It’s been awhile since the first installment of this series, and lately I’ve felt that it’s high time for me to pick it up again, because there are questions with which I’ve grappled, since the first installment went live.

It's hard to explain what exactly I am, when what I am is something that the average person probably hasn't heard of. But there are labels, umbrellas and niches, to which I belong, as do others like me. Even if these are new concepts to the average person, they are nonetheless valid, and by using them and talking about them, we can broaden awareness and encourage understanding. I’m standing on the shoulders of giants as I do so, amidst my hope of helping others like me in turn.

So, let’s talk about labels, about which ones are mine, about the things that are, and the things that may yet be.

There are any number of broad labels that might apply to someone in my situation for whom, as a friend put it, the specific expression of my identity would require entirely or mostly prosthetic bodies to achieve. Transhuman and alterhuman are two of them. I've seen these applied extremely broadly, applying to everything from a cybernetic being like me, to people who consider themselves therian-- animals in human form. So it works, but it is clunky, and over the past year I've felt I need something a little more closely fitting. "Doll" is the very specific term I've adopted, and a combat doll at that, to be more precise. I've explained it in some depth in Part 1 of this series. Here's a link if you haven't read that yet-- please go read that first so that this makes more sense, if this is all new to you.

But what is the category into which that nests best? I've thought a lot about this, in the year since I first thought to write about what this all means to me. Being visible as a combat doll, especially in public events like Anthrocon, has prompted curiosity and delight from strangers and from some who are like me, relief to see one of their own, just living her life.

So what, then, is the word I'm looking for?

Altersex.

The word is altersex.
[Image 2: One take on an altersex pride flag from 2021.]

Is it a sex (as in fucking) thing? Not really. Alright, then what is this? Where can you read more about it?

Well, it's a term that's still relatively new in common usage, having originated in July 2015 as a term for describing characters that have “body plans that are a mix of things, rather than the usually-found configurations.” It was not originally intended for use by real-world people, but evolved to encompass them. An altersex person is someone whose physical expression of identity-- including primary, secondary, and/or tertiary sex characteristics-- is something other than found in nature.

Your humble author, a combat doll who wrote an entire novel in the name of figuring out her identity, most definitely fits into that category, and I’ll say more on that below.

Yes, the word “sex” is in the name. No, this isn’t just about genitalia, though that can be in there if an individual so chooses. It’s about bodies overall, about their features, about their composition, their color. It’s about– to use the term that some combat dolls like me use– the preferred and ideal arrangement of the chassis.

So is this concept new overall, even if the term is, as I write this, barely a decade old?

Well, not really.

It is a new term, yes, but one that’s emerged in order to make different, more specific ideas and identities– like combat doll– more comprehensible and cross-compatible. Another term that nests within this category is salmacian– an altersex person with a desire for a mixed genital set, named for Salmacis, a Greek nymph who had such a body. Like “lesbian,” it’s a label with an etymology that evokes antiquity.

[Image 3: An 1878 engraving of the nymph Salmacis, from a painting by Charles Landelle.]

Our binaries in the modern day west, be they of gender, sex, or any number of other things, are the result of centuries of genocide and erasure of identities like this. Thus, in that context, altersex and the other new, inventive, and poetic ways for articulating our diversity, is some of that beautiful diversity reasserting itself via a new vocabulary.

And thank gods for that.

But aren't you a binary trans woman? you may well ask, as well you may.

Yes, that is my gender identity. And yet, integral to my ideal expression of identity in body includes colorful sleeves, seam lines and servos, a heads-up projection over my field of vision, and clearly artificial hair color and bustline. Some of that I can have, some I can acquire, some I cannot have at all given the current state of technology and medical science. All of the above are not things that human bodies naturally possess.

So I am, in a word, altersex. These things are how it’s supposed to be, for me. This is how it’s supposed to look. 

To speak most simply, I can point to my hair. My hair is one way I like to express who I am-- in style, and in color. I’ve tried dark hair and it isn’t my usual taste. I’ve tried short hair and it’s actively dysphoria inducing. So I wear my hair long– thanks to the wonderful work of the wig makers of Arda Wigs USA– and I wear it a permanent bright blue that isn’t this reliably possible with dyed natural hair.

The long, bright blue hair is one way I say this is me. This is not an affectation, it is me. Were I able to grow my own hair, I might be able to undercut it, as I wish I could. But I would have to be aggressive about dyeing it, and it would never be quite this blue, a color so important even when it pertains to my spirituality. Were restoration of my hair possible, I would take it, but were it possible to modify myself to grow hair in this color, I would also do it. Perhaps one day that will be possible.

So in the meantime, I use the means at my disposal to have that color in the here and now.

I likewise have plans for tattoo sleeves that are floral and colorful, but are framed with seam lines that indicate access panels and points of articulation where mine ought to be. Tattoos are often seen as cosmetic, but many people, myself included, see them as an important part of expressing ourselves. But tattoos are expensive, so these days, I make do by drawing those seam lines on with waterproof eyeliner or tattoo markers.

I wasn’t quite sure how I’d react, the first time I did that. But when I did– haphazardly and backhanded with Sharpie– I remember sitting there and crying in relief. This is how it’s supposed to be. This is how it’s supposed to look.

[Image 4: Seam lines drawn in waterproof eyeliner on the author's arm.]

It is well known by now, likewise, that I’ve got plans for extra-large breast implants, a process that will require at least two procedures. A friend very kindly sent me her old forms meant to simulate the minimum size for which I’m hoping. Again, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was smiling ear to ear even as I was sobbing in relief, when I looked in the mirror.

This is why I point to River M59A1 and say that her story in Confluence and One Heart Together, her way of being, the contours of her body, the ways she expresses the fullness of her identity in its physical manifestation, are the truest things I've ever written about myself. More than a character I invented, she is what I would be, in a world that was somewhat more technologically advanced and allowed me to be myself more fully in body.

[Image 5: River M59A1, protagonist of Confluence, meant as the author's self image "writ large."]

Four: The Things that May Yet Be

The Apple Vision Pro debuted last year to much fanfare and lampooning. “Those dorks with the giant ski goggles,” every late night talk show host seemed to say. “Why bother?”

And while I agreed with the jokes about the giant bizarre goggles, it was seeing videos of the interface that made me weep in joy, at people manipulating heads-up displays projected over their field of vision with nothing but their bare hands and fingertips. This is how I’ve always felt my own field of vision ought to look, though I have reservations about wearing ski goggles over my head. So, inasmuch as I’m not going to be in a rush to buy and wear the Vision Pro because I have qualms about Apple and the technology is in its infancy, it is nevertheless on the way.

This is how it’s supposed to be, I said, replaying the footage for the umpteenth time, reaching out my hand, the ghost of what should be just beyond my sight. This is how it’s supposed to look.

So I take comfort in the things that may yet be, but I know also that who I am is valid and has substance in the here and now, regardless.

Even now, I am who I am regardless of medical science or technology. And in an age when so much seems so dark, I intend through audacity to clear the way and light a path.

Even now, I am a combat doll– and I am altersex.

Sources