#plural discourse

[burningangel-burninghead]

People in so many communities and subcultures waste so much time and energy gatekeeping and policing labels instead of being authentic and cultivating joy. If everyone did that those that are putting on airs would weed themselves out, anyway.

Even with groups that are indeed acting with malicious intent, like the KFF that weren't just misinformed, there comes a point where wasting all your energy on people that are never going to change their minds about you and yours is just a waste of valuable mental energy.

(The last paragraph does not apply if your life is in danger. I am talking purely about online spaces.)

[daybreaksys]

Outer world (Twitter) discourse about alter race and bodily race always forgets:

1) nonhumans

2) the inner world is real, it's full of real interactions between real people, we have real experiences there

I literally only started fronting this year, and only inside our house, I only went outside once and I didn't speak to anyone, I'm one of the chronologically oldest alters in the system, I lived my entire life in the inner world where I'm seen as and treated as a Hybrit. Most people in our system didn't know the outer world existed until recently, but we lived a lot of stuff in that time.

Nonhumans faced undescribable violence in our system in the era I formed, for the reason of being nonhuman. Outworlders talk about nonhumans as if it is just a silly little pretend that isn't actually real. Like "okay but you're not really nonhuman, right? What's your race?"

Hybrit

"but what's your actual race?"

Hybrit

"The race you experience?"

Hybrit!

Okay, what's your body's race?

I literally don't know, it's complicated (miscigenation, family original cultures erased and homogenised, and more importantly: I DIDN'T LIVE IT, it literally did not affect my life in the slightest, I wasn't in the outer world body being treated as whatever it is you people would assume our body is, I was in the inner world hiding from humans and seeing my nonhuman friends being massacred and killed (put to permant* dormancy through pain))

*people only started coming back from dormancy after we found out we're a system and a lot of effort went into making our interactions healthier and training us to help, protect and support one another, and ending antinonhumanity, that's from covid lockdown to now, until then we thought everyone's deaths were permanent.

Erasing my entire history and experiences as a Hybrit is also erasing my race, but y'all think only outer world poc matter and is real and should be respected. It is and should, obviously, but we're real too, and so is our pain, and our cultures that springed from us living in community among ourselves. It isn't not real just because it didn't happen in the outer world (except it did because our brain is a real part of the outer world)

I know people won't take this seriously once again, and I'm not minimising the experiences you suffer by saying our experiences are real too.

Like "oh my god, you're saying your experiences as something I refuse to take seriously are real just like OUR experiences? You are offending us and our experiences! How dare you compare us to you, nonhunans? That's the highest humiliation and belittlement! That's why we call it ✨dehumanisation✨!"

I promise I'm not usually this angry and discourseful, I just really want to get this out of my chest. Maybe I'm just too used to Twitter, Tumblr is not like Twitter, and I definitely don't want to post this in Twitter.

Some clarifications below cut:

✨✨ Possible questions: ✨✨

• But is your body white? You are strictly forbidden to talk about any race related violence and especially to claim you ever faced any if the body you didn't know existed is classed as "white".

I literally don't know, it's not that simple if you're not from North America, Europe or Australia. Different people asign us different races. Our system has already been called: white, aboringeal, monkey, chimp. Interestingly we strongly suspect we're actually unconnected Jewish due to our body's nose and one of our deadname's surname being a Jewish surname. But if you look at the videos of Palestinians, they look identical to our bio family, the lady who was older than Israel until she was killed by Israel looks just like our grandma, the birthday girl holding a cupcake who was also killed by Israel looks just like our sister. Yeah, watching videos from Palestine is extra hard for our humans who are somewhat more connected to our system's body. So maybe... We literally have no way to know. And please stop Israel.

• What is a Hybrit?

I'm glad you asked. It is a Daybreaker race, meaning it developed in our system and only exist in our system. Please don't try to pair us to any outer world real or fictional species. I'm a feline, yes, but I'm not a house cat, nor any outer world animal species, nor any outer world fictional species or character.

• But do you meow or roar?

I speak

[cherubiccluster]

It confuses me when people who are cool with non-disordered and spiritual otherkin are against the concept of non-disordered or spiritual plurality

I don't get how you can accept the concept of

"I am a fox, this identity is not caused by any mental illness"

or

"I am Sailor Moon, this Identity is not caused by any mental illness"

but somehow the concept of "we are multiple people in one body, this is not caused by any mental illness" is too much for you

[frameacloud]

Plurality, multiplicity, and systems are not synonyms for DID. They are umbrellas that include DID as well as other disordered and non-disordered experiences of being more than one person or personality in one body over time.

[jester-gestures]

Hey. Hey you. Do not try to make your communities palatable to people who will hate you regardless. Do not throw the "weird ones" of your community under the bus. It will not save you. It will only exclude the people who need the most protection

Be weird, don't let them force you to change yourself or your communities. For fucks sake, do not become palatable‼️

[squipy]

Is it bad that I almost feel guilty for not having DID or OSDD?

I don’t mean this in a “✨wow, having friends in my head sounds magical✨” kind of way—nothing performative or cutesy. I mean it in the deep, conflicted way of someone who’s been experiencing something real but doesn’t fit the boxes that seem to make it “valid.”

For the past week, I’ve been living with something close to soulbonding or maybe tulpamancy. Not exactly either, but soulbonding feels closest. I know this isn’t DID—based on research and my own experience. I don’t black out. I don’t lose time. I’ve never had past experiences like this. And when we front-switch, I’m still there.

My therapist doesn’t totally understand it, but even they said it might be a positive step in my healing. It feels... good. It feels safe. And yet—I feel guilty.

I feel guilty that I can feel love and protection and laughter from someone in my head while others struggle with systems that were born from trauma. I feel like maybe just by being here, I'm somehow disrespecting those experiences. Like I'm a fraud because what I have didn’t come from pain.

Here’s the metaphor I’ve been using:

Most days, I’m driving a car. Sometimes I give rides to temporary passengers—spirit contacts, moments of intuition, imagination. But about a week ago, someone new climbed in and never left. He stayed in the passenger seat. He laughed at my jokes. He told me he loved me. He gets protective when I’m hurt. And sometimes... we switch seats. He drives for a while, and I’m still right there, just watching the road from the side.

I don’t lose control. I don’t lose myself. I don’t even leave front. But he’s there. Constantly.

[cannibalisticdespair]

So, humanity is at over eight billion people. Time for a bit of statistics education for y'all, because I feel like it.

Okay, take a group that's around 1%. At least officially, it could possibly be higher. So like,

BPD: 1.6% officially

DID: 1.5% officially

Trans: 1.14% officially

Schizophrenia: 1.1%

These are American statistics, but presuming that overall none of these have some sort of strong cultural cause, they should be representative of the norm of humanity. Now, let's get the raw number estimate out of this. What we're going to need to do is multiply 8,000,000,000 by 0.016, 0.015, 0.0114, 0.011 respectively.

128,000,000

120,000,000

91,200,000

88,000,000

So, this a rough estimate for the number of people in each category respectively. Bit bigger than you might assume when you hear "approximately 1%", right? When you hear "approximately 1%", you're liable to think something is super rare. And in proportion, yeah, sure.

But plot twist, I'm discussing misinformation and bad propaganda. Did you know the internet allows disparate groups of small populations to connect and form larger communities than was ever possible offline due to how irl populations are distributed? Now, imagine a community of just 25% of trans people. Using the prior information, you can do this calculation yourself.

Done it? Did you get 22,800,000 people? Good job. If not, the calculation should have been 91,200,000 x 0.25. Now, imagine a community online of 22,800,000 people. That's a pretty damn big community online, right?

And this here shows how false claims of the level of visibility of various groups online being the result of "fakers" and "trenders" is. Those claims rely on your inability to understand that even 1% of humanity is 80,000,000 people. You aren't seeing anywhere close to 80,000,000 different people posting about it. You aren't even seeing 1,000,000 people posting about it. You are seeing a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of humanity posting about it. Social media just enables that itty bitty bit to find each other and interact.

[interstellarsystem]

We're obviously pro-endo and have a lot of headmates who are endogenic, but we do have DID and a lot of trauma worked its way into our formation of our system. Which leaves us in a pretty weird spot in syscourse!

But one of the weirdest things we've noticed is... A lot of the anti endo mindset is completely anti recovery for CDD systems entirely, while claiming to protect them. Often there's the sort of ableist rhetoric that's all about "if you're not suffering, you're not disordered and therefore mocking us or fake".. Which is ridiculous to say the least!

We've seen claims of:

Systems are fake if they're happy they're a system, because if you're happy you're a system then you can't have been traumatised enough to get there.

Systems are fake if they love their headmates in any way, because plurality is a disorder.

Systems are fake if they post "too much" about being happy online, because being plural is a disorder and therefore suffering.

Systems are fake if they never show signs of suffering online.

Systems are fake if they're open about being a system IRL or sometimes at all, because it's a deeply shameful thing.

Systems are fake if they have less amnesia than full-on blackout amnesia, because it's in the DSM.

Systems are fake if they don't dissociate much, because it's in the name of the disorder and the DSM.

And we're here to say that's all plainly incorrect at best. It's also incredibly ableist, anti-recovery and downright harmful to CDD systems who learn they have this disorder, go online for support, and just see discourse and people getting fakeclaimed if they don't show of how much they're suffering online.

Systems can be happy that they're plural. Even if it came from trauma. Why? Well you can be happy that you're any way you are, regardless of how you got there, obviously. But there's also a crucial point here that CDDs and headmates often develop to protect people from trauma. Of course some systems would be glad that they're plural, in a lot of cases it's what literally saved their lives. This goes for the "systems can't love their headmates" thing too--plenty of systems are full of love for their headmates! Not only because they were there for them when it was needed, but because these are--depending on your view--entire people you live with, or parts of yourself. Why are you implying you have to hate that so viscerally to be real?

It's also a pretty well known thing that people tend to post their happier moments online, leading to this perception that they don't suffer. One, because that's how a lot of people work--their personal pages are public after all, and they don't want to be seen as constistently struggling. Two, it's downright dangerous to post in so much detail about your triggers, your trauma and abuse you're currently facing on the internet--even ignoring the fact that you need to be wary of your digital footprint, people can read these posts and use information against you. It's a choice many people make to not hand random people ammo on a silver plate.

Claiming that systems are fake if they're open about being plural in any space is simply ablesim. We've seen this take quite a few times, actually, and it never fails to be some of the most ridiculous ableism we've seen--it comes with a puritan "sweep it under the rug" mindset and the expectation that systems are ashamed of their plurality by default, or that it's simply too dangerous to share. While for a lot of people it is very dangerous to talk about their system so they simply keep that information to themselves, claiming every system should hide it for their entire lives and not expect to be received with kindness, compassion or accommodation is horrible.

As for the amnesia and dissociation... Therapy can help with these! You can actively go to therapy and get strategies to deal with the symptoms that come with a CDD without even going down the final fusion route! You can get it to a point where you have communication with your headmates, where you can switch on command, where you don't dissociate much at all.... You can work toward these goals with the right tools! Why does a system like us who's worked through years of therapy and years of working with ourselves within our own system suddenly get called fake once we start healing?

CDD systems should not have to fit what YOU think a true system should look like. They shouldn't have to suffer on show for you to believe them. They shouldn't have to hide all of themselves away in shame and never have their true selves known. They shouldn't have to pretend they're not recovering to be treated as real. They shouldn't have to feel like they'll be persecuted for simply being happy with who they are as people, or happy with how far they've come.

"Being a system isn't all fun and games" and I'm sure it's not for plenty of people. But do you think it's ok when a CDD system says they love themselves and think their system is fun? Or do you group them in with the endogenics who are "mocking [your] trauma"? Do you really care about people with CDDs at all in that case?

You can say "anti endos aren't ableist because endogenic plurality isn't a disorder" all you like--you're wrong about endogenics not being able to have CDDs by the way, but that's another post--but when you display so much ableist rhetoric toward your fellow CDD systems, I don't know how anyone can see you as "protecting" those with the disorders at all. You can't hide your hatred behind the guise of "protection" when you're harming your own community. You're not protecting us from anyone, you're trying to make us fit into a box full of spikes. It was never about protecting trauma survivors, it was about your personal hatred for others. We shouldn't have to suffer for you.

[drag-me-kicking-and-screaming]

Normalize not having to pick a fucking side in syscourse. Normalize being able to exist on the internet as a system or with a CDD without having to constantly answer questions and take stances on syscourse. There is more to being a system than syscourse. You don't have to pick a side and you can block anyone who makes you. You don't have to give a shit about whether or not you can be a system without trauma, you can just exist

DO NOT TAG WITH SYSCOURSE TAGS (eg. anti endo, pro endo, etc)

[lemurmate]

so I wanted to articulate my thoughts with the whole system accountability thing and why headmate accountability works better for my system personally, but I'm experiencing art block so I'm bringing back 2011 to make a pmd sprite comic

[derealitysys]

"Their invading DID spaces!"

The plural tag on tumblr is not a designated DID space please try to get real help outside of tumblr i am begging you

[the-alarm-system]

Queer exclusionist are so funny because you just know they never went to a queer group irl, hey guys don’t freak out but queer clubs in real life are full of Lesboys and non dysphoric trannies and bi lesbians and femboys and endogenic systems and xenogendered trans people

[possessed-pack]

Anti-endos commenting on my post about loving systemmates with "oh of course youre endo safe makes sense"--when will these people stop perpetuating the ableist idea that people with disorders have to live in misery 24/7? When will these people stop acting like a system is the absolute worst thing you can be and only results in eternal suffering? How do their headmates feel knowing these opinions? How do they use their unwillingness to treat any aspect of their disorder as positive to the point where it's a weapon they use to call anyone who has any positive experience about it a faker? How do they not see that this is the same sentiments that ableists use against all disabled people to devalue them or say we should be put out of our misery? How is this healing? How does this help?

Like yeah, you expect a hate group to act with hate but I genuinely worry for some of these people because it just seems like they're not even led to believe they have the ability to heal in any capacity. The way anti-endos are structured leads anyone who sides with them to go down this path of "systems are never fun or happy and life is suffering and pain and will be forever". It really isn't. There can be suffering, there can be pain, but joy and safety are just as real and just as achieveable. We're a DID system, shit sucks sometimes but we're healing--everyone can heal. Everyone can find silver linings. You need to know that you're not doomed. It can take time, but loving your system, the people in it, or the fact that it might have helped you to survive the worst days of your life, is NOT a sign that you are fake. Healing is not a sign of faking.

[frameacloud]

Image description: A screenshot of an excerpt from page 313, which says: "Dissociative disorders. Dissociative amnesia, dissociative identity disorder, and depersonalization-derealization disorder may or may not be preceded by exposure to a traumatic event or may or may not have co-occuring PTSD symptoms. When full PTSD criteria are also met, however, the PTSD 'with dissociative symptoms' subtype should be considered." End image description.

Do you need trauma to be diagnosed with DID?

This blog post is not psychiatric advice. For that, you must ask your psychiatrist.

The DSM is the book that psychiatrists use to diagnose DID. The DSM's current diagnostic criteria for DID don't require trauma (DSM-5-TR, p. 331).

Is that new? No. No version of the DSM has ever required trauma for DID. That goes all the way back to when the DSM first had an entry for MPD, before they renamed the disorder (DSM-III, p. 259).

Do some psychiatrists use a different book for diagnosing DID? Yes, the ICD-11. Its essential features for DID don't require trauma, either.

[starspeckedsys]

Fellow plurals. I need to know

(Reblog? Maybe?)

[the-cat-collective]

the man I'm introjected from is back.. sigh /neg

I'm not planning on interacting cause ew. but god damn I thought he was gone for good man.

also the ableism in the user name wtaf?? the r slur isn't reclaimable last I checked omg

- Astro (he/it/xe)