anyone else like it when bi men

neurodivergencies* are just as physical as other disabilities. why are changes in your brain, nerves, gut, hormones, senses, and energy levels only considered physical if they're caused by literally anything else? have we considered that the separation of the mind from the rest of the body is just a way of minimizing and othering ND people?

*neurodivergent refers to people with mental illnesses, developmental and intellectual disabilities, and other neurological conditions.

Some Musings on Plurality and Mental Health (had a conversation about this earlier today, but we've also been thinking about it generally for a while, so hey, why not, post time) Something that frequently tends to get lost in the noise of discourse but is, imo, actually pretty relevant to system community spaces of all kinds, is the realization that many (I'd venture to say most) systems of any kind, origin, dx, whatever, often have concurrent struggles with mental health issues of one kind or another. Not every system or every person who experiences multiplicity in a significant way has a Textbook Case dissociative disorder (or even a diagnosable dissociative disorder at all, depending on your framework for thinking about what does and does not fall under the scope of the label). But also, that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't dealing with significant mental health challenges: - A lot of systems are queer in one way or another, and many have had to deal with the dangers and insecurity and heartbreak of being queer in our current society. - A lot of systems are autistic/dyslexic/have ADHD/have other kinds of processing differences that have affected many years of their lives, especially if they went through any kind of education system that tried to force their brains into something different, told them they were broken, and facilitated social isolation in one way or another. - A lot of systems, even those without dissociative disorders, have other mental health diagnoses. Depression, anxiety, personality disorders, schizophrenia and related disorders, etc. - A lot of people overall have undergone traumatic experiences in their lives at some point (or multiple points), which we all know have significant aftereffects on mental and emotional health. Also, there's multiple global crises that have been going on for a while, of which the COVID pandemic is just one example, which means a lot of new and exacerbated mental (and physical!) health issues for a lot of people in the last few years. So, what's the relevance of all this?

To us, it's yet another reminder that the idea of an easy division between "disordered system" and "non-disordered system" is frankly illusory. For anyone whose experiences of multiplicity/systemhood/plurality/etc are a significant part of their lives and functioning, that relevance will extend to their struggles with mental health, regardless of whether the mental health issues they're having fall under DID/OSDD or not. Control over switching, new or worsened in-system conflicts, system members being differently impacted by traumatic experiences, degree of dissociative disconnect vs ease of internal communication and memory sharing, system members experiencing and presenting symptoms of mental health issue differently, dysphoria over external-body-vs-internal-self mismatches, increased dissociation overall as a collective coping mechanism.... all of this is stuff that lies at the intersection of any mental health issues and systemhood, potentially, not just "DID/OSDD + its associated classical presentations and etiology". If a parogenic system fell into heavy depression over the quarantine, they might start experiencing more negative dissociative symptoms, and they'd also have to figure out how to navigate the mental health support system (such as it is) while plural. If someone with PTSD from trauma in adulthood decides to look into daemonism for comfort, and finds themselves more and more feeling like a system, they may or may not qualify for DID but they will still be contending with healing-from-trauma-while-a-system. If a system without memory barriers or other apparent issues gets long COVID and has their whole lives upended from new disability, their presentation may start looking more like a dissociative disorder. None of these examples are necessarily exactly the same as having DID or OSDD (...depending on how you define the scope of those diagnostic labels, which is a complicated question all of its own), but they're within a spectrum of related experiences that involve both mental health disorder and plurality in an intertwined way. Which, I guess, is a long way of saying: There is no specific diagnostic category or label that someone has to fit in order to be suffering and need support--and that includes systems as well as singlets.

Hey uh, fully support the overall point being made here, but can we please stop making blanket statements about which period symptoms are the most major/important ones? Just like, as a general rule?

For some of us, bleeding absolutely is the main symptom, and other stuff is minor or even nonexistent. It's absolutely worthwhile to have a broader understanding of what symptoms can look like, & that bleeding is not the defining trait of a period. But what we really don't need to do is minimize bleeding just so we can replace it with a different standard of what True Periods are.

Every person is different. Symptoms vary and that's ok! Your specific constellation of symptoms doesn't make your period more or less of a period. Bleeding is not required! Cramps are not required!

And at the end of the day, the most important thing: your period (or lack thereof) does not make you more or less of your gender!

The whole "trans women can't get periods because they don't have uteruses" terf rhetoric is almost funny to me knowing that male dogs can have false heats and false pregnancies when their bodies produce excess estrogen

I don't think a lot of people realize that lot of their advice to disabled people often boils down to "Get over it." they are trying to be helpful but their idea of helpful is "Just do the thing" because that's what they do. for them they just do things. It comes naturally to just do it.

They don't know how to bridge the gap between you and the task. For them the bridge is already pre-built and stable. For disabled people the bridge is run down, not well kept, it feels unsteady and is hard to get across without being slow and cautious - hell for some people there is no bridge and we need to build it ourselves but we don't have the bridge building tools and no one gives them to us.

"Just cross the bridge." They say before walking over their pre-built bridge. They never gave you the tools to build a bridge to cross.

i hate the way mental illness is conceptualized in general but specifically on here where there’s this weird focus on disorders defining what symptoms you have rather than disorders being the constructed result of the symptoms that you have, which exist outside of the framework of the disorder

Having adhd is like being stuck in rooms with no exits and then told by neurotypicals i should have just done like them and walked through a door

why does my brain kick and scream like an angry toddler every time i try and do a thing that i need to do

me: come on, time to do laundry

my brain: NOOOOOO DONT WANNA!!! WANNA PLAY GAME!!! WANNA STAY IN BED!!!! DONT WANNA DO CHORE >:( CANT MAKE ME

me, the overtired parent: but we gotta do it brain. we're running out of clothes. come on we gotta go

my brain: WAAAAAAHHHHHHH DONT LIKE YOU >:( YOU BIG MEANIE AND NOT MY FRIEND ANYMORE

wait you understand that kinks are ok because they're fantasies that make you happy right? you all get that you don't need to have trauma for your kinks to be okay? right? like none of you think i witnessed a tragic accident on the pool toy assembly line right?

I don't really see people talking about how the "gifted kid" paradigm can make your life harder in the moment

I was recently dxed ADHD as an adult. as a kid the adults called me gifted, bored, and claimed the reason I was depressed af was that I wasn't being challenged enough.

their solution for this? give me more work, more expectations, demand more of my time/energy/focus for schoolwork. it was the opposite of what I needed, and it was hell.

(this is how I lost my love of reading btw)

I was a 'gifted kid,' and my school years absolutely ate me alive.

ohhhhh I get it now. the "gifted kid" discourse exists because people see it fundamentally as a sign of Privilege and not as a largely meaningless category that puffs up weird children before setting them up for the same unremarkable lives as everyone else; thus they interpret people going "the educational system gave me false expectations before ultimately abandoning me to the same heartless world as everyone else" as "why am I, The Main Character, not getting everything I ever wanted."

my cat likes to run up and leap into my pulled-down pants the moment I sit down on the toilet

absolute nonsense thought process from my blendy plural ass today:

hm am I queer enough to engage in this Queer Discourse?

well I'm a bi trans guy so uh yes

ok sure but we're definitely too straight to be here

...but...I'm a guy....who likes guys.....

and too cis also

I'm not cis you're cis

*crickets* (no one else is here)

obviously I'm queer enough

...but am I lesbian enough to be gay

NONE OF US ARE LESBIAN WHAT

"are you normal about" no I am not normal I have never been normal a single day in my life thank you

A reminder I needed today, in case anyone else needs it too:

Having insecurities & doubts about your identity doesn't make you or the identity labels you choose any less real.

Plural? It's super common for systems to be blurry/blendy/mixed up sometimes. Having thoughts, feelings, & experiences at odds with how you view yourself doesn't cancel out the thoughts, feelings, & experiences that led you to that view.

And even without the plural factor: it's ok to be insecure. It's ok to doubt. You can be really truly XYZ and still have doubts & imposter syndrome sometimes. It's ok to change your labels if you decide they don't fit, but having insecurities doesn't mean your labels are wrong.

I have this habit of like, aggressively shutting down insecurity & doubts if they threaten my core sense of self. But you know what? Insecurity is just insecurity. Doubts are just doubts. I'm still me, and I'm allowed to be human too.

this needs more notes

The way people will judge disabled people for not committing a hundred percent to any supposedly healthy lifestyle choice... Are we seriously gonna act like the people WITHOUT chronic fatigue aren't skipping the gym all the time? Like the people WITHOUT clinical anxiety don't still struggle to quit the smokes? Like the people WITHOUT chronic pain don't still fail to get out and exercise on a daily basis? Like the person who DOESN'T have an addiction doesn't still drink a bit too much on the weekend? Like the people who DON'T have ADHD don't also struggle to cook a healthy meal every night? So how and why are we expecting the people who ARE in pain, who ARE mentally ill, who ARE fatigued to somehow do a better job than fully abled people? Make it make sense!

so something that annoys me about the physical vs mental disability binary is that there is at least as much variance within the category of "physical disability" as there is between it & psychiatric disability. like there are AT LEAST 4 broad but distinct categories of disability - off the top of my head, there is: sensory, mobility, psychiatric, & chronic illness.* all of theses categories are similarly distinct, but still have significant areas of overlap with each other (including disabilities that can span multiple categories). there really isn't any single uniting factor that separates psychiatric disability from all other disabilities in a binary way.

("physical disability" is in quotes because yes, the brain is physical, and yes, psychiatric disabilities commonly have physical effects & symptoms. physicality itself does not define a category that excludes psychiatric disability)

and I really think that's the reason it feels like dismissal. not because every space has to be for us, not because all disabilities are the same, but because "physical disability" is a category that is explicitly and exclusively defined by our absence. there is no universal "physical" experience that unites everyone else but doesn't apply to psychiatric disability.

I can understand that the attempt to create this binary probably stems more from ingrained mind/body dualism rather than from a belief that psychiatric disability isn't disabled enough. But I'm begging you to question that dualism, because it's false, and because it's also behind a lot of the ways ableists DO dismiss us ("it's all in your head" etc).

There can be value in having some narrower communities built around shared experiences! That's not a bad thing! But we really don't need to be digging trenches where they don't exist.

*this list is not exhaustive! I'm sure there are more categories that should be included here, these are just the ones that come to mind/that I hear about the most

what's up sluts today we're reclaiming the word lazy

"you're not lazy you're disabled" actually I'm both. I'm lazy because I'm disabled even. it's not an insult it's just a part of who I am.

it's high time we reject the idea that 'lazy' is a meaningful descriptor of a moral failing. it's not. it's a rhetorical tool used to enforce a soulless & destructive work 'ethic'.

redefining it to mean only people who want to be lazy is just gonna bite you in the ass when the ableists decide that's you. it's always meant you, it's always been a tool of ableism & subjugation. disability is not an exception it's a target.

don't let it have that power

lazy bitches rise up 🔥