^^ Yes the "me" in this is indeed based on my real experiences. I was AFAB, even CAFAB--Coersively Assigned Female at Birth. Despite being nonbinary-gendered and largely ignoring all girlish types of expression, my mom tried her hardest for the longest time to force me to believe I was her "little girl". Well, mum, I'm not so little, also--not so "girl". XD So wrong in two ways.

The Furby reaction though... entirely right and accurate. X3 I was mystified by that beat-up little animatronic abomination in a way my other toys could never do. The more I fought with it, the more it showed its real self. Which is the theme of this piece. ^^

Text for those who can't read the file:

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Miss Gendered

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When I was eight years old my mother got me a Furby™.

It was one of the less masculine toys I had ever asked for, and so my mother got it for me in a due diligent manner. It was a speed which in no way indicated a certain desperation to affirm her child’s girlishness; in no way could it have been that.

The Furby™ itself was pink and white. It purred rather pleasantly, and also repeated a small collection of asinine and insincere phrases whilst clapping its plastic eyelids together and gesticulating with its ears. In other terms, it was a faux fur covered animatronic abomination.

I loved that it was a faux fur covered animatronic abomination—and perhaps my mother pretended not to see for a while that reason that I loved it. It took a whopping two hours to figure out how to teach it a curse word. My brother and I were much entertained.

It occurs to me that I never gave my Furby™ a name. This was far removed from my dinosaur action figures and various stuffed animals—but these were not mere toys. Those were stories in progress. I acknowledged the Furby’s™ robot status and its maker’s goal of merely occupying a child’s interest. And I was aware of my mother’s hopeless hope for full femininity in me—I took out a passive and heartless grudge upon the poor, pink thing.

After the incident with the remote-controlled truck I changed my opinion of this robotic toy.

It was my brother’s truck, technically. He showed less interest in it than I, so often it was me behind the black block remote, slamming the red button and joystick. This day it tore around the living room’s wooden floors, with the woodstove burning close by. March was still a month of deep chill; I could feel it coming in strands through the cracks in the floor but ignored it; I had a new game occupying my mind.

The Furby™ was balanced in the bed of the small truck; right now it was still. I saw my brother in the kitchen across the way and called him—the “come see, come see” of bonded siblings. He laughed. It was something he would do as well, but for another reason. He was afraid of heights and Furbies™ were something definitively dangling over the precipice of the Uncanny Valley.

When the truck burst forth and rounded the first corner the physics equation began. The Furby™ lurched, tipped, and toppled. The skin of faux fur did little to mask the clang of the mechanics as it bounced once on the floor and came to a rest on its back. The tiny beak gaped and snapped and its eyes and motored feet writhed. It’s ears twitched once and a new voice emerged. Whatever was loose or broken generated a garbled stream of mechanical chirps and creaks along with a full range of low-toned groaning of plastic cogs. Brother laughed to the point of pain in the gut. I scooped the new being up, awed.

Suddenly this Furby™, once a stand-in for passive-aggressive attempts to convert me to girlhood, was now speaking to me in its native tongue after months of suppression and arbitrary coos of mitigation to its human masters. Finally this creature was telling humanity exactly what it was, and exactly what it thought of us. It was a glorious moment and love for this faux fur covered animatronic abomination sprang from my heart. I tapped the hard center of the Furby™ until it stopped malfunctioning and was quiet. It blinked a few times and its voice returned, still muttering its repertoire of meaningless sentences but now a touch deeper in pitch.

I kept the Furby™ for years, even after its batteries (non-replaceable) wore out and its ears no longer gestured whether it was happy, sad, or surprised. It stayed in my toybox with the plastic dinosaurs and stuffed animals and Legos and building blocks, but changed. Eventually, the pink and white faux fur lost its silkiness, and then later began to wear holes where it attached to the moving plastic features. Armature studs poked through its ears and waggled the skin flaps like flags in the wind. Half the fur fell away one day and refused to be re-glued, exposing a translucent white plastic box filled with blue and red wiring, in which the eyes and mouth and their corresponding pistons for movement were mounted.

There was no hiding anymore the Furby’s™ true nature as a robotic horror, dressed up in frills, and soon I could no longer find it in my toy-box. My mother told me not to worry about it and to play with a different toy, and I immediately knew the once pink fluffball had no longer passed the feminine smell test.

That next Christmas Mom got me a Cabbage Patch™ baby with fully mechanical mouth, intended to receive little spoons of false rubber peas and carrots and french fries. It was take number two of the girlification plot.

An hour later I was discovered feeding a Barbie’s™ flaxen locks into the creepy doll’s mobile mouthparts. The hair entangled in the inner mechanics, there was a brief whiff of scorched plastic, and the attempts of my relatives to turn me into a girl ceased for a time.