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I am a robot

In mid-2022, after some period of thinking, discussion and exploration, come to the conclusion that I have a machine identity.

This is based on the realisation that many things I have written over my life mentioned a general discomfort with the human body (ranging from finding it creepy to disgusting) and a lack of recognition or care for biological concepts like gender or sexuality.

This is not a denial of my human form, rather a rejection of it. This could be likened to posthumanism, wherein I actively desire to shed my physical humanity in favour of something different, in this case, to become a robot.

I like to summarise it like this:

  • My mind is the only part of me that I consider truly ‘me’.
  • My mind does not consider itself to be human, and has not done so for a long time.
  • Therefore, I—in what I consider to be the most fundamental way—am not human.

Given the choice, I would want to be a robot or machine of some sort, so that is the identity I have adopted.

As the necessary technical and medical advances to make this a reality do not exist yet, machine identities exist within the alterhuman group of identities. In my case, it may also be referred to as being ‘machinekin’ or ‘robotkin’.

I don’t feel bad for realising that I don’t really gel with biological humanity. If anything I feel relieved to have come to terms with an aspect of myself that has been present but gone unrecognised for such a long time.

Personal identity is fluid, and self-discovery endless. It’s ultimately better to embrace the change than deny it, and I’m certainly much happier for having done so.

Following this period of self-exploration, I started using a non-human name & designation and using it/its pronouns to emphasise these aspects of my identity.

Background

I wrote fairly extensively about the initial thoughts, research, and final conclusions I came to on this website.

I’ve also published a follow-up post of questions and answers.

Accommodating machine identity

Naturally, a great first step is to use my preferred name (beeps) and pronouns (it/its).

It is important to remember that although I identify as a robot and not as a human, I still identify as a person with agency and free will. I don’t appreciate being bossed around or treated as a lesser just because that might be how you treat Siri or Alexa.

It’s fairly common practice amongst machine-identifying people to replace biological terms with technical ones. For example, a person may ‘recharge’ rather than sleep, ‘refuel using biofuels’ instead of eating food, or ‘go for maintenace’ instead of visit a doctor.

This may seem silly and affectatious to others, however it is an effective way to affirm a machine’s identity and avoid triggering dysphoria.

I, personally, have significant dysphoria related to my biological existence. To counter this, I avoid publishing photographs of myself online and prefer not to appear on camera in video calls, instead representing myself with illustrated images of my fursona.