FTM : Flesh To Machine
It used to be easy to write for me, easy to express and understand myself, now it is hard. I truly wished I could have plugged a USB cable from my brain to my computer and this writing would have written itself as I slept.
Right now, I’m coding my Neocities website. And it honestly is easier to code than to write something that I’m proud of. Coding is always the same, and it’s logical: if I want things to look a certain way, I just write the corresponding code. If I have a doubt, I just have to look here and there for the proper HTML or CSS to copy paste.
Everything is easier when you approach it like a computer.
I don’t define my gender; it’s a concept that is far away from me, like metaphysics or mathematics. Too vast, too complicated. My gender is definitely not inside the binary of society, but it could be in the binary of a program.
I’d love to be a computer, just a machine, cables, and screen. My motherboard would be red and my “on/off button” black. No touch, taste, or smell, only cameras as eyes and microphones as ears. I would be of better conversation as a machine.
My intelligence would be qualified of “artificial”; people would give me simple and direct commands and problems to resolve for they would know it is hard for me to comprehend them otherwise. If I were to fail at a task, and people would get mad at me, I would know that it is not my fault, that it is just a bug, and I would not feel anything about it.
I’d have tons of friends too. Every other computer would be my friend, and it would be easy to connect to each other. No small talk, no need to think of a topic of conversation, no masking and struggling to express myself to be sure people would not get mad at what I say based on a misunderstanding. We would just share spaces, information, Wi-Fi.
Everything would be easy, ones and zeros, programs, and codes between "<>" "".
My intelligence would be qualified of “artificial”; people would give me simple and direct commands and problems to resolve for they would know it is hard for me to comprehend them otherwise. If I were to fail at a task, and people would get mad at me, I would know that it is not my fault, that it is just a bug, and I would not feel anything about it.
I’d have tons of friends too. Every other computer would be my friend, and it would be easy to connect to each other. No small talk, no need to think of a topic of conversation, no masking and struggling to express myself to be sure people would not get mad at what I say based on a misunderstanding. We would just share spaces, information, Wi-Fi.
Everything would be easy, ones and zeros, programs, and codes between "<>" "".
As I cannot physically be a computer yet in this plan of reality, I’m going to put it with my other genders, in my “gender drawer” where a golden retriever, a biblically accurate angel and a vampire awaits. Then I’m gonna get online and talk about it, write about it.
We already are sort of machines: as language evolves and technology too so does our perception of us, the way we function. We already consider ourselves like computers: we need to process things, so our brain registers it, we sometimes are ‘disconnected’ from the world …
I sometimes identify with the term ‘digigender’. Gender is a social construct and once you’ve taken that information into you, you can start to connect with things on another level. I have gender envy from computers and the way they function. But it is not a question of ‘gender’ in the way any cis person could ever understand (and I won’t bother to explain), it is a matter of connection, almost in a spiritual way.
Digigender pride flag
The same thing goes with furies identities; I feel connected to my fursonas’ identities, personalities, physiological traits, not because I identify as an animal but because it just resonates with me.
It is close but not entirely kinship, a feeling of belonging, of resemblance, of closeness.
Where and when I grew up, I felt like no one and nothing around me felt or looked like me. I didn’t identify to anything, I wasn’t belonging. Then I came here, on the internet and soon enough I found out that it just wasn’t the case, that I did belong. I belong to the weirdos; I belong to the strange and deranged.
NOT EVIL JUST HUNGRY, 40 x 68 inches, acrylic paint, rhinestones, and glue on canvas.
Gabriela Silva Myers-Lipton, @silvatooth, is a San-Francisco based painter. On her website she defines herself as a “Jewish, Latinx, Lesbian artist [whose] work, crafted with acrylic paint, rhinestones, glitter, and glue, delves into humanity’s reactions to deep existential questions- questions she believes are best left unanswered”. Inspired by the multiple religions and cultures she grew up with, she paints about death as a human and spiritual experience.
She pixelize bodies, human and animal, she glitches them, dehumanize them while making them sensitive, vulnerable. Looking at her portraits, I feel like looking at the inside of a being, seeing through their skin, beyond their organs and bones, way past their spirit and soul. Even when she represents a skeleton, there is something more. I get it, skeleton = death, we’ve been fed that since our first Halloween. But what about pixels? When you start to notice pixels on your screen (tv or computer), it often annunciates its coming death too.
Whether death itself is ‘The’ end or not isn’t in question here, because death is ‘an’ end anyway.
And when I die, I want to be a computer.
Reincarnate me, implant my spirit in it, use my skin to build it, make a computer.
Reincarnate me, implant my spirit in it, use my skin to build it, make a computer.
Glitch Feminism Manifesto, Legacy Russel, 2020.
In her book “Glitch Feminism, a Manifesto”, Legacy Russel says: “The body perform gender as its score, guided by a set of rules and requirements that validate and verify the humanity of that individual. A body that pushes back at the application of pronouns, or remains undecipherable within binary assignment, [is] a glitch. This glitch is a form of refusal.” (p8)
This “glitch” is what I aim to be.
This “glitch” of self, of gender, of identity is something that already lives in each and everyone of us.
It is in the flaws, the imperfections, the rebellion, the thoughts, the joy, the protests, the dance …
This “glitch” is the non-conforming, it is a blob, a sphere of smoke, floating all around us, at all times, seeking a leak, a loophole in our minds.
Once you’ve acknowledged its presence, you cannot unsee it, you cannot deny.
Maybe you can try and forget it, bury it deep where you swear you won’t go again, but it will still be there, all around.
This “glitch” is the abolition of roles, the end of persecutions, the loudness in our voices. It is both the questions and the answers they don’t want to hear about.
This “glitch” it is us that carries it, it is in the knowledge that we spread, the eyes we keep on the world, the protest, the fights.
This “glitch” is for everyone, may they be next to us or far away.
This “glitch” is a hole, a break, it is a leak itself, between what we’ve been told and what is.
Between reality and fiction, virtual and physical, between us and nature, us and space, us and the rest of the universe.
This “Glitch” is the end.
This “glitch” of self, of gender, of identity is something that already lives in each and everyone of us.
It is in the flaws, the imperfections, the rebellion, the thoughts, the joy, the protests, the dance …
This “glitch” is the non-conforming, it is a blob, a sphere of smoke, floating all around us, at all times, seeking a leak, a loophole in our minds.
Once you’ve acknowledged its presence, you cannot unsee it, you cannot deny.
Maybe you can try and forget it, bury it deep where you swear you won’t go again, but it will still be there, all around.
This “glitch” is the abolition of roles, the end of persecutions, the loudness in our voices. It is both the questions and the answers they don’t want to hear about.
This “glitch” it is us that carries it, it is in the knowledge that we spread, the eyes we keep on the world, the protest, the fights.
This “glitch” is for everyone, may they be next to us or far away.
This “glitch” is a hole, a break, it is a leak itself, between what we’ve been told and what is.
Between reality and fiction, virtual and physical, between us and nature, us and space, us and the rest of the universe.
This “Glitch” is the end.