the empathy we owe and the shared reality we bear for one another. Thank you for sharing, as always. And for whatever it may be worth, the love, respect and care of an internet stranger.
Thank you for this article. I cannot say that I fully understand or have felt what you described being altersex as. But the other feelings, the storm inside, not knowing how to explain, and on some level the feeling of wishing for the impossible, are things I can relate to. And so I imagine this was not easy to write. Not at all. That is where my thanks come from, because delivering this piece of yourself for us to see is something we had no right to ask of or expect from you, and you chose to do so anyway. Whether you did it for yourself, because you felt you needed to, or for our benefit, doesn't matter much. You did it, and because you did it I gained a new perspective on a topic I'm unfamiliar with, so thank you.
My main takeaways from this are that the human experience is always more varied and complex than one can ever expect, and that I'm so very sorry this specific part of you is hurting you because it's currently impossible to make it a reality.
Not for the first time I wish everyone was free to become who and what they want - even if that means having a body that is not human. I wish I had the power or the means to help you and others like you. Honestly I don't quite understand the difference between what you described and transhumanism, save maybe for the raw want/need for it to be A Thing That Exists And Is Possible that you expressed (do you think that's what trans people with dysphoria felt when there were no procedures to help them, only a couple centuries ago?), but I don't have to understand to know that I'd want you to have what you want. If nothing else, I hope I can offer you these thoughts at least.
Take care, Doc.
Thank you.
Knowing full well this may not be seen,
Thank you for sharing,
Because - despite how uncommon it is - this is a shared experience.
Thank you.
I also dream of being made of completely different stuff. I used to dream of steel, and then titanium, and now it's atomically precise lattices of carbon, boron and nitrogen, coated with flourine, assembled and repaired atom by atom by tiny machines with precise applications of electrical potential. Skin covered in fractal, microscopic scales, atomically smooth, near frictionless flourinated graphine on the outside, capable of lifting to reveal fractal carbon nanotube hairs that can stick to any surface, over layers of reconfigurable diffraction gratings capable of appearing as any color, beneath which are the tiny fractal channels carrying the tiny machines which keep everything in peak condition. I'm sure it will change as I learn more about the world, that's how it seems to work for me. Somehow, it doesn't feel impossible. Everything seems to hinge on knowledge, so if I just understand the process of gaining knowledge so well that I can fully externalize it, then the path will be revealed.
One of the things I always wonder when I hear about other altersex people (although I'm not sure how I feel about the term for this purpose?) is like, how specific is your conception of ideal self? Do you think you're looking for a set of simple properties, or an aesthetic, or specific features? When I've thought about this for myself, it seems like mostly I am interested in a set of simple properties and a small list of vaguely defined features. When I've heard altersex people talk about themselves in the past, they tend to focus on specific features they wish they had and a vague desire not to be human, but I wonder if there are underlying principles to it as well.
I don't think you could say anything universally. A number of the things I need would most realistically and effectively be achievable with a machine body, and the feel, emotionally, of the rest is right for me. I'm sure plenty of altersex folks, like Salmacian people, are able to describe and envision every aspect of their altersex natures. Still others might be, for instance, aphantasiaic, and be unable to visualize things at all.
Sometimes I dream of being a Mind or ship avatar from the Culture series by the author Iain M. Banks. Particularly the character Amorphia in the Excession novel speaks to me. The name alone is so beautiful, contains such meaning. To have this deep connection with other Minds and ships.
I don’t feel I am altersex. At least, I think I don’t. I didn’t know the term before this article, so thank you for sharing this knowledge. Currently I am contend with my evolving feminine body. You have my sympathy and compassion and I hope one day we can all shape our bodies to be what we want and feel deeply inside of us. To live as our true selves in freedom. 🦋
shit, Doc, thank you for putting your literal essence into this. thanks for being around and being visible, it's not the first time something you've written and shared has felt so important to me.
there's something, well a lot of somethings, here that resonates really deeply with me. my mind kept being drawn back to the course of these past few months, reading a new indie rpg called Girl Frame, and feeling this uniquely alien yet familiar *yearning*, really intensely too, like to the point where i tried explaining what i was feeling to people i normally wouldn't, just to try to understand it more myself. it, predictably, didn't go well 100% of the time. there are aspects of it that *REALLY* don't resonate with me at all and i find personally uncomfortable, in a bad way, but that i think highlights just how strongly i feel pulled to the parts of it that do.
i don't think i'm fully ready to really dig too deeply here, i don't know what it'd take for me to be ready, but to borrow from your beautiful metaphor, i'm not sure if i should wait for parts of *my* stained glass self to set before i go looking to fit or even break new pieces of myself in.
gonna go wash my face and pull myself together a bit i think
I'm glad... and I'm so sorry. I know that wrenching way too well. 🫂
This was beautiful (to me). And very powerful. Thank you!
The concept of altersex is something entirely new to me, and while I relate to many of the things you express (aspects of the pain, longing, the struggle to define- put into words- express concepts that can't be expressed by keyboard or spoken language), those feelings for me have actually subsided significantly since realizing I was trans and having transitioned. My body today is so much more 'me' than ever, and its given me a feeling of singularity/unity that I had never experienced before. (My body now isn't my perfect image/ideal, but its such an improvement.)
Not sure if you have ever read the 4 book Hyperion Cantos series by Dan Simmons (Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion), but I feel there are aspects of what you describe in that series over the timeline, and how some of the main characters shift in their identity and appearance. I know when I first read the series (as a very dysphoric and disassociating teen in high school not understanding why I felt how I felt), the way the author describes beings and individuals through the story line gave the shifting, undefinable but so definitely 'me-but-not-identity' that was my desperate dissociative self insightful creativity into what I otherwise could be. This served as an effective coping mechanism to avoid dealing with the unexplainable difficulty I had living in my actual body. (At the time, I didn't realize how desperate this dissociative 'not-identity' was, it felt rational and secure to me, but I knew it wasn't 'me', it wasn't what others saw when they looked at me (but even what I actually was wasn't really me either when I had the courage to look at my own reflection or a photograph). But I can look back and see how she helped get me through the bullying, the let-downs and disappointments, the depression and worse.) If you haven't read them and like science fiction, I highly recommend them.
That shifting 'me-but-not-me' identity today? Well, she's/its still with me, but now feels like a creative halo through and around my identity, rather than the desperate life raft it was back then. She'll always be a part of me, but I'm so grateful that my transition has given me that sense of unity with my self and my body.
I don't know if what I experienced was similar to what you experience. I just want you to know that I saw my not-identity in what you wrote