system-liberation

[system-liberation]

tma/tme is useful terminology for transfems to describe our oppression

tma/tme is not reinventing the gender binary

tma/tme is not repackaged bioessentialism

tma/tme is not asking whats in your pants

tma/tme is not dividing the trans "community"

tma/tme is not perpetuating infighting

tma/tme is not transphobic

tma/tme is not intersexist

tma/tme is useful terminology for transfems to describe our oppression and especially our relationship to those who oppress us

[system-liberation]

probably should have seen it coming I guess but it's pretty fucking annoying everyone saw a conversation about "people don't understand how difficult it is clothes shopping as a trans woman" and proceeded to show just how much they don't understand it by assuming it's only about sizing and not the constant societal surveillance and inability to use the change rooms and fear of being kicked out of the story and unwillingness even for friends to recognise that there's barriers in your way and try and help you.

even people trying to commiserate with me complaining about the dumb responses assumed that it was just about sizing. and phrased it all like "you're so seen and valid". fucking christ.

wow it's almost like people don't understand how challenging it is clothes shopping even years into transition as a trans woman! who could have guessed??????

[system-liberation]

infinitely annoying when another trans woman spouts a kinda reactionary take and tme people come in droves to parade it around and use as a cudgel against anyone who disagrees with them

[system-liberation]

trying not to infodump about my alterhumanity on my friends got me looking like:

[system-liberation]

me, shaking and nauseous: i don’t feel that good

one of my medieval peasant hallucinations keeping me company: mæg ic forleten cwycgan ænne fulle mete?

me: henry i don’t think i’d be able to keep it down at this point

my other medieval peasant hallucination: henry you know how to speak modern english. stop being pretentious

henry: nē ic wile nāt

[system-liberation]

respectability politics is really entrenched in the plural "community". also, we hate the modern trend of calling groups of marginalized people "communities" regardless of whether or not they show any actual, material solidarity or shared interests. but that's a rant for another day.

the point i would rather make is that the people invested in respectability politics are the ones most often policing the community and holding it back from adapting to fit the needs of its actual members. they serve the interests of the ruling classes and do such a shit job supporting the community they claim to that they end up forgotten.

for example, since it's pride, in the 1950s in the u.s. and europe there was a "homophile" movement. these people chose the suffix -phile to downplay the sexual aspect of gay life. some of these organizations, iirc such as the mattachine society, made sure that members adhered to dress codes to prove to the straight public that gay people were just like everyone else. ultimately, they wanted to prove they were normal. they wanted to be allowed to be normal, upstanding citizens or whichever empire they lived in.

and we've all forgotten them. they didn't start the gay rights movement, multiply marginalized twoc with a hatred of the u.s.'s oppression did. the people rejecting gender norms, including those pushed by others in the gay community did. this is absolutely crucial to remember, and to learn from.

- royal blue

[system-liberation]

the history of plurality is being written now. it's up to us to make it a good one.

- royal blue

[system-liberation]

Rambling time with 📮

thinking about how we've gotten really terrible asks about being pro endo and its like. dawg you are harassing an actual real life person who is a DID system for having an opinion you don't like. where is your humanity and sense of community.

I'm already traumatized enough, I have the trauma you require. you don't need to violently threaten me in my ask box because we disagree on someone else's experience.

my stance is literally "I believe people when they tell me their internal experiences" and to me that means being pro endo because endogenic systems say they are real and therefore I believe them. some people get so hard pressed about that.

[system-liberation]

one thing that really struck me was how rigidly putnam ascribes personality to supposed roles within systems. it's a belief i see a lot of systems internalize and it sucks.

as a personal example, i'm an introject. i got into this system when there were already twenty something other people here. over the years i've taken on more of a caretaker and nurturing role, as well as handling as much tedious adult shit like bureaucracy as i can.

someone meeting me for the first time would probably assume that i was /made/ as a caretaker for my system because it fits the pre-establishrd belief, but that's not the case. when i first got here i fought with a lot of people. honestly, i still tend to, though it's less.

the thing is that over time i changed, both by necessity and choice.

we have got to find other words for what we are, using "system" makes things confusing.

i'll try to phrase this as best as i can.

when i got here, i entered a social system, which is to say i entered an intricate web of social relationships, needs, and beliefs. in navigating that, i found that the thing that makes me happiest and fits me best is the role i have now. i realize this isn't true for literally every system, but i know it's similar for some others.

this process literally isn't any different than socializing physically with other people, except for the fact that it all happened in headspace.

this is important not just as a kind of validation of systemhood, but because it means that we can learn, grow, and change. systemmates labelled "persecutors" aren't inherently evil and aren't fated to only ever have a small section of personality traits. they, like any other person, are capable of becoming more than what they've been labelled as.

for years a lot of my systemmates worried they were "the sad alter" or "the anxious alter", but that was in large part due to the social situation they lived in at the time.

no one's life is bounded by chains like that, and we shouldn't reify the belief that some people are somehow doomed to only ever be their worst traits.

- royal blue

[system-liberation]

we need to take away "misgendering" from people who dont know any gender theory lmfao. trans girls seeing themselves in fictional characters is not "misgendering" them. it is not "misgendering" to tell a cis boy he might be a trans girl. misgendering is specifically a sociopolitical act of violence to reaffirm & reinforce a cisnormative status quo.

[system-liberation]

i finally found a copy of frank w. putnam's "diagnosis and treatment of multiple personality disorder" online! i flipped through it a bit this morning, and there's a lot that i want to examine, especially how at the time of publishing, 1989, it was unclear how many bipoc were systems and how many trans people were systems. putnam does say in a sentence or two that it might be unclear how many cases of "tranvestism and transsexualism" might be caused by plurality, which i want to dig into. both transness and systemhood have a lot in common, mostly with regards to people's internality, and i'm really curious about what the intersection of studying both was like when both were experiencing a new position in cultural mass consciousness.

- royal blue

[system-liberation]

it feels incredibly obvious and intuitive that as marginalized people we should not be taking the word of individuals who are part of a power structure with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo as inherently correct. our system is indigenous, and we would not learn indigenous history or culture from white anthropologists or historians. in the same vein, systems need to realize that we have the ability to define ourselves for ourselves, and need to start doing so.

[system-liberation]

i hate it when clones die

[system-liberation]

"yo who tf are you?" I told you, I don't know.

[system-liberation]

[system-liberation]

holy shit im sorry if this vaguepost is obvious to anyone but nobody is born evil. NOBODY IS BORN EVIL. Different cultures can have super horrible things that get ingrained into people but you can always unlearn that. NOBODY IS INHERENTLY EVIL. That's an insanely dangerous and aggressively Catholic concept, and a very easy road to the belief that certain people do not deserve equal rights. Holy fuck please nobody is born inherently evil it literally doesn't matter where or how or why. Enacting violence is not the answer. Please don't torture yourselves