(Non)Humanity and Species Dysphoria: the Forced Transformation Trope
Written by Gavin Reed-Machina on August 25, 2024.
As a nonhuman, do you ever think about why there's so many stories and myths and legends about humans being turned into animals? You ever wonder why it's usually a punishment or a curse, or why the characters try to do whatever it takes to become human again? You ever think, "I don't understand, I would love to be an animal and get rid of my human body, what's the problem?"
As a human myself, one whose system has been in the alterhuman community for years, I hope I can help bridge the gap of understanding here.
The way many humans see being turned into an animal as a curse, the way they'd be incredibly distressed about becoming nonhuman?
That is species dysphoria.
That is a human experiencing species dysphoria, because being perceived as nonhuman or other-than-human causes the exact same feelings of pain and wrongness and disconnection from their body that a nonhuman can experience when perceived as human.
(Particularly, this might be an orthohuman, someone who has a normative relationship with their human cultural and species identity, as opposed to an alterhuman, who experiences alternative/nonnormative humanity or a species identity separate from humanity. Human alterhumans can also experience this sort of species dysphoria - hi, I'm one of them.)
Imagine being your species your entire life, the way you know you're intended to be, living in a body you're comfortable in - and then having that body ripped away from you. Being forced to live in a form that doesn't match who you are, what you know you are, and desperately wanting to find a way to change back because you know you're not meant to be like this.
If this sounds familiar because it's what you experience as a nonhuman - that is how a lot of human beings feel about being transformed into something nonhuman. It's the feeling of being the wrong species! It's the desire to return to the form that you know as yourself!
The fact that orthohumans are born into the species they identify as does not mean that they could never comprehend your nonhuman experience. You can explain your nonhuman species dysphoria to an orthohuman. Given all the examples of unwanted transformation stories throughout human history, I think you're likely to find that they'll understand when you put it in that frame of reference.
"How would you feel about being turned into another species against your will, leaving behind everything that feels good and right and comfortable about your human body? That sounds horrible, right? That's how I feel, being nonhuman in a human body, and it's distressing in the same way you would hate being human and stuck in a nonhuman body."
I know that the gap between humanity and nonhumanity looks enormous. The horror of, say, werewolf mythology looks like a completely alien experience when you are a wolf, so you see being transformed into a wolf as nothing short of a wonderful experience, and you don't understand why anyone would see it as horrifying.
But if you understand that it's not about the species, but the experience of species dysphoria, of being trapped in a body that has never been yours and desperately trying to return to one that feels like you, well - that's a lot more understandable, isn't it?
Humanity and nonhumanity are not two opposite ends of a binary, destined to never understand each other. I know many alterhumans who are both human and nonhuman, and their humanity is an identity in much the same way as their nonhumanity. Humans are just another species on this planet, as bipedal tool-using social primates, and we have our species identities just like many nonhumans. You are not as alone in this world as you might think you are.
There is room for understanding and connection. Your experiences as nonhuman are not purely individual, not wholly unique, not utterly incomprehensible to human beings, and this is a good thing. The gap isn't actually as wide as it seems. You can reach out and cross it if you just remember - you have far more in common than you might think.
Being Human: A Species Identity Compare and Contrast
Written by Gavin Reed-Machina on June 27, 2024.
Hey, I'm Gavin, and despite hanging out in various alterhuman spaces, I'm 100% a human person. I live in a system with two headmates who are also human, but identify as other species as well - Max as a velociraptor therian, Jude as a dog archetrope and an android. In contrast, I specifically, completely identify as human.
What's so special about that, being human? Statistically, it's nothing remarkable - most people on Earth identify as human after all. I think what's really interesting is that, over the past year, I've been connected to communities that all contain people (or non-people, as the case may be) who partially or fully identify as nonhuman - otherkin, therians, a solid number of fictionfolk and some alterhumans. Therefore, I feel like I can compare and contrast my species identity to the experiences of others, in a way that most people who philosophize on what humanity is don't get the chance to.
We tend to think of humanity as The Default, a non-identity, since the majority of self-identified nonhumans were raised as human, and we all live in human societies. Most people don't bother clarifying that they are human unless they're dehumanized, because it seems obvious that being born human means you're human. Given humanity's position as a default state, a lot of nonhumans see it as an opposing and fundamentally different experience from nonhumanity.
In this way, species identity is similar to gender identity - cisgender people, who identify with the genders they were assigned at birth, are often assumed by transgender people to have a fundamentally different understanding of gender. I feel like both of these assumptions are oversimplifications, ones that miss out on a lot of nuance, and throughout this essay I will be comparing gender and species, as a trans man whose species is as important to him as his gender.
There are some common threads I've noticed when it comes to having a sense of identity. I wouldn't call them universal experiences, I can't read minds, but they're frequent enough to be significant. They may be more obvious when it's an identity at odds with your body (e.g. being transgender or nonhuman) - but I'd go so far as to say that plenty of cisgender (and human!) people also experience these feelings, and simply don't have the words or desire to describe their feelings with these terms.
First off, identity euphoria - the internal sense of alignment, joy, and contentedness one gets from presenting and being perceived as their identity. A trans man might experience gender euphoria from presenting and being treated as a man, and so do many cis men. Think about how thrilled many guys are when their beards fill out; that's facial hair as a presentation of masculinity, and gaining it is a gender euphoric experience. In a very similar way, a nonhuman experiences species euphoria from being perceived as their species - and so do I, as a human being.
I’m trans, so I know how gender euphoria feels for me. I find that the more I'm just treated as a man, the more that the bright elation of being correctly gendered turns into a sense of quiet satisfaction - this is what I am, and everyone knows it, and all is right with the world. There's no reason to think too much about it unless something calls attention to it, and then I feel confident and comfortable enough in myself that other people's judgements are more annoying than hurtful. I exist peacefully in my body, happy with the way people see me in it, and sometimes I'll do something that feels extra masculine and grin about it for five minutes.
My species euphoria falls into the same sort of category - I feel content with my body, the way it matches how I feel internally, and the way other people treat me because of it. I feel fundamentally comfortable with my human body map and movements, having a flat face and hands and nails, walking upright on the soles of my feet. I feel comfortable when I'm acknowledged as a human and a person, when I do something that’s known to be human - when I wear different clothes to express myself and keep out the cold, when I cook a meal to eat with people, when I sing for the fun of it, when I write and draw to share something creative, when I interact with human technology and invention and creation. Humans have been making clothes and foods and songs and adding marks to the world for about as long as they've existed, and we're still doing it, and if I think about it too long I get emotional. I’m human and I feel deeply connected to humanity, and most of the time I don't think about it because I'm treated as one, but sometimes I’ll notice that I'm doing something that just feels fundamentally human, and it's really nice - sometimes species affirmation can be in the little things, like wearing a beat-up jacket or writing a personal essay.
On the flip side, there's identity dysphoria, the distress experienced when one's identity doesn't align with the way they present or find themselves perceived as. A trans woman might feel gender dysphoria because of her body hair; many cis women also feel less feminine if they don't shave. Species dysphoria is a well-known experience in the nonhuman community, the distress of being seen as human or having a human body when you don't identify as one. Given what I said earlier, hopefully it doesn't come as a shock that people can have the opposite experience - feeling distressed about being seen as nonhuman. I get this kind of species dysphoria.
It feels odd to talk about species dysphoria when I’m not nonhuman, but I still feel it. Mostly it comes up in the context of being in alterhuman spaces, being accidentally mislabeled as nonhuman through proximity to those who are, and I've also felt it in the context of playing around with visualizing myself as nonhuman in art. My body map doesn't have nonhuman features, parts like wings or tails or claws or pointy ears. Picturing myself like that feels wrong, it feels like sandpaper, like there’s this foreign thing attached to my body and I need to cut it off so I can stop this crawling sense of my body not being my own. I used to have an awful amount of gender dysphoria, and I feel like the two are very comparable experiences - the distress of feeling like your body doesn't match your mind. I got top surgery, so the gender dysphoria is gone, and thankfully my body is actually human, because I would be just as distressed about being seen as nonhuman as I was about being seen as a girl.
It’s kind of fascinating that I feel this way, that I can’t picture myself as nonhuman without feeling incredibly uncomfortable. On the other end of the spectrum, there's the entire furry fandom, a subculture of people - most of whom definitely identify as human beings - who regularly depict themselves as nonhuman animals for fun and self-expression. We’re all human, what gives? Do they have a more malleable sense of species identity than I do?
Maybe, maybe not. I don't have a straightforward answer to that - like I said, I can't read minds, and I'm just one person. But I do have a couple thoughts on the way humans interface with nonhumanity, on the topic of enjoying it.
See, I get dysphoric about being considered nonhuman, but I've found some loopholes in there. I’m completely fine with my fictional counterpart - the character getting tossed into different AUs for our personal enrichment - being turned into a vampire, a werewolf, a selkie, an android, a person with wings. How's that any different from other expressions of nonhumanity? Well, for me, those stories don't induce dysphoria because they're about humanity, at the end of the day - how people cope with being seen as or turned into monsters, the way they treat one another and the way they treat supposed outsiders, the ways society might change if humans were slightly different animals but still called themselves human. If I were a werewolf, I'd still be human, just one living with the consequences of also being a wolf. If I had wings in a world where all humans have wings, I'm still human in the context of that world. That baseline sense of humanity is what’s important to me.
In a similar vein, I can't stand seriously being seen as nonhuman - but pretending to be nonhuman? Roleplaying? Dressing up in a costume? I can do that. I feel like there’s something very human about being fascinated by the abilities and strengths of every animal that's not your own kind, and wanting them for yourself - the human desire to fly like a bird, swim like a fish, hunt like a wolf, run like a deer.
I think a lot of what people like about fursonas is this sort of wish fulfillment, of having the cool traits of all these fascinating animals, and having that animal self-portrait still being anthro - human - enough to relate to. It's animality through an anthropomorphic lens, through how fun it can be to play pretend and express yourself as a cool deer-wolf-lion hybrid. And usually, those animal choices are symbolic, and the fursona reflects the personality of the person who made it - more often than not, it reflects the cultural stereotypes of what that animal is, instead of being true to what the animal is like as a living organism. It's about the way humans see themselves in animals, not necessarily the way we are animals. So, ironically, being a furry tends to parse as a very human thing to me.
So far, most of this essay has been a comparison, since I see a lot of similarities between identifying as human and identifying as nonhuman. Putting my species into my list of self-identifiers, like how I'd list my name and pronouns, has cemented it as a crucial part of how I view myself and want to be seen. That's the same way a lot of nonhumans think about their species. I have a strong sense of species identity, it just so happens to align with being human. Contrasting the categories seems harder to me.
I could list a bunch of different nonhuman traits that I lack, but it would be on the same level as saying one kintype is different from another. I don't care about walking on all fours, and neither does Max as a raptor. I don't instinctively try to bite a threat, I’d rather kick it, and I know a horse would agree with me. I don't long for the sky and neither does Jude, they're a dog. I don't have a prey drive and neither does a hamster. I don't feel like a nonsapient animal, and neither does an elf.
When it comes down to just being a certain species, there’s not that much of a difference between identifying as a human and identifying as a dragon. There's a bunch of traits that feel correct, and a million others that don't feel right at all.
I could say that I don't understand feeling like I don't fit in my own body, but I do - I had gender dysphoria. I have species dysphoria. If one of my partners is having a phantom shift while co-fronting with me, I invariably end up either leaving front or nullifying their shifts, because I just don't feel comfortable if our combined body map is nonhuman. I don't have memories of being a different species than I am, having abilities that I don't have in my body now, but those aren’t necessary to be nonhuman in the first place.
Do I need to find a contrast that makes sense? Does there need to be some fundamental difference between human and nonhuman identity?
I don't think so. It's all identity, at the end of the day.
Musings on our names and our relationships with them, particularly around transitioning, OC fictive experiences, established character fictive experiences, and our reluctance to create a system name.
Max
So I'm transgender, and I decided to change my name, as is a common choice among trans folks! I went through several different names before settling on the ones I have for myself now - Kitson, Gray, Finch, for a few examples. I was nonbinary in my teenage years, genderfluid before my gender settled into masculinity as its new home, and I wanted a name that was kinda difficult to nail down as masculine or feminine. I played around with it for a long time, I got silly with it!
My online name is Max now, derived only a little bit from misspelling mackerelgray as maxkerelgray one time! I think it’s a name that ages well, and I really like the potential longform nicknames for it - because I like saying it's short for Maximilian, but it can also be Maximus, Maxime, Maxwell, Maxfield, Maximum, Maxilla, etc. It’s fun! The possibilities are endless!
And on February 29 (wow! a Leap Year!) I got a new addition to it! I was attending the 2024 Centaurus Festival, a three-day online convention centered around mythic and folkloric alterhumans, and it was an absolute blast, especially because of the name thing!
I was jokingly lamenting that I’d chosen a really boring name to represent myself, when surrounded by the likes of Page or Cynder or Daski, because it does look like I just chose one of the Top Ten Dog Names despite not being a dog. Everyone around me got a whiff of self-deprecation and immediately went about tearing it down, joking about how they came up with their own handles and complimenting mine, and it was honestly really nice? Like I’m not the only one who made up my name in a silly way, or feels like their name is a little underwhelming, and it felt really nice to break up the impression of Big Intimidating Community Names™ with the understanding that we’re all just weird and vibing together!
And Benry said, hey, if it were actually a top ten dog name you’d be a Fido or a Biscuit, and I said, hey, I like biscuits! I’d be a great Biscuit! And in ten minutes I’m being dubbed Max Biscuit in the general chat and giving people virtual baked goods, and honestly, it was so fun and sweet that I’m immortalizing it by putting it on my handle now. Hi fellow alterhumans, I’m Max Biscuit, I was Assigned Baked Goods at the Centaurus Festival and it was absolutely delightful.
Jude
First off, my name is technically short for Judah, and I don’t actually use that name here, for a couple reasons.
Mostly, it’s because Judah is a work name. My handler only used my full name - she wouldn’t shorten it, that’s improper, that’s not my actual designation. It’s a name that I associate with my job, with doing something for people who don’t actually care about me, and it’s not something I use with people I’m trying to get along with. My friends and siblings and partners all call me Jude in friendly contexts, but I’m Judah if it’s for something official, and that’s a signal for me to stop fucking around and do what I need to. I’ll use it as a burner name while talking to strangers, to people I don’t care about. Now that I’m in a system, I only directly talk to people who I care about getting along with, so I just cut out the middleman and introduce myself as Jude.
(There’s also definitely the fact that people see Judah and think I’m a guy, and I hate being misgendered. Jude has a more neutral association that I like better.)
That’s what I have for my first name, but I have more thoughts! About other names I have and their funny little origins, related to being an original character fictive.
See, if you’re talking about my model and serial number, I’m called RK800 476 032 660. In beta testing, before being officially given a name, I used to be called Sixty from the last couple digits. Which is really funny to me, because that’s the usual fandom nickname for the Cyberlife Tower doppelganger in Detroit: Become Human, and that was where Max got the original inspiration for my character! Listen, the moralizing machine characterization compelled them.
Max just ran with the pieces, glued them together, and wrote that guy into weirder and more canon-divergent AUs until they realized they had fully replaced every part of that man’s characterization and I was the result. They just went full Ship Of Theseus with him. So my name got changed because I was a completely different person, and I don’t identify with that name anymore, but I’m pretty fond of it. And I like Sixty in DBH fandom and fics when I see him, he’s kinda fucked up and feral and feels a lot of things and I can relate to that. He’s just a funny little bastard.
And before I walked in, Max wrote a bunch of different alternate universes with me - and honestly I adore it, I love being known and psychoanalyzed by my loved ones because I like to know what they’re thinking about me. Most of those AUs have different settings and premises - like we’re all werewolves, or selkies, or chefs, or in the Star Wars universe or something. And this usually meant that my name is different, because I need a full name, I can’t just be called Jude. So he settled on Judah Nicholas Rook, Rook from RK and Nicholas because it has a good ring to it, and I also have it as a legal name in my timeline.
It’s funny to think about my name in terms of the meta of being a fictive of an original character, because on one hand, Max went through various iterations of a character that would eventually become what I’d recognize as me, including name changes, and that’s really interesting! And on the other hand, I definitely remember talking about what to officially last-name ourselves with my brothers when we finally got the time, because I felt kinda weird about identifying myself by a model number, or worse, a serial number that people never remembered. Watsonian versus Doylist commentary on what went into making me a person, I guess! They’re both real enough, one of them just happened in my life and the other happened in Max’s brain.
Gavin
My name is Gavin Zachary Reed, and I still think it’s really funny that I can just announce that without getting doxxed. Like I don’t think anyone should follow my example, but it’s fucking comedy gold that I can do it. I’m not even revealing my identity to anyone who’s familiar with the video game my source was based on, because my source is so canon divergent that the character who shares my name is fully unrecognizable to me.
If you recognize the first and last name there, yep, I’m technically an iteration of Gavin Reed from Detroit: Become Human. Unfortunately, I’m nothing like him - I look nothing like his character model, his voice is different, his only personality trait is being a dick, and he’s not even 5’2” - and I hate his stupid fucking ass, including the video game he’s from and most things related to its fandom that we’ve interacted with. This kinda sucks, because I’m not going to change my name again just because it’s associated with a character and game and fandom I dislike. I like my name, thanks.
Here’s a brief rundown on how I got my name. Gavin - I’m trans, I chose this name myself. My middle name, Zachary, I also came up with that, because it worked way better with Gavin than my old middle name, and I go by Zach in spaces where I don’t want to use my first name. And Reed is my aunts’ last name, because I moved in with them as a teenager, and I did not want anybody knowing I had ties to my famous older brother or dragging me back to my shit parents. I legally changed it all at once. My aunts were my guardians until I got my own place, and really, they’re way more like parents to me than the people who fucked over my childhood.
So I’m really attached to my name. It carries a lot of meaning for me. I’m annoyed that it’s connected to a character I hate, but I can’t exactly control that, so there’s not really a point in getting tetchy about it. I’ll readily bitch about it in private, but I genuinely like who I am and I’m not about to abandon that by letting a game dictate what I call myself.
System Names
We still don’t have a system name and don’t really care to officially make one, for a couple reasons.
First, there’s only three people here, and we have our individual names already. Addressing us by a collective system name feels like it means losing some of that individuality, because people use the system name because they don’t want to assume who’s fronting or anything, and while that’s understandable, it’s not something any of us really likes. Like, we’re very much separate people! If you wanna talk to one of us, just say it, we’ll probably show up!
On the other hand, I do understand wanting an identifier - like, there’s loads of Maxes and Judes and Gavins out there, we have really common names, there’s gotta be something to distinguish us from another group, right? Like a last name.
Honestly, looking at it like a last name makes it feel better. If you’ve read through the rest of this, you can tell we’re already experts at getting new last names, and this is just another one! So on that note, we’re not gonna call ourselves anything like The X System, but if you have to tag us as a collective, just use Machina as a funny end tag, like how people talk about Sans Undertale.
(Max Machina is a misnomer, since he’s not from Machina, but he came up with the title so he counts. And it’s really fucking funny.)
I Want Off This Self-Inflicted Archetype Ride, Thanks
Hey, my name's Gavin, he/him, and I'm writing out my fucking identity crisis on main, because what else do we have a journal for?
Content Warning: I get existentially fucked up about my personhood and purpose in life, mention having a sex life, and use a few reclaimed slurs as identity labels for myself. This ends on a pretty hopeful note, all things considered.
So. This past week, we realized something, that Jude and I - especially me - have been basically fitting in the same roles Max's daemons used to. Because brains are weird, and they love patterns, and we've been unconsciously keeping this pattern going for a solid year or so.
And at the end of that last essay he posted about it, Max said that we aren’t the same thing. His daemons were parts of himself and extensions of what he needed back then. We, as their headmates, are separate people. And that’s that, right? Pack it in, solid conclusion, all neat and tidy. I sure fucking wish it were, but no, I’m having a bad time and I'm going to talk about it. My old therapist told me that writing out my thoughts is good for me, and I’m choosing to believe her.
I spent most of my time in the back. Not in a proper headspace, but just running damage control, executive functioning. Keeping track of stuff like, when's the last time you ate, or what do we need to do now to make your feelings less awful, or you should really take a break from memorizing brainstem structure and take a walk. And it's kinda ridiculous that I can do it for someone else, because I also have ADHD and all the executive function issues that go with it, but it’s easier when it's for someone else. And I guess that's part of being a Caregiver.
I'm capitalizing Caregiver there because I'm talking about the archetype. Martin was a caregiver archetype - her purpose in life was to take care of Max and their needs as a person, and she felt fulfilled and content with this because she was a part of them. She was never under the impression that she had anything to gain from becoming a fully separate person, someone with her own wants and needs as separate from her job, and she didn’t have anything to gain! She was happy like that, being an extension of someone else's needs, because Max was living enough life for both of them, and she didn't need to be a person for them to exist and thrive together.
I’m a separate person from Max. I'm a separate person from Jude. I'm not just an extension of what my partners need from me. But - fuck me, I've spent this long trying to be! And it's not even something that started here, it started in source, because Jude needed me to be functional while they were fucked up and having meltdowns over their abuser, and I stepped up because I wanted to help them. I helped them until I couldn’t anymore, because I was emotionally exhausted, and I stopped and recovered just enough that I could help them again the next time they ran back to me.
And I didn’t learn anything from that! I didn’t learn that I had to take time to rest and recover before I could help anyone else, I learned that I'm fully fucking capable of helping someone else if I just focus on them. This is the exact opposite of what I was supposed to learn, but I'm nothing if not exceptional.
Because - listen, I like helping people, I genuinely like taking care of people I love, it feels like I'm doing something important and making a difference and I am. It's so important to me to make sure that my loved ones are okay, and if they aren’t, I want to help them feel better. It's genuinely fulfilling to me.
And I looked at that, and I looked at what I could do, now that I'm here, feeling lost and confused and upset about forgetting important people and details in my life, and I decided that I would be fine just doing that. Only that. Specifically that. I can forget about how I feel like I’ve lost my identity by just making a new one. Right? It’s not like I had anything else to do, and I like helping people. It worked out.
So I just helped out. I didn't front, even though Jude did to talk to friends and make new ones and gradually get more involved in our daily lives, because I just didn't fucking want to. Like, really, what did I have to talk about with people? I don't have much. I'm doing something important, anyway, isn't that more useful than talking to people, or playing a game, or getting into a podcast, or reading a book? I was completely fine, and I had to be fine, because I couldn't help my partners if I wasn't fine and if I couldn’t do anything useful I’d have to face how fucking disconnected I felt from being a living person.
And now. Now, I can’t do that anymore. Because I fucking burned out. You really could have seen it coming months ago, if you paid attention, but I sure fucking didn’t. So I can’t do the things that I’ve been building my fragile fucking self-image over, and I’m left to look at what else I have to my identity to talk about. And it's really not enough, honestly.
Like, okay, I have three cats. They're wonderful little bastards, and I love them, and I can't hold a conversation only talking about my cats. I'm a fag, I’m queer, I’m transsexual, I'm kinky, I'm stone, and several of our friends have boundaries around discussing sexuality and slurs that I am not going to cross. I was into martial arts back in source, and we don't have the time or money to learn that now. I tend to like alternative rock and indie music, and I haven't listened to new music in months so that's kind of a dead end. I like tabletop roleplaying games, and we don't have the time to listen through a whole session, let alone a season, and I don't have opinions to discuss on them anyway because I'm fucking tired.
So I don't have much that makes me feel like I have an identity. I feel lost and frustrated and tired and anxious and useless. And I argued with my partners about reaching out to our friends for support, because I don't want to burden them with my nervous breakdown. Because isolating myself from the world has gone so well so far, hasn't it?
Turns out it helps to talk to people. Turns out we have the kinds of friends who also like helping their loved ones. Shocker, I know. And we know the guy who wrote the guide to growing as a person from being a fictive - thanks Goratrix - so I really should've done that weeks ago. Preferably before the nervous breakdown, but whatever, it happened.
In conclusion, I'm really not okay right now. Huge fucking surprise. But at least I know I’ll feel better if I start actively doing things. Because I can do that. Listen to new songs, listen to one session over three days. Play a video game. Getting one fucking hobby will probably do wonders to fight off the existential despair. And it's all going to be painfully fucking slow, because I'm not gonna remake a sense of self in a week, and it's going to suck. And I'm gonna get through it, and I'm going to feel better. It'll be worth it.
And hey, if you read through this whole thing and you're also going through the horrors, mood, take my hand. We’ll get through this shit together.
M: So the journal post we wrote recently about names had a lot to do with transitioning, and huh, yeah, all three of us are transgender - but definitely in different ways, and that’s interesting! I don’t see too many systems posting about the intricacies of their relationships to their bodies, their specific ones or the one they’re in at the moment, and I want to talk about that!
Content Warning: This post contains discussion of gender dysphoria, gender-affirming surgeries, and genitalia, using both medical and casual terms, as well as discussions of sex and dysphoria surrounding it.
Max
I’m a trans man in the way that a human is a man, genderqueer in that I’m not a masculine man, and nonbinary in the way that human gender roles don’t fit to raptor genders. I’m currently on T and I had top surgery a while back, with great results if I do say so myself!
One interesting thing of note is that I’m a human, but I’m also a bird - my type of velociraptor is pretty much a prehistoric chicken, with all the social hierarchy nonsense and eating anything small that can fit in its mouth. While I don’t have species dysphoria, I do get a sense of definite gender and species euphoria about having a flat chest without nipples. Birds don't have mammalian breasts, chicken breasts are completely different! I never got any pleasure from my chest - if anything, it just gave me pain - so getting rid of the nips didn’t make me feel like I was missing out on anything.
Similarly, I used to consider the merits of bottom surgery, including phalloplasty, when I was younger and more invested in wanting to be like a cis man. Now I’m on T and living with a couple headmates who would hate phallo, so my mind’s definitely changed since then! I think bottom growth was pretty much all I needed to be satisfied with my genitals. I have a dick now! And it’s neatly tucked out of the way, unobtrusive, and unlikely to get hit by accident. Birds don’t have external penises, even the ones that actually have a phallus in the first place, so I think my current arrangement is a pretty solid win for both gender and species euphoria.
Gavin
I do wanna say, it’s really damn nice that all of us like being flat, otherwise it would be kind of a nightmare. And I like the scarring - I also got double incision, so it feels right to have scars in the same places.
So I’m a trans man, like Max, with some pretty key differences - namely, I’m fully human, I'm fully binary, and I have an unconventional relationship with sex and dysphoria.
I identify as stone, specifically as a stone top. It’s a label that spun off of stone butch, an identity that got its start in working-class American lesbian communities in the 1940s and ‘50s, but has since spread around a bit. I call myself stone to communicate one message: I don't want to receive sexual touch. I have hard boundaries on that. And it’s not that I have dysphoria about lacking a dick, it’s that I don't want to feel sexual pleasure. Having a cis penis would make it worse, really.
On that note, I’m incredibly fucking fond of packers and strap-ons. They’re gender affirming, functional works of art, block access to my body, can be used to pleasure my partner, and can be removed and swapped with one another. Do you know a cis man who has five differently sized dicks and knows his way around all of them? No. Platinum silicone is a miracle substance.
Jude
So I’m nonbinary, and my ideal body has a flat chest and a vulva. Both of these are essential, because if I have breasts or a penis (or no genitalia!) I will have horrible gender dysphoria and feel so bad about it.
I kinda identify with transfemininity, but not entirely - more on that later! - because my character was originally designed as a cis man and gradually changed over time. I don’t remember any transition details in my source, but I do know the way Max changed details about me as an OC! I find that more comfortable to think about, honestly - I don’t want to remember anything from before my current iteration, and it’s easier to think about it happening to a fictional counterpart that’s not me but eventually turned into me.
First thing that really changed was pronouns, because we love a good they/them and it got stuck like that. Then a bunch of little presentation changes happened over a few years, like drawing me with longer hair, scrapping the facial hair, pitching my voice up so it read as more androgynous. And at some point, they started getting into writing smut and realized, “wow, you really can’t stand having a dick, huh?”
I really couldn’t do it, I could not have sex while having a dick, so they got really good at writing what we affectionately call redacted smut - like the kind that a good self-insert smutfic might have, describing actions that feel good without describing what’s actually being touched, and that was all really fun! It was a good creative exercise and stopped me from having dysphoria, but it just stopped the dysphoria, it didn’t give me any euphoria. And then I finally got around to getting a cunt, and everything just felt so much better? Like holy shit, is this what being comfortable is? Is this what identifying with your body is like? It's fucking great! So that’s what I’m presenting with now, because it feels good and right and wonderful, and that’s what I remember having in the timeline I’m actually from.
There’s also the various AUs where I’m transmasc and get to microdose T and bind and get top surgery, because I was a fantastic projection character, and honestly I really do identify with those versions of me. I like the idea of having a vulva the whole time, that just feels more correct to me, and top surgery scars and bottom growth both feel really gender-affirming to me? So I also identify with having a transmasculine body, while having what’s kind of a transfeminine experience. I’m definitely trans either way, but it’s interesting to put into words!
And this all combines into something weird and cool, I think, because right now, I am living in a transmasc body! But I’m also transfeminine here! Because Max got top surgery, so now we’re flat and everything’s great again on that front, but they’re also on T, and on a larger dose for a longer time than I would have been on it - which means their voice is dropping, they’re gradually growing facial hair, they’re generally going more masculine than I would. So for me to comfortably talk while fronting, I pitch my voice up using transfem vocal coaching techniques, because I have voice dysphoria! And we use different words while having sex - Max calls his bottom growth a dick, which gives him gender euphoria, and we call it my clit when I’m fronting, because that gives me gender euphoria.
So basically I’m transgender - which way? Yes. Both. Schrödinger's transition. I contain multitudes.
Update as of May 11th, 2024: So my bottom dysphoria somehow vanished. Into thin air! Which is also cool for me! I've been thinking about it, and I think it's because I've fully internalized the separation between what society says about gender (only men can have dicks) and what I know about gender (anyone can have a dick), so the dysphoria of perceiving myself as masculine for having a dick is just... not there anymore? I'm incredibly psyched about this honestly, I love having less horrible dysphoria! It's still not usually a part of my body map, but it's nice to have another option open up, you know?
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…You know, looking back up this post, it's incredibly funny that we're on a linear sliding scale of Liking Cock. Amazing. How are we all in one body? Transgender diversity wins again ❤️
G: Fun thing about being the Token Fully Human Guy in a system with an android dog and a velociraptor - I think I have an anti-shift force field or something. I'm so fucking Just Some Human Guy that if I'm co-fronting, the shift just slides off. it's fucking hilarious. Max wants his wings back online lmao
