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deactivated-20220808 · 3 years

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“System” is a Medical Term

…And Other Things the “Empowered Multiples” Movement Hid From Us

Introduction

Hello again, guys, Remy here, kind of. More or less.

This is something I’ve been meaning to talk about for a while, because it’s something absolutely no one in the online system/plural/etc community is talking about. Either because they want to ignore it because it makes them look bad, or because they legitimately just never knew that this had happened at all, likely because it was before their time as systems online. But I’m here to talk about it, because this is something that can explain so many things about why the system/plural communities online are the way they are today; damaged and filled with infighting and constant confusion.

Who Were The “Empowered Multiples”, and Why Does No One Talk About Them?

The “Empowered Multiples”.

That’s an identity label that should fill everyone but the most anti-DID, anti-psych, anti-recovery ableists with the most dread.

If you want a long, detailed and heavily sourced history of what the “empowered multiples” did to the online multiple/DID communities specifically, you can read this post here.

To make a very long story short, the “empowered multiples” was a movement started by Astrea’s Web and Dark Personalities that advocated for the abolition of DID/MPD as diagnostic labels and wanted them removed from the DSM, and displayed blatant superiority over those who still accepted or identified with DID/MPD for themselves, and that’s only a very small idea of what they did. They encouraged people to write them essays on why DID/MPD was a bad label, which they would both post on their websites, encouraged people to boycott the diagnosis, told people to refuse to identify with it it even if they were already diagnosed with it, tried to convince people that it was “natural” to have DID/MPD, including inherently pathological DID/MPD symptoms like time loss, as well as encouraged the idea that anyone was plural if they saw themselves that way and rejected the idea of DID/MPD.

They also deliberately muddied the definition of terms like “system”—which was originally a medical/clinical term coined with DID in mind only, originally referring to a “parts as a system” as it were—and “multiplicity”—also only associated with DID/MPD up until the “empowered multiples” movement, as MPD (when that was still the primary term used) was often referred to as things such as “multiplicity”, “being multiple”, the “multiple gift”, and more. See below:

(Sources for these images are linked in the post above)

They changed the definitions of these words to better suit their narrative, to co-opt language that was not for them in order to both boycott DID as a diagnosis, and to still use language that they were comfortable with at the same time, so they didn’t have to change that much about the language used to describe their experiences.

In the process, and this was very likely 100% intentional, they changed the way a lot of people see the word “system”, now referring to any instance of multiple consciousnesses in one body, rather than a specific experience of “parts as a system”, which inevitably lead to the constant confusion and conflation of experiences, as well as the erasure of DID as a system experience, as this has directly lead to some people knowing about systems as a concept, but not about DID, or having very skewed perceptions of DID, things I have witnessed firsthand in the online communities.

Now, I generally use past-tense when talking about the “empowered multiples”, but it should be important to note that on some level, they do still exist within the plural communities, they’re just not nearly as prominent as they used to be, however, that’s purely in identifying with the term itself. The rhetoric of the “empowered multiples” is still quite rampant in a lot of ways, such as in the anti-psych sentiments of many parts of the plural communities, as well as even the “nondisordered plural supremacy” sentiments that many of them spread, with the implication that people with DIDOSDD1 are lesser for being so, or less “plural”/systems as it were, which all goes to display many of the ways that the “empowered multiples” still have an effect on the communities, whether they’re as prominent as they used to be or not.

How Did This Damage the Online Communities?

This damaged the online communities by constantly having dissociative trauma-based system experiences conflated with non-dissociative, non-trauma based experiences, and while there may seem to be a lot of similar experiences between the two on the surface, at the core, they have extremely different needs. In DID, integration/fusion, (not even final fusion/full integration), is often times necessary for survival and healing, and helps to give a more complete sense of self and personal history, whereas in plural communities, it’s often seen as an extremely negative thing on par with death. This alone shows that the communities are very different and have extremely different needs, meaning that the two cannot be conflated or treated the same at all, and yet this behavior of treating DID the exact same as a non-DID experience persists, simply because they are both called “systems”, when plurals, going by the original definition of the word “system” given above, are nothing like systems.

To clarify, I’m not saying endogenic plurals are not real, I’m saying that by the original definition(s) of the word “system”, and taking the history of the word “system” into account and who the word was coined for, endogenic plurals are not systems, because they don’t consider themselves parts, and because they are not parts neurologically. They’re plurals. In fact, “plural” as a term was actually coined as a non-DID alternative to “multiplicity” in the first place, which already makes it a great substitute for the word “system”. The reason that DID systems are systems, even if they don’t consider themselves “parts” is because no matter what, DID alters are, neurologically and structurally, parts of a shattered consciousness that broke apart to survive repetitive childhood trauma. This is something that has been proven time and time again, and even if certain systems are uncomfortable with this notion, that doesn’t change what the science says about DID neurologically and structurally.

But endogenic plurals are nothing like this, because they don’t have any substantial scientific evidence for their existence, let alone for what their headmates are neurologically, (no offense or judgement meant by this). So, going by this historical definition, endogenics are not systems, they’re simply plural. (Hah)

Is this a bad thing? No.

I also don’t think it’s inherently anyone’s fault for not knowing this, considering this is something that was pretty much deliberately covered up and forgotten about by most of the plural community, considering, well, if this were part of a community I were in, I’d also be pretty humiliated and offended by these people’s behavior, and would just want to move on. However, this is an extremely important part of the history of the plural community, and I haven’t seen people talking about it very much, if at all, and that needs to change if we ever want to start to fix the community going forewords.

How Can We Fix It?

The best we can do to even start fixing the community is to stop conflating endogenic plural experiences with the experiences of DIDOSDD1 systems.

Full stop.

The two experiences are far too different and have far too different needs to comfortably conflate the two under the same umbrella, using the same language, because someone with DID is never going to have the same experience as an endogenic plural simply because DID is severely dissociative and traumagenic, and endogenic plurality (or any non-DID plurality) is, by definition, not. DIDOSDD1 does not belong under the “plural umbrella”, because going by the historical use of the word “plural”, we aren’t plural. We’re systems, or multiple.

Using the same language implies that the two experiences are the same, when they are not. If you want to look more into the differences between DID and endogenic plurality, I suggest looking under the #endos vs. DID tag I have on my blog, which goes a bit more in-depth in this subject.

Is Separating the Experiences Necessary for Community Healing?

Separating the experiences via encouraging the use of separate language? Yes.

Separating the communities entirely? Well, that doesn’t have to be the case. It’s not like I could control people in the first place, so saying ‘yes’ would be useless.

Shared spaces aren’t inherently bad when they’re not using the same language to describe two extremely different experiences, implying they’re both the exact same just with a different origin, when that is very, very obviously not the case, verifiably so.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the “Empowered Multiples” movement did a massive amount of damage, more than I can put in one short post, which is why I linked the post I got my information from, which has dozens upon dozens of sources and links to archives of these sources, as well as screenshots and image descriptions for them, so you can read the original post and make your own conclusions based on the information at hand, (however OP explicitly asks for no syscourse on their post, so please respect their boundaries).

The “Empowered Multiples” movement did a lot in the way of conflating and confusing two extremely different experiences, taking language from the earlier DIDOSDD communities and it wasn’t even that long ago, either. The movement was only really brought to its knees when “The Haunted Self” came out in /2014/, presenting the Theory of Structural Dissociation, and just two years before that, 2012 was when the discourse surrounding the “Empowered Multiples” was at its peak. The damage that this movement did is still very, very prevalent in the community in the anti-psych fearmongering rhetoric a lot of plurals (and even DIDOSDD systems) spout, in that “fusion is murder” or the implication that all alters have to be extremely separate all the time or sentiments of “getting diagnosed will make you lose ALL your rights” in the form of long, severely misinformed and frankly bullshit twitter threads, and we can’t forget the outright ableism of being considered “disordered” that many plurals peddle—all of these things are remnants of the damage that Astrea’s Web, Dark Personalities and the “Empowered Multiples” movement have left us with.

These are the parts of plural history that people don’t want to talk about, which only makes these things more important to talk about now more than ever, if we ever want to change it and if we are ever going to make progress within the communities to stop the infighting.

If you want to make a change, we need to open a dialogue on this damage so that we can heal it.

Sincerely,

Remy

(P.S., I do not support the use of this piece being used to attack endogenics/plurals for any reason, that is not the reason I made this piece, I made this piece to start a dialogue within the system community about making actual, genuine change and to start a conversation about how we can try to fix a massive amount of what’s wrong with the online DIDOSDD1/Multiple and Plural communities, not to attack Plurals and to invalidate them, because it is very much my belief that it will do nothing to help the infighting between the communities.)

#txt #syscourse #actually endogenic #actuallytraumagenic #actuallydid #actuallyplural #actuallymultiple #empowered multiples #pluralmeta #sysmeta #didmeta #plural deep dive #pluralitycritique

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pluraldeepdive · 3 years

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hey do you know the history of the term 'endogenic'?

Sorry for the late reply!

So, the -genic origin labels were introduced by Lunastus Collective on August 8th, 2014. They coined endogenic, along with a handful of others such as traumagenic and cryptogenic.

They talk about why they coined these terms & what it was like in their interview with The Plural Association here.

You can also view an archive of the original coining post here.

In the interview, they express that what motivated them to create these new labels was, unsurprisingly, syscourse. Interestingly, they also explain that their original intention with these new labels was for them to replace terms commonly used by people with DID/OSDD such as system/multiple/plural/alter/etc.

Back then, there was extremely heavy discourse over these terms. Many people believed that only DID/OSDD systems should use system terminology, and that it was ableist or appropriative for non-DID/OSDD plurals to use it. You can see in Lunastus Collective's coining post, they are encouraging the nontraumagenic community to just call themselves endogenics or endogens, rather than systems or system members.

Their origin labels obviously ended up seeing great success on Tumblr, seeing how widespread the usage has become. But, it also seems like no one really had the same intention to replace system terminology like Lunastus Collective did. You can see in the comments on their coining post how several people supported these new labels, but still felt attached to system. This is why their new terms were incorporated into system terminology, rather than used as replacements.

#syscourse #plural deep dive #sysmeta #plural history

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deactivated-20220808 · 3 years

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It’s Debunk! Time!

“If DID is caused only by trauma, why is it not listed in the diagnostic criteria? Gotcha sysmeds”

There’s actually several reasons for this, but they can all be boiled down to a couple:

1) DID is a disorder that regularly causes people to not remember their traumas because another alter in the system is holding that trauma. Thus, a lot of people with DID will straight up not know they were ever traumatized in that manner, so they naturally wouldn’t report what they experienced to a psychologist because they don’t know about it.

2) Some people don’t consider what they went through to be “bad enough” to call it trauma, or “bad enough” to cause DID, and thus also may not report the trauma to a psychologist as they don’t consider it to be their view of “trauma”, or they may be more focused on the idea that “other people have been through worse” instead of focusing on how that trauma affected them.

There’s also the fact that the diagnostic criteria isn’t the only part of the DSM’s entry for DID. There is a whole lot of information on DID in its entry, including prevalence in the population, the symptoms in more detail, comorbid conditions, oh, and the causes of DID, and the DSM just so happens to not list any other cause for DID than chronic, complex childhood trauma, generally in combination with a disorganized attachment to one’s primary caregiver.

This is not a “gotcha”, this is misinformation on DID to say that it can be caused by anything other than trauma.

“But it says ‘associated with’ not ‘caused by’!”

This is medical language. They use the term ‘associated with’ instead of ‘directly caused by’ in the case that they are proven wrong, because with cases like this they can never be 100% sure of the cause of a disorder, especially one like DID, without being extremely unethical, and this is generally just to cover all their bases. It’s like this with every disorder in the DSM, and it doesn’t mean that DID can be caused by anything other than trauma, especially if you’re keeping up to date with the current research on DID.

Again, if there was something else known to cause DID, they would very likely know by now and it would be a revolutionary discovery for DID research, but that hasn’t happened, the current research and the DSM only state “chronic childhood trauma” as the sole cause of DID and nothing else. If they weren’t sure, or thought that it could be caused by something else, they would have put it in the DSM.

“You can’t prove DID is only caused by trauma!”

Yeah, because you can’t prove a negative. However, sometimes you don’t need to prove something 100% to be sure of something. Just because there’s an extremely small chance that the megalodon still exists in the ocean doesn’t prove that it still does, it just means that the chances of it still existing are so small that we shouldn’t even consider that to be a possibility until we see it for ourselves.

With our current understanding and research of DID, dissociation, childhood trauma and CPTSD, we don’t need to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that DID is a trauma disorder to know that it’s a trauma disorder. All signs point to it being a trauma disorder and nothing else. Until we see a case of DID caused by something other than childhood trauma, it’s wildly inappropriate to say that it can be caused by anything else.

“But DID is a dissociative disorder, not a trauma disorder!”

It’s listed next to the trauma disorders in the DSM to show the close relationship between dissociative disorders and trauma disorders. Dissociative disorders are heavily related to and associated with trauma disorders, that’s why they’re so close together and that’s why the DSM’s entries for dissociative disorders talk so much about trauma.

Now that those arguments are debunked, I’m hoping that we can get better and more well-researched/more well-thought-out arguments from the side of endogenics. I’m not anti-endo, I’m anti-misinformation, and I debunk these arguments to give endogenics a better understanding of DID and to encourage more critical thinking, as well as to display the differences between DID and endogenics so that we can all get a better understanding of both sides.

Remember: I don’t support my posts being used to harass, attack or fakeclaim endogenics. I make these posts to open dialogues within the community and to attempt to grow communication and understanding between both sides of the argument. Fakeclaiming and harassment doesn’t help anyone on either side.

#txt #endos vs did #syscourse #anti endo #pro endo #actuallymultiple #actuallytraumagenic #actuallyplural #actuallyendogenic #actuallydissociative #pluralmeta #sysmeta #didmeta #pluralitycritique

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deactivated-20220808 · 3 years

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On Trauma Gatekeeping

Remy again, and today I’m here to talk about the massive issue of trauma gatekeeping.

Trauma gatekeeping is where someone tries to define for someone else whether or not something was trauma or, in this case, ‘traumatic enough’ to cause DID/OSDD.

Believe it or not, this is actually a massive, /massive/ issue in both endogenic and anti-endogenic communities, and I’ll explain why.

In endogenic communities, there’s always the general consensus that it’s ‘sysmeds’ or anti-endos that are gatekeeping the definition of trauma and what can be traumatic to someone, but actually, I’ve seen a lot of potential DID/OSDD systems talk about their childhoods that are very clearly traumatic and act like that had no effect on their psyche and didn’t very possibly cause their system. They’re gatekeeping trauma for themselves and in the process doing damage by not letting themselves heal, but also doing damage to other people by continuously pedaling the idea that trauma has to be ‘severe’ to cause DID/OSDD when that’s not exactly true, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

Anti-endogenics also have a very similar problem; they refer to the trauma that causes DID/OSDD as ‘severe’, when that’s not really a measurable label. There’s no real way to measure trauma as ‘severe’, because that implies the existence of ‘less severe’ and ‘less bad’ trauma, which is a really damaging idea considering the fact that people with DID/OSDD very often tend to downplay their trauma, and referring to the trauma that causes DID/OSDD as ‘severe’ only furthers that idea, considering we all have a history of comparing traumas to other people’s and going ‘oh so they had Real trauma’ and downplaying our own. This, again, leads to people thinking they don’t have DID/OSDD when they may actually have it because they don’t think their trauma was ‘severe’ enough.

In actuality, the trauma that causes DID/OSDD doesn’t have to be ‘severe’ in any measurable manner, it /actually/ has to be *severely traumatic*, (and repetitive). ‘Severe’ isn’t necessarily a measurable statement in regards to trauma, but if we’re talking about how a certain trauma *impacted* a child instead of how severe we /think/ the trauma is, then we can get a more accurate idea of what kind of trauma affects children as a whole, and what kind of trauma can cause DID/OSDD.

So what kind of trauma can cause DID/OSDD? Any kind of trauma, actually.

Any kind of trauma can cause a child to develop DID/OSDD so long as the trauma is repetitive, the child has a high ability to dissociate, and often times this also comes with a child having a disorganized attachment to their parents, (loving their parents but also fearing them in some ways, often fearing punishment for rules they weren’t told or don’t fully understand), or not having a support system to help comfort them through the trauma and healthily process it, (for example, getting them a therapist to help them understand and get past the trauma).

I think it would be really helpful to stop categorizing trauma as ‘severe’ because that leads people to believe their trauma is lesser than others. Instead, I think we should use language that defines trauma by how it impacted the person instead of by how severe we think it is, because often times our view on how severe we see something is very often skewed by our own experiences.

Terms we can use instead are ‘severely traumatic’, (this one categorizes trauma based on how severely it traumatized the person instead of how severe we think it is), and ‘repetitive trauma’, (this erases the idea of ‘severe’ entirely, and instead replaces it with what actually causes DID/OSDD; repetitive trauma, specifically during childhood).

I hope this helps people to understand trauma better, and helps them to stop unintentionally undermining both their own and other people’s trauma by trying to define trauma as ‘severe’ and ‘lesser than’. ^^

[This blog is pro-endo. Think before reblogging.]

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deactivated-20220808 · 3 years

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Honestly, I wouldn't say it's directly proof that someone isn't faking if they’re worried about faking, more like, 'if you're worried about faking, then it's more likely you are not', but it’s not in and of itself hard evidence that someone isn’t faking.

I say this because it's completely possible to misattribute symptoms to the wrong diagnosis, and if you latch onto a diagnosis for long enough, you can accidentally manifest symptoms or see symptoms related to that diagnosis without actually having that illness. It's psychosomatic, and I think this is definitely something that needs to be talked about a lot more.

We need to open a dialogue about people who were wrong about being a system. People who faked systems for any reason.

This is extremely controversial, but here’s my take on it, and my advice on self-doubt and denial:

If you’re worried about faking, don’t automatically assume that means you’re not, because these feelings are important. You can’t always ignore your feelings and rely on this kind of reassurance because your feelings are important and they can always be traced back to a specific source. In short, there’s a reason you’re feeling this way, and there’s a way to get rid of that feeling if you find the origin of those feelings, untangle them and resolve them. So trace that feeling to its origins. Why are you feeling this way? Are you afraid that everything is too real? Are you afraid of having DIDOSDD? Are you afraid someone is going to find out and leave you because of it? Are you afraid of confronting the trauma that having DIDOSDD implies? Are you afraid of admitting it was actually that bad?

Or, alternatively...

Are you afraid of being wrong? Are you afraid of losing something if you are wrong? Are you afraid of losing friends? Are these feelings related to shame or guilt? Are you afraid of being harassed? Are you afraid of admitting it because of the shame often centered around being wrong about something on the internet? Are you afraid of being wrong because of how you’ve built a community and sense of self around this one aspect of yourself?

Trace your feelings to their origins. Figure out why you’re experiencing them, and resolve them. This is a legitimate therapeutic tactic; tracing your feelings so you know why you’re feeling a certain way and so you can communicate that to yourself and other people, and so you can understand yourself better.

This is a dialogue we need to open, or the community is just going to continue to be toxic. We need to be able to admit when we are wrong, when we are not a system, instead of repressing those feelings and pretending that they don’t exist and continuing to live a lie, because those feelings are only going to get worse as time goes on if you don’t trace them to their origins and resolve them.

This isn’t meant to be invalidating anyone, I refer to DIDOSDD in the first set of questions, but this can apply to endogenic systems with self-doubt as well. This blog is not anti-endogenic, and only aims to help the system community by providing a nuanced yet positive and welcoming space for people who want to safely criticize the wider online system community.

#post.#this is my most controversial take yet #pluralitycritique #syscourse #syscourse tw #fakeclaiming #fakeclaiming tw #i'm not fakeclaiming anyone its just in case #actuallydid #actuallymultiple #actuallyplural #didmeta #pluralmeta #sysmeta #didblr #multiblr #pluralblr

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deactivated-20220808 · 3 years

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A Criticism On System Role, Label and Origin Pride Flags

Hello, it’s Remy once more and I’m here to talk about why I, personally, seriously dislike system role, label and origin pride flags.

Introduction

The point of a pride flag is to spread awareness and be prideful of something you’re experiencing that might cause you harm or distress in your life because of it, which is why the gay pride flag was created. They’re supposed to be worn, painted on your body, posted on social medias and recognizable in real life, where people can ask about them and you can tell them about what it means. Where you can show to other people in a niche community that you’re a part of them, and that they can be safe with you.

Making a pride flag for everything, especially for things like disorders, alter roles and system types makes absolutely no sense because these aren’t going to get used outside of niche internet subcommunities, and I highly doubt they’re ever going to actually get recognized anywhere. You’re not painting the paragenic pride flag on yourself and wearing it to a pride event, you’re not putting the OSDD-2 pride flag on a pin on your backpack and waiting for people to recognize it, mostly because it’s not going to get recognized, and if it does, it’s going to be by people who mistakenly identify you as LGBT, because that’s what pride flags are most known for; being in the LGBT community.

Like my post on the subject of hyperspecific system labels and my criticisms of system origin terms, I have an issue with people creating pride flags for things like disorders, and worse, hyperspecific system labels, roles and origins because of a combination of things.

First, it feels like people are trying too hard to establish an identity and are trying too hard to make being a system their actual identity, which ties in with my next point:

It feels like people are trying too hard to conflate/compare being a system with being LGBT when the two are just not the same. This is a huge pattern in the online system community and it’s deeply uncomfortable for me, as a trans system, because the two experiences are fundamentally different in so many ways that I don’t know how people got to comparing the two in the first place. One is having a gender identity that is different from what you were assigned at birth, and the other is having multiple people/parts/entities/alters/etc living in your head and sharing your life with you. The two are not comparable.

Third is because these flags aren’t getting used anywhere. No one is photoshopping them into icons of characters, no one is wearing them to pride, no one is getting them made into pins and wearing them on their bag, no one is going to recognize them. People can barely recognize these flags inside of the online system community because there tends to be, like, 8 different flags for the same label.

It doesn’t make sense to have these flags in the first place, but these reasons just make it that much more irritating for me, personally. To constantly see systems and the LGBT community get compared, conflated, to see people act like they’re the same thing, for people to constantly create a pride flag for pluralpedia every single time they create a new term that may or may not be useless entirely.

The facts are, being LGBT and being a system are not comparable. They are far from it. Being LGBT is about your orientation and gender identity, and being LGBT in itself is an identity. But being a system, while it affects your identity, is not itself an identity. You don’t identify as a system, you are a system. Being a system is not a gender, and to compare being a system to being trans to gay or lesbian or queer in some way devalues the experience of both LGBT people and systems as a whole.

That reminds me of another thing, where people assume that if you’re pro-MOGAI, it means you /have/ to be pro-endo at the same time, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me because being a system is not an identity and it is not a gender. The two are not the same thing, I don’t know how many more times I have to say it before people realize that being a system is not the same as being LGBT just because there is or can be some overlap for some people. Being a male alter in a body that was AFAB does not make that alter trans if they don’t plan on transitioning or consider themselves trans in some way, (socially or medically, by which I mean changing name or pronouns, going on hormones, identifying as trans in some way even if they are closeted). There is some overlap between the two experiences but they are not the same if said alter is in a body that was AFAB and has a host that has no plans to transition or consider themselves trans/non-binary/otherwise IDs as a gender outside of the body in some way.

I hope that I am explaining my point clearly enough, I’m not saying you have to go on hormones to “really” be trans, I’m saying that if you don’t consider yourself/yourselves trans/enby/etc then you are not trans, and having an alter that appears male in a body that was AFAB doesn’t make you or that alter trans, it just means that there is a somewhat overlapping experience that is, ultimately, completely different from the actual experience of being transgender.

My point is that these origin/role/etc flags are genuinely useless and don’t make sense to use or make. All you’re doing is creating a flag for a term that likely already has 8 other flags for it, and you’re just going to confuse people on whether or not you’re actually LGBT. Making pride flags for systems and mental illnesses don’t make sense, and it feels weird that everyone is trying to take the idea of pride flags without actually understanding what they’re there for.

But you know me, I don’t just generally complain without offering a solution to the problem, I have a very interesting idea for what systems can do instead of using pride flags. Instead, we can use things like awareness ribbons.

We already have a DID awareness ribbon, you may have seen it before, it looks like this:

Personally, I think it looks jank as hell these days. I’m sure it looked better, but with the contrasting colors, the awkward stitches and the low resolution, it just doesn’t make very much sense to have as a symbol of awareness or pride anymore. So I’ve taken it upon myself to create a new awareness symbol for DID/OSDD-1b specifically, (since this ribbon is the DID/OSDD-1b awareness symbol), and to try to help revamp some of the other plural and system pride symbols that have come out over the years.

This is my proposal for the new DID/OSDD-1B pride/awareness ribbon. The first one has colors and the second one is the transparent lineart in the case that you wanted to make your own colors with your own meanings specific to your system or background. The meanings of the colors can be found here. I made this ribbon to be a new version of the DID/OSDD-1b pride ribbon because it’s a lot easier to re-create if you wanted to draw it, and it looks a lot more coordinated and less awkward, with these stitches looking a lot cleaner to represent the pieces of us that shattered to cope with the trauma, and how we work towards connecting and communicating with each other to form the whole ribbon instead of being traumatized and unconnected/stitched together.

The other pride symbols for systems/plurality that also need to be brought back that aren’t specifically for DID/OSDD1 are these:

And I talk more about these pride symbols in the other post I linked talking about the meanings of the colors on the new DID/OSDD1 pride ribbon. In short, these are the plural pride rings and the ampersand, both of which are stunning symbols of pride in plurality, with the colored plural pride rings being my favorite.

We should use these symbols instead of pride flags because they are far more distinct and recognizable and a lot less confusing.

What do you think? Do you like pride flags more? Why? You can send all of these into my inbox, I would love to open up a dialogue about this subject within the system community.

Sincerely, Remy

#txt #pluralitycritique #actuallyplural #actuallytraumagenic #actuallydid #endogenic #actuallymultiple #pluralgang #syscourse #pluralmeta #didmeta #sysmeta #pluralblr #sysblr #didblr #multiblr

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deactivated-20220808 · 3 years

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I have a neat idea. On tumblr, we don’t really have a designated tag or community for discussing the meta of system stuff, like discussing terms, the community, etc, and I think it would be really interesting if we could create something like that. I’ve already come up with a couple of tags that could be used to discuss the wider system community:

-Multiblr: For DID/OSDD systems to discuss the DID/OSDD system community. -DIDblr: Alternate tag for DID/OSDD systems, since some people don’t like the term ‘multiple’. -Pluralblr: For endos and people who ID as plural to discuss the plural community. -Sysblr: For people to discuss the wider system community as a whole, especially online and on tumblr. -DIDmeta: A tag for discussing the DID/OSDD system community online. -Pluralmeta: A tag for discussing the plural/pluralgang community online. -Sysmeta: A tag for discussing the wider system community online.

We have tags like pluralgang, actuallyDID and syscourse, but I don’t feel like those tags/communities are really open to the discussion of the online system community itself, not to mention that none of these tags are really all that open to nuance and discussion of each community, different labels, how each community can be toxic in their own way. The already existing tags don’t really allow for a critique of the online system community as a whole where there definitely needs to be. I think tags full of nuance, discussion and critique on the online system community would be good for understanding each side of the argument, what’s harmful and how we can try to change it.

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deactivated-20220808 · 3 years

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The Community Doesn’t Treat Introjects Like People, And As An Introject, I’m Tired Of It.

Hello all.

Technically not Remy here, but on some level, still Remy, and oh boy do I have a scalding hot take.

Almost /nobody/ in the community online treats fictives with any sort of humanity, dignity or respect.

One of THE biggest issues in the online system and plural communities is the fetishization of introjects, i.e. fictives/factives/etc, but particularly fictives and factives. This is something that happens on ALL sides of the community, it happens with pro-endos, anti-endos, DIDOSDD1 systems, parogenics, endogenics, all of us alike. Origin is irrelevant when fictives and introjects are involved.

In the community, there is a huge expectation for how fictives and factives are supposed to operate:

Introjects are always fictives or factives of comfort media/characters/creators/etc, and never of people you know IRL and especially never the collective’s abusers

You must have a deep connection to your source

You must have “source memories”/pseudomemories (the medical term)

You must always have “source trauma”/“exotrauma” related to your source

You must generally follow headcannons involved in the fandom or headcannons that your collective holds

You must actively seek out source content that suits you/your canon

You must miss your sourcemates and make “canon calls”/“source calls”

Being separated from your source always causes severe distress and discomfort

You must always split with no knowledge of the system or where you are now

Every time you watch a new media, you must split new introjects from it

You must always be fully 3D alters and never fragments

You must never grow past your source or become your own person, and must always be treated like your source

There are more, but these are the big expectations and stereotypes that I can think of off the top of my head.

Now, disclaimer here, I am not the Remy that generally posts on this blog, I am the co-host of the system. You should still call me/us Remy, I’m just specifying, because the Remy that generally posts here is not an introject, whereas I am and thus I feel more qualified to talk about my experiences being an introject that doesn’t fit any community expectations, standards and stereotypes, and how that alienates me from other introjects/fictives/factives/etc. I’m also going to be speaking mainly from the perspective of an alter in a DID system, and mainly talking about DID systems and introjects/fictives/factives/etc in DID systems, since I don’t feel comfortable speaking on the experiences of plurals that are non-traumagenic and non-dissociative.

I am an introject of multiple sources, 2 specific ones in fact: A fictional character, and our abusive stepfather.

I don’t have pseudomemories/“source memories” from either ‘source’. I don’t have memories of ‘being’ the fictional character I’m introjected from, and I don’t have memories of abusing my family. I just hold the appearance and some traits of said fictional character, in combination with traits and behaviors related to our stepfather. I didn’t start off as an introject of the fictional character, either. I started off as a fragment from childhood that held memories, emotions and traits related to our stepfather, and only recently, as of this year, did I actually become aware of myself during a traumatic event that I now hold the memories of. Because of that traumatic event, I started becoming more “3D” as it were, and part of that was latching onto the identity and appearance of a fictional character that displays prevalent anger issues and has frequent angry outbursts, something that is related to the traumatic event that caused me to become aware, as well as something that is related to our stepfather’s behavior. This character was also abused very similarly to how we were abused, making the connection and reasons for latching onto this identity stronger and more obvious, but in spite of this, I don’t have memories of being abused by ‘my’ parents in my source.

I only know that I’m an introject of that fictional character because of my appearance, and I know that I’m an introject of our stepfather because I share many, many traits with him, but I don’t have “source memories”/“pseudomemories” or any real deep attachment to my “sources”. In that same vein, I also don’t have “source trauma”. I don’t follow headcannons that people/Remy (host) has for the character I’m based off of. I don’t seek out source content very much because I don’t have a connection to my sources. I engage with it casually as in drawing fanart for the characters, but that is mostly to spread our artwork and to get commissions as my fictional source is a popular show. I don’t miss ‘sourcemates’, I don’t have any. I came into awareness knowing about the system, knowing who I was, knowing where I was, and knowing our general life situation, I didn’t come from nothing, (no alters come from nothing, they come from your subconscious, so they’re more likely to know what’s going on than they are to not).

I don’t share many traits with many of the other introjects in the communities because of this. I hate being treated like or compared to my source(s), so I don’t generally tell people I’m an introject at all. I changed my name, my appearance (relatively) and did as much detachment from my source as possible because trying to stay connected to it was exhausting. I constantly struggle with lines of thought like “[source character] wouldn’t act like this, you’re fake”. I actively tried to come up with ‘source memories’ so I could fit in with the other introjects, and it never worked or felt right because I wasn’t supposed to have any because I didn’t need any, even if the character I’m based on experienced a very similar abuse to what we experienced bodily.

Because of this, I feel extremely alienated from the system/plural communities online, because I don’t see many other introjects like me at all. I just see the community expectations of introjects, and I’m half inclined to believe that some introjects are exaggerating certain things about themselves to fit in, much like I tried to. What really doesn’t help is the fact that people treat introjects like a commodity, like something cool to have when we’re not. We’re just alters based heavily and obviously off of outside sources. That’s it. Introjects are always expected to tell people they’re introjects, we’re expected to flaunt our introject status as if it were an alter’s role within the system, which doesn’t make sense, because “introject” is not a role, its a type of alter, such as a ‘nonhuman alter’ or a ‘child alter’/‘little’. These aren’t roles, they’re alter types and there’s a huge difference. My role is not ‘introject’, it’s ‘co-host’ and ‘alter that keeps everyone’s shit together by keeping us on track’, and yet, here we are, parading around acting like ‘introject’, ‘fictive’, ‘factive’, ‘fuzztive’, etc, are all alter roles and not descriptors.

I don’t understand people’s apparent need to let everyone know that a certain alter is an introject, or how attached to ‘source’ they are, or the need to tell people you’re ‘introject heavy’, considering the fact that not only is this all personal information, it very obviously affects how people view and treat your system. People don’t treat introjects normally, they always come up to us, whether they’re singlets or systems or plural or whatever, and say shit like “you’re problematic for being an introject of x character/person/etc”, or “i love your source!” or “your source is triggering to me, don’t front around me”, or “why did you do x thing in your source?”, as if we’re expected to know what to say to that, or like we’re supposed to go “oh yes i know, i’m sorry for existing”, or “thanks for liking my source I guess??”, or “yeah sorry you obviously have the right to control who does and doesn’t front within our system and have the right to take away an alter’s autonomy just for us to exist around you collectively” or forcing us to explain why our source characters have done certain things, whether we have source memories surrounding those events or not.

The facts are: No one outside your collective is entitled to know you’re an introject. No one outside your collective is entitled to say who is and isn’t allowed to front. No one outside your collective is entitled to speak about your source with you. No one outside your collective is entitled to ask you invasive questions about your source and things “you” did in source, whether you remember them or not.

Another thing, people always talk about an introject’s source character/person/etc as if that introject is literally that character, and people don’t see how incredibly harmful this is? You don’t see how incredibly damaging it can be to tell an introject that they are literally that character, and reinforce dissociation between your alters by implying that everything they did and went through is real, by referring to them as that fictional character they’re based on? Because while it may hurt some alters to hear this, no, what you went through is not real or something that actually happened, that’s why the clinical term for ‘source memories’ is ‘pseudomemories’. Your source memories are based off of a combination of a very dissociated consciousness’s way of trying to conceptualize trauma, trying to make sense of everything by ‘filling in the gaps’, and a fictional piece of media/events that you did not go through bodily. It is not a ‘reality check’ to say this for several reasons, mainly because that is a term relating to psychosis/delusions.

It sucks for some alters to hear this at first, but your source memories did not literally happen, and the sooner we let go of this expectation of having detailed ‘source memories’ and ‘source trauma’, and the idea that we constantly have to reaffirm that these memories are ‘real’, the sooner and easier it will be to let go of a lot of these memories and trauma, and to start connecting/integrating* with your system.

(Note: I am not using “integrate” (lowering of dissociative barriers between alters, increasing communication, etc), to mean “fuse” (the merging of two or more alters into one), the two are very different and have very different meanings. Integration is required for healing in DIDOSDD1, but fusion is not.)

I’m not saying source memories or your feelings surrounding these memories (if you have them) aren’t valid, ‘source memories’ are normal to have in both introjects and non-introjects. I’m saying that these events did not literally happen to the body or to you. Most often, source memories are a way of processing and conceptualizing trauma that the body experienced in a way where the brain can think about it, but not have to attribute the trauma to something that happened to them, (ie it’s the brain saying ‘this trauma happened to this fictional character, not to me!’). Introjects are alters heavily and obviously /based off of/ an outside source, they are not, nor were they ever, the characters they are built around. They are and have always been, (in DID), dissociated aspects of a heavily traumatized and hypercompartmentilized consciousness. The implication that introjects were, at some point, the fictional characters they were based on, but /now/ they’re alters in a system, is extremely unhealthy and reinforces substitute beliefs that keep a system from functioning and integrating healthily.

I almost feel bad for other introjects in other systems/collectives, because even their own systems/collectives will treat them this way, and it only does damage in the long run. Most, if not all, introjects are at some point going to have to come to the conclusion that they aren’t and were never literally their sources, that the things they remember happening, while valid experiences, did not literally happen, and that they are allowed to grow past their sources and become their own people, that they don’t constantly have to perform as the characters/people/things that they are based off of. You don’t eventually /have/ to be 100% detached from your source like I am to be valid or whatever, I’m saying that if your existence as an introject is distressing to you, you are allowed to forfeit that identity and build yourself a new one. If it’s hurting you, you don’t have to go by your source name or dress like your source or act like your source or use images from/related to your source for your profile pictures or even tell people that you’re an introject/what your source is. You literally do not have to. I know the community encourages people to tell everyone everything about their system, specifically as a validity thing as well as pressure to be like other systems since everyone else is doing it, but you don’t have to do that at all. It is no one’s business if you don’t want it to be.

To everyone that has introjects or interacts with them:

Stop pushing these expectations onto introjects. Stop expecting introjects to have source memories. Stop expecting introjects to fit your headcannons every single time you split a new one. Stop suggesting that they were at some point literally that character/person/etc that they are based on. Stop parading around the fact that your introjects are introjects without their permission. Stop telling other people private things about your alters without their permission, actually, this just happens to be an issue that is especially prevalent with introjects. Stop forcing the idea that introjects are always heavily connected to their sources. Stop forcing your introjects into the box of “introject” and let us become our own people outside of what we’re based on if we want to be.

You may not realize this, but in DIDOSDD1, everything that happens in your system is based on your subconscious thoughts/views whether you are aware of these thoughts/views or not. Everything about your subconscious affects your entire system because you are all in the same brain and are all part of the same subconscious, whether you want to believe it or not. The way you view your introjects subconsciously is going to affect how your introjects split and how they behave, because everything down to what introjects you split, how they behave and how they interact with the rest of the system are determined by your subconscious thoughts/views of that source character/person they’re based on, the trauma/stress you experienced when they split, and your subconscious views of introjects, alters and your system as a whole. The less you view your introjects as people/individuals with their own thoughts/feelings/autonomy, the more that is going to affect how they behave, how they view themselves, (and it’s usually going to to be dehumanizing themselves because of this treatment), as well as how they integrate with the rest of the system, (ie usually by preventing or slowing down healing and integration).

This community needs to learn how to treat introjects with basic humanity and respect. We are just as deserving of respect and dignity as any other system member. I’m not the character/person I was based off of. I’m just me. The same goes for every other introject out there. I’m sorry if this is hard to hear or too ‘hot’ of a take, but I am so tired of (my alter type) being dehumanized by a community that is supposed to uplift, respect and care for us.

This needs to change.

Sincerely,

Remy

(PS: If any introjects want to add onto this post with their own negative experiences within the community, feel free. Or alternatively, you can come into our inbox about it, on or off anon, and talk about your experiences, and we can link it to a more concise post talking about the negative experiences of introjects within the community.)

#txt #syscourse #long post #actuallyplural #actuallytraumagenic #actuallydid #actuallymultiple #endogenic #pluralgang #anti endo #pro endo #introject #fictive #factive #pluralmeta #sysmeta #didmeta #pluralitycritique

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deactivated-20220808 · 3 years

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On The Subject Of Typing Quirks

Hello, Remy here again and I’m here to touch on the subject of typing quirks, and my criticism of the community involving them, and answering some questions about them.

What is a typing quirk?

A typing quirk is the style in which someone types. Technically, everyone has a typing quirk, like typing in all lowercase, but the most notable ones are the ones where you replace certain letters with numbers or other symbols, ‘l1k3 7h15′, (translation: ‘like this’), 0r m@yb3 7h!5, (translation: ‘or maybe this’). A good example of where most of this started is something called leetspeak. This link will take you to an image that shows the cypher to typical leetspeak.

Why do people use typing quirks?

Typing quirks can be a unique way of expressing oneself online, or for an introject, it could be something they did in their source and hard to separate from. Originally, things like this originated in early internet relay chat, (IRC), forums to avoid text filters, and went from there.

Are typing quirks ableist?

It mostly depends on the context, in my opinion. Someone could have a typing quirk that’s just speaking in lower caset. Another one could be that someone puts ellipses at the ends of their messages to attempt to denote a softer tone. These aren’t ableist.

However, in the case of extremely difficult to read typing quirks, like +yp!n9 qu!rk5 1!ke +h!5 can be, (translation: ‘typing quirks like this’), they can be and absolutely are ableist. Here’s why.

Some people have visual processing issues that cause them to be unable to read or easily comprehend typing quirks like that. Some people also use a screen reader to rely on understanding messages since they are visually impaired in some way, and a screen reader cannot feasibly read out a typing quirk in the way you want it to. In some cases, I’ve seen typing quirks so difficult to understand that even I couldn’t read them, and I can read leetspeak like a second language.

Typing quirks aren’t inherently ableist, but typing quirks like this absolutely can be, and if you want to be able to communicate effectively, you should probably learn to step away from the especially heavy ones.

What about stutter typing?

Stutter typing is ableist.

As someone who actually has a stutter, stutter typing is ableist. It’s ableist because it doesn’t communicate what stuttering actually is, not to mention that you can’t actually stutter while typing. Stuttering and stammering are only something that actually happens while you’re speaking, and to type out stuttering and stammering makes absolutely no sense. It’s hard to screen readers to read as well, only further making it ableist.

Just because you have an introject who uses stutter typing doesn’t mean it’s somehow not ableist. If you have an alter who is a caricature of a gay man or a certain race or mimics a certain physical disability, that is offensive, and the same applies to stutter typing regardless of whether or not the alter can control it. It is simply something that the alter must learn not to do, and that is something the alter /can/ unlearn.

But I am/have an introject, and it’s hard to step away from a typing quirk.

It is, but like an introject with a name from a nonwhite culture that the body wasn’t born into/doesn’t belong to, you need to learn to step away from it for the safety and comfort of others if you want to be able to communicate effectively.

Introjects aren’t their source, and should be allowed and encouraged to step away from it to some degree. Being so deeply attached to your source that you can’t separate the way you communicate over text from it to be able to talk to other people is going to isolate you. Not to mention that it’s not healthy to be that severely attached to your source, but that’s a subject for another post.

How can I detach from source or stop typing with a quirk?

It takes practice. It’s not the easiest thing to do, but it definitely just takes practice and getting comfortable with it. You can also have a much lesser typing quirk that is easier to read and doesn’t confuse screen readers. Another thing you can do is only use a typing quirk around people who are explicitly comfortable with it, (i.e. in DMs or group chats, but not in public discord servers or tumblr/twitter posts).

What about translations?

Translations don’t make sense to me, personally. If you are able to provide a translation for what you’re saying, it makes more sense to just use the translated version in the first place instead of with the typing quirk. I’ve even seen some people use ‘spoiler blocks’ on discord messages where the typing quirk was ‘spoilered’, but the translation was provided below. Honestly, it’s counterintuitive. It makes typing take much longer and doesn’t make sense to use.

If an alter is incapable of typing without a typing quirk at that time, but another alter is with them and can provide a translation, just have the alter that can type accessibly speak for that alter, (i.e. ‘(name) says this’), instead of providing a translation until that alter can communicate effectively.

In conclusion, typing quirks are not inherently ableist, but can absolutely stop an alter from communicating effectively or accessibly, and that should be changed. That being said, typing quirks aren’t bad necessarily, but they are absolutely inaccessible at times, by confusing people who use screen readers and people with visual processing and comprehension issues.

Alters who use heavy typing quirks should, at the very least, know how to type in a way that is more accessible to the people who have trouble reading heavy typing quirks similar to leetspeak.

#txt #typing quirks #syscourse #pluralmeta #didmeta #sysmeta #actuallytraumagenic #actuallyplural #actuallydid #actuallyendogenic #pluralitycritique #on typing quirks #on community ableism #long post

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deactivated-20220808 · 3 years

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Why I Don’t Use The Word ‘Traumagenic’

Hi, Remy again with hot takes and criticism of the online system community as a whole.

If you’ve noticed on my blog, I don’t generally use the word ‘traumagenic’ to describe DID/OSDD systems. This is because I feel like the word is a little redundant, saying something like a ‘traumagenic DID/OSDD system’ is doesn’t make sense because DID/OSDD is already traumagenic, inherently. I consider traumagenic to be synonymous with DID/OSDD, and find it hard to believe that a traumagenic system could form without it being DID/OSDD, (i.e. created from childhood trauma). I might be biased, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me going with the science based on the theory of structural dissociation, but that’s a topic for another post.

I also feel like the label itself puts so much emphasis on the trauma without really bringing attention to the other experiences of being a system. I know it’s about the origins of your system, but part of why I feel so many DID/OSDD systems may accidentally ID as endogenic is because they don’t think they have trauma, either because they don’t remember it because another part is holding it, or they’re misunderstanding what trauma is and don’t think what they went through was ‘bad enough’ to cause DID/OSDD. Even the word ‘endogenic’ puts emphasis on having a lack of trauma. All these labels are surrounded by whether or not you have trauma, and it’s frustrating to me because I’m really tired of having my existence defined by the trauma I went through.

That’s why I refer to traumagenic systems as DID/OSDD, and nontraumagenic plurality is referred to as just ‘plurality’, since the word itself is inclusive of endos and if needed, I can specify if I’m talking about DID/OSDD systems.

Another term I use to describe DID/OSDD systems is ‘dissociative’, and non-DID/OSDD systems I refer to as ‘non-dissociative’. This highlights the fact that DID/OSDD is, above all else, dissociative. Yes, the dissociation is caused by trauma, but I also feel like the term ‘dissociative’ highlights one of the biggest differences between endogenic and DID/OSDD systems; that one of us is extremely dissociative surrounding our systems, and the other isn’t, because it physically can’t be according to the TOSD.

This is a difference between endos and DID/OSDD systems that often gets extremely overlooked, and it’s part of why the two communities have become so enmeshed, because people don’t understand that DID/OSDD is dissociative first and pretty much everything else second. They’re dissociative disorders--I mean, the word ‘dissociative’ is the first part of the name of DID. This is a huge reason why so many DID/OSDD systems accidentally ID as endogenic, because they think they don’t have trauma or that it wasn’t ‘bad enough’ to cause DID/OSDD, when in actuality, trauma isn’t even on the diagnostic criteria for DID because people so often don’t remember their trauma or severely downplay it.

I think using ‘dissociative’ to refer to DID/OSDD systems and ‘non-dissociative’ to refer to endogenic systems would do a great deal of good in helping people understand the differences between DID/OSDD and endogenic systems, and help people from accidentally misidentifying themselves and possibly doing damage to themselves and/or accidentally spreading misinformation, like ‘endogenic systems can be dissociative’.

I hope these terms can help people to understand some of the differences between DID/OSDD and endogenic systems. ^^

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deactivated-20220808 · 3 years

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Dear System Community,

Another day, another post from Remy talking about ridiculous and inappropriate system terms and origins and how they don’t need to exist, much less need pride flags.

White people: Stop making terms for alters who appear as a race other than the body. It’s weird and inappropriate, and downright racist at times. If you are white-bodied, you are all white, even if you have an alter that appears as a race outside of the body. You are not and will never be a POC, and it’s deeply fetishizing of POC to try to say that you actually are this race or use it as an excuse to use slurs, which I have seen with my own two eyes in several different communities so don’t even try to say you haven’t seen people doing it, and it’s definitely weird and fetishizing to “miss” your race or the culture that you “came from”—because you were never actually that race, and you never actually “came from” that culture, in DID.

In DIDOSDD, you are a dissociated self-state that was never actually in the universe you have memories from. You are based on the rest of the system’s misconceptions and preconceived notions of the race that you appear as, and have just as much of an ability to appear as a racist caricature, which goes to show that, again, alters are based off of the subconscious in DIDOSDD.

In endos, it can be slightly different when talking about things like soul bonds and alters that have spiritual origins or walk-ins, but that doesn’t change the fact that the body you are residing in now is not the race that you appear as, and you should not claim to have those experiences of that race, try to say you actually are that race in a white body, or “wish” you were that race. Even if you believe that you come from another world, it is deeply fetishizing and racist to say that in a white body.

Altersex people: Stop telling people things about your inner world sex, that is deeply invasive, uncomfortable and inappropriate. Stop telling people you don’t know what your inner world sex is, that it doesn’t match the body’s sex or that it’s entirely different. This is so unbelievably inappropriate to tell to minors, or to tell to people while you are in a minor body. Nobody needs to know this information, it’s very private and deeply uncomfortable to hear! This is very NSFW information that you’re just handing out, and that’s not even getting into the fact that it can get extremely weird about intersex people, especially that one label with a flag that is extremely similar to the intersex flag, (samostasex?). This is just so inappropriate on so many levels, it’s insane that terms like this are even allowed on a website like LGBTA Wiki.

Do not use these terms, it’s invasive, inappropriate, uncomfortable, NSFW and extremely TMI to tell people about the way your sex in the inner world is the same, different, or nonhuman/alien compared to the body you are living in.

Before people come at me about terms like AFAB/AMAB—those terms aren’t exactly explicitly about sex and apply to a very wide range of experiences. Those terms are just terms used to describe what gender you were assigned at birth, and can be and often are used by cis people, intersex people and trans people. Alters are not truly trans unless the system collectively identifies as trans, (and even then it gets complicated), and alters are not truly intersex unless the body is intersex.

What happens in the headspace, (specifically in DID here), merely reflects your body and reflects the life you actually live a lot of the time. Even if you have a headspace that is supposedly connected to another world or universe, or have alters that come from other universes, you have to take in mind the context of the universe you’re living now, and respect this world just as much as your own. System responsibility, protection and privacy doesn’t go away just because you might have alters from alternate universes, and oversharing exists in this universe. “Altersex” as a term is oversharing a complicated relationship with your inner world body vs. the body you collectively live in and it’s uncomfortable and TMI for you to tell people about it willy-nilly, especially while you are in the body of a minor. I am only 18 years old and if a minor tried to tell me about how they identified “altersexually”(?), I would get extremely uncomfortable with it. That’s not the kind of information you just share with people. Maybe with friends, maybe in a private journal, but remember:

“Altersex” describes the relationship with the body and genitals you have in the inner world of your system. It’s not a MOGAI identity, that’s oversharing.

“Parethnicity” describes a relationship with the race you appear as in the inner world of your system vs the race you are in your own body, which is not something that people need to know either. The race your alters appear as is not important information for other people unless your body is that race, or that alter behaves in a very racially stereotyped manner. Because SOC very oftentimes have white alters due to racial violence against them, and you are just as likely to get an alter of a different race as a white person because of racial stereotyping and subconscious racist views of POC, and in DIDOSDD or even created systems, it’s very common to have headmates of a certain race behave very racially stereotyped because of your subconscious racist views, which shows that you need to work on your own racist views before you try to claim that you have an “alter of color” in a white body. Not to mention that ethnicity =/= race in the first place, so that word already has so much wrong with it in the first place.

TLDR:

Sorry if this is controversial or anything, but “altersex” is a wildly inappropriate and TMI term, and “parethnicity” is just another way to claim the experiences of POC without actually knowing the differences between race and ethnicity. Both are extremely invasive, fetishizing and inappropriate terms for people, especially perisex white people, to be using.

Sincerely,

Someone who is fully prepared to get hate comments for this post.

(AKA Remy)

#txt #syscourse #actuallyplural #actuallytraumagenic #actuallydid #endogenic #actuallymultiple #pluralgang #didmeta #pluralmeta #sysmeta #pluralitycritique

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deactivated-20220808 · 3 years

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The Harm of ‘Validity Culture’ - A Scathing Criticism of Online Validation and Its Opposition

Alternate Title: Why I’m Not On Either Side of the Argument

Hello, Remy again and today I wanted to talk about ‘validity culture’--i.e., “if you experience it, it’s valid” and similar statements, as well as those who oppose validity culture and attack vulnerable parts of the community because their systems present differently. Buckle up, this one gets a little long.

Content warnings: Discussion of fakeclaiming and harassment, being wrong about being a system and similar topics.

Introduction

On a surface level, this doesn’t actually seem bad, and, on a surface level, it’s not. Validity is something we all crave as people, especially when we’re talking about something like systems, which can come with amnesia, hardcore denial, fakeclaiming, self doubt, and more that can cause us to think “no, I couldn’t possibly be a system!”

But there’s issues with places that don’t allow you to be wrong.

Some people come into certain spaces and say, “well, I don’t know if I’m a system or not, but here are my experiences, can someone help me figure out if I’m a system?” And a lot of what they’re describing might not sound like being a system, but instead something else, like identity issues, dissociative amnesia, a personality disorder, etc. But nonetheless, the people of validity culture will step in every time and say, “that’s valid!” And “there’s actually a term for that!” Without using any critical thinking skills about whether or not what this person is actually experiencing is related to being a system at all, all because it would require them to think harder about their own experiences and question whether or not they’re a system.

There’s a reason this culture exists, though, one that nobody really wants to address.

But Where Did ‘Validity Culture’ Come From?

‘Validity culture’ exists because of fakeclaiming and harassment, full stop. People wouldn’t need spaces like this if fakeclaimers didn’t act like being wrong about being a system was the worst thing in the world, if fakeclaimers didn’t create such a horrible reputation for those that were wrong about being systems, if fakeclaimers just left people they didn’t know alone.

Because people were being fakeclaimed and harassed to the point of distress, some people wanted to create spaces where they wouldn’t be harassed, spaces where they could be validated in their experiences without people acting like they were wrong for existing a certain way that didn’t look like certain other people’s experiences, and over time it evolved into what it is now. Pluralgang.

‘Validity culture’ was created in direct response to extreme harassment, fakeclaiming, subreddits like r/fakedisordercringe and r/systemcringe, anon hate and death threats from strangers on the internet. Validity culture exists because of the harassment people received from fakeclaimers, and that is something nobody wants to address.

Years ago, people used to harass anyone who claimed to have introjects, god forbid you be introject-heavy. Now, it’s full of people who may or may not be systems but are claiming to be because they either are systems, or they’re afraid of what being wrong would do to them, considering the reputation people who are wrong get due to how fakeclaimers behave. They’ve always behaved like this, too. If you were wrong back then, you were an irredeemable asshole, and if you’re wrong now, you’re still an irredeemable asshole.

But now with the introduction of ‘validity culture’, if you’re wrong about being a system, then you’re an irredeemable asshole to some people, and to others you’re someone who can be made into a system to prove them wrong, or you’re secretly a system and haven’t figured out your real headmates yet, or you’re actually a median system leaning towards being a singlet on the plurality spectrum and etc...

People on one side can’t accept that someone might’ve been accidentally wrong about being a system and that doesn’t mean they’re inherently a bad person or were faking, as faking is a conscious choice. It just means they were wrong.

People on the other side can’t accept that some people are just wrong about being a system, and choosing not to be after figuring out they aren’t doesn’t make them an inherently bad person or mean they’re rejecting anything. It just means they aren’t a system.

What Needs To Be Added To The Discussion?

The discussion of syscourse has such extreme black and white views on people because of fakeclaimers and because of the resulting validity culture that expanded from them, and people wanting to be seen without being attacked for existing in a way that some people didn’t like, and on some level, i can empathize with not just one, but both sides. I am part of an introject-heavy system, and that’s something that would get me fakeclaimed pretty easily in a lot of places, and I have been. I’ve been fakeclaimed, or implied to be faking by people I considered friends for a myriad of reasons, one of the weirdest being that we somehow ‘acted similarly’.

On another level, I want people to take what I’m experiencing seriously, and when people treat it like some fun identity that doesn’t really mean anything and can be picked up or dropped at any time, when people deny that DID is a trauma disorder despite the studies, or when people outright deny science, when people use my disorder as an excuse to be an asshole or liken being a system to being LGBT, it’s incredibly frustrating all of the time. I get it, believe me.

But ‘validity culture’ is just as toxic as fakeclaimers in a lot of scenarios. People involved in ‘validity culture’ are not in any way, shape or form innocent, or free of blame or criticism for their own actions and toxicity.

Remember how people discussed things like ‘toxic positivity’ when the trend of being critical of ‘Steven Universe’ was a huge discourse? ‘Validity culture’ is the living embodiment of ‘toxic positivity’.

Somewhere, I saw someone asking if they could use terms like ‘plural’ to describe themselves even though they weren’t sure if they were a system, and were aware that they had identity issues due to their CPTSD. Someone chimed in and said, ‘hey, I think you should be careful with questioning if you’re a system considering your identity issues, here’s what I suggest’, and people tried to shut that down. Even the person themselves said it didn’t feel ‘right’ to be a singlet, or something along those lines. There was then a long discussion about median systems that lead to this person identifying with the term ‘parasian’, which refers to a median system that leans more towards the singlet side of the plurality spectrum.

I can’t tell if this person is part of a system or not because I’m not an expert of any kind, all I know is that they have CPTSD and ADHD, according to them.

But I can say that immediately rejecting the idea that someone could just be a singlet, even causing themselves to reject the idea of the possibility of being a singlet, (they even rejected the idea of creating headmates, which was suggested if being a singlet was so uncomfortable to them), and instead identifying with a term that just sounds like having a fluid personality, (at least to me, since I don’t really understand the term myself), feels infinitely more harmful than someone being able to open a dialogue of potentially not being a system.

And this is the problem with ‘validity culture’.

Toxic Validation: Where Things Go Wrong

Validating everything someone is experiencing instead of being able to open a dialogue and say, “hey, what you’re experiencing doesn’t sound like my experiences, and I think you should talk to other people about it and do more personal research, possibly talk to a therapist, people who have been diagnosed with DID or other people who have been in the community for years before saying you are a system or before genuinely questioning if you are”, is incredibly toxic. It does so much more harm than good, because some people will be out here, singlets in denial, applying names and ages and genders to parts of themselves that are not fully autonomous, to parts of themselves that aren’t separate in any way, shape or form, mistaking kin-shifts for alters, mistaking dissociative amnesia for alters, mistaking PTSD EPs and BPD and OSDD2 and other disorders known to cause identity issues with alters and refusing to recognize that they could be wrong because validity culture told them it was right, and validity culture does what it does best and constantly validates these people, and says, “if you experience it, it’s valid” and “if you experience it, it’s normal” and “everything you’re experiencing is valid” and “label yourself with what feels most comfortable, even if it’s not accurate to what you’re experiencing”. They’re doing it because validity culture said what they were experiencing was ‘valid’ for a system, and these people never bothered to do their research.

What’s worse is that most of these people weren’t even around to know what ‘Astrea’s Web’ is/was. They’re often times /that young/, and don’t know where to go but their peers for information, and often times that information just comes from severely misinformed carrds and twitter threads instead of genuine, scientific research and decades of personal experience.

And this is, again, in _direct_ response to fakeclaiming. We would not have these issues if fakeclaiming and harassment weren’t so rampant in the online system community. Because fakeclaiming and harassment have become so rampant in the online system community, it’s caused people to see any kind of criticism of their validity culture-style community as coming from a gatekeeper that doesn’t think they’re real, that it’s just someone who’s trolling or gatekeeping and they aren’t someone to take seriously because they’re spouting ‘pluralphobic’ or ‘sysmed rhetoric’--the definition of which changes depending on who you ask due to the term being so watered down, but, like usual, that’s another post for another day.

Both of these toxic sides of the community feed into each other, and they do it heavily, and nobody seems to ever see the cycle.

Fakeclaimers feed off of seeing validity culture validate some of the most impossible and insane things, like the ‘singlet fictive’ discourse that went around twitter a couple months ago, to say ‘hey, look at these whacky inclusionists, you shouldn’t listen to anything they say because they all support this’, (they don’t all support these things, actually, and it’s pretty obvious that this was either a troll or someone severely misinformed), while ‘validity culture’ feeds off of the harassment of fakeclaimers to say ‘hey, these people are just gatekeepers, and you shouldn’t listen to them because they’re like transmeds and TERFs’ (they’re not even comparing them to anything accurately comparable at this point, either, but another post for another day; ‘sysmeds’ are not anything like transmeds or TERFs).

It’s a toxic cycle of harassment, confusion, misinformation spread through carrds and twitter threads, and miscommunication on what the DSM and ISSTD guidelines actually say due to laypeople trying to be the mouthpieces of these medical texts without understanding how to read them.

Everyone is yelling at each other and it doesn’t make sense, because both sides are horrifically toxic and need improvement, and neither of them want to see it or take any kind of criticism, because they see the other as somehow inherently infringing on their right to live, somehow. Both sides have a tendency to see criticism of their arguments as ‘the other side’s rhetoric’ instead of coming from a place of wanting to better the community. It gives me the same vibes as that one book that was banned in the US for being ‘communist propaganda’, and banned in the USSR for being ‘anti communist propaganda’. Neither side wants to see the faults in their own communities, much less try to fix them, and it’s made the community horrifically toxic, and forces people to pick sides they don’t necessarily agree with because of how toxic either side can be.

People need to be mature enough and have nuanced enough views to recognize that both sides of the argument are extremely toxic.

What Can We Do?

We need to be able to open a dialogue about being wrong about being a system, and we need it for certain people’s health, because for some people who incorrectly believe(d) they’re a system, it’s extremely detrimental to their mental health to separate parts of their own subconscious off just to believe they’re a system, or because they’re mislabeling their symptoms, or to fit in or because that’s what they feel like they have to be for whatever reason, or even just because they want attention, because that happens sometimes, even if people don’t want to believe it--but it’s not nearly as common as some fakeclaimers like to believe.

We need to open a dialogue for people who were/are wrong about being a system, we need to be able to pin down certain experiences as irrefutably plural, or groups of experiences when, grouped together, are irrefutably plural experiences, and other experiences or groups of experiences, as irrefutably not, and to stop treating being plural like an identity and start taking it much more seriously due to the fact that it’s disrespectful to actual plural experiences to /not/ take it seriously.

No, it’s not always serious and doom and gloom being a system. I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is that we should take ourselves more seriously so that we can pin down what experiences are actually plural, and which ones are actually just things like identity issues and dissociative amnesia caused by other disorders, and what’s just code switching and people having normal, fluid personalities, because labeling all of these things as alters or headmates arbitrarily causes someone to lose a sense of self and causes them to start to fragment their own personality piece by piece. Someone falsely believing that they’re a system is part of what can lead to a disorder like OSDD2, which is a dissociative disorder that refers to identity disturbances, but no autonomous parts/alters.

We need to stop treating being a system like being LGBT, because it’s disrespectful to both LGBT and plural experiences to act like both are the same thing, or even remotely similar, speaking as a queer DID system. Being a system /affects/ your identity, but it is not, itself, an identity in the same way that LGBT labels are, and applying things like pride flags and symbols to every aspect of being a system is extremely uncomfortable because it feels like the two are being severely conflated when they don’t deserve to be.

But most of all, we have to realize that being wrong about being a system is /always/ an option, and that it doesn’t make someone a bad person. It just means they were wrong about being a system. It’s not that deep.

Food For Thought: A Lack of Progress in the Discussion

Really, it’s both sides of the argument are extremely toxic and lacking the nuance needed to actually get anything done. Making fun of either side or pulling up receipts from either side being shitty doesn’t actually prove anything. It just shows that either side can be vehement in their arguments and harassment and abuse of other people online. That doesn’t mean anything other than some people take it way too far, which is something that happens everywhere and isn’t special in any way.

We’re not making any progress with system discourse or system community discussions like this, and we won’t be until we add more nuance to the discussion until we’re able to be critical of our communities and the people in them, until we can deplatform abusive people, until we can be mature enough to admit our own faults. Because there’s a special kind of maturity in being able to admit your own faults and try to grow from them or build off of them and make them make you a stronger person and that, in turn, makes a stronger community. but the online system community has nothing but weaknesses relating to their faults. All you do is weaponize the other side’s faults while refusing to address the ones in your own communities and acting like you’re better for it, but you aren’t. It just makes you immature.

What people refuse to recognize: Both sides of the argument are incredibly toxic and both sides attack each other vehemently and without regards to the other person behind the screen and refuse to accept any kind of criticism for their community, and they do it like they can do no wrong and act like any criticism is bad and ‘the other side’s rhetoric’.

Conclusion

In conclusion: Learn to accept criticism. Learn to accept your faults. Learn to grow past them. Listen to the other side’s argument. /Really/ listen. Don’t just wait for your turn to talk. Respect the other side’s argument for what it is, because discourse is about intelligent discussion, not whiny bickering. Show the people you’re discoursing with more respect. Accept your faults and the faults of your communities. Bring nuance into your discussions and discourses, because almost nothing is black and white, ever.

Really, what I’m telling you to do, is grow up. Mature. Stop blindly believing in one side just because they told you the other side is bad. Form your own opinion on the subject through your own research on both sides. Try to have an intelligent discussion, for once, because we’ll never get anywhere if we’re constantly arguing and bickering with each other, it’s childish and nobody is going to take your arguments seriously if you’re acting like that, especially not outside of any kind of internet discourse.

Sorry if any of this sounds rude, but I’m a pretty blunt person and I’m not going to try and sugarcoat myself just to make myself palatable to a community that doesn’t take itself seriously and won’t stop bickering.

-Remy

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My Thoughts on Hyperspecific System Microlabels

Remy here to talk about my thoughts on hyperspecific system microlabels.

There's a lot of these going around, along with pride flags, and personally, I take some issue with it for a couple of reasons.

The first reason ties in with why I partially have issue with the pride flags as well; the comparison to the LGBT community.

In no way shape or form is being a system comparable to being LGBT. I don't understand the need to compare the experiences of one group to the experiences of another group, especially when there are actual, legal attempts to eradicate LGBT people, criminalize us, kill us. In some countries it's illegal to be gay or trans. You can get arrested or killed for it. Meanwhile being a system doesn't get any kind of even remotely similar treatment. It's not illegal to be a system. You won't get killed for being a system.

That's not to say that systems are "less oppressed", but in the case of DIDOSDD, that is a mental illness and disability. There is no need to compare it to being LGBT because of the fact that there's already the unique experience of being mentally ill/disabled that we can be discriminated against for. We get ableism. Not anything even remotely like homophobia. We don't need to compare our experiences to LGBT people to be "valid" or to have our oppression mean something. We are oppressed for being mentally ill, and that means something. Stop comparing being a system to being LGBT. They're not the same at all.

Side note, but endogenic systems are not oppressed for being a system, however. Not in the same way that people with DIDOSDD are. In fact, non-DIDOSDD plurality is often times accepted far more in the scope of media than DIDOSDD. A character becomes an evil plural when it's revealed that they have DID. But that's another post for another day.

The second reason it bothers me so much is that some of this information just doesn't need to be out there. Some information is extremely personal, like hyperspecific alter roles that reveal way too much about said alter, such as the fact that they're a sexual protector or sexual trauma holder, or otherwise an alter with a role oriented around sexual situations. That's not a label that you need to be putting anywhere or telling other people unless they're very close to you, that's a lot of extremely personal, sensitive information. Especially in a community populated by minors, you /definitely/ don't need to be revealing information like that about your alters if you are under 18. That's extremely personal, and even creating a pride flag or putting it on your profile opens up the door for someone to ask what that term means, what that flag means, and if you don't answer them, someone else likely will when they go through the internet searching for the definition of this term.

The point is, a lot of this stuff is extremely personal and stuff you shouldn't be putting on your social media profile where all kinds of strangers on the internet can see it. Mostly because it can either be deeply uncomfortable for them, or because it can get you and your system badly hurt in the process, where someone could absolutely use that information against you.

This is another example of younger people getting way too comfortable revealing so much about themselves online that they don't realize how much danger they can be putting themselves and their system into by revealing that kind of information.

The third reason it bothers me is it makes me wonder if you're even going to remember what these terms mean well enough that you'll be able to tell other people when they inevitably ask what a "Kaksbased" system is. I feel like people don't stop to ask themselves questions about why these terms apparently "need" to be created.

Who are these terms being created for? Who are they helping exactly? Why does this term need to be created? What void is this new word filling that other terms left empty? Should you be revealing this information? Is this uncomfortably personal information you shouldn't be sharing with strangers online? Would it make /them/ uncomfortable to learn this information about your system/alter? What position are you putting them in if you end up in the situation where you have to tell them what that word means? Are you/other people going to use this term enough that it warrants not just creation, but posting online for others to see and use as well?

Does this term /actually/ mean anything or have a real use outside of giving you the mild, temporary comfort of coining a new term for a couple of notes on tumblr?

Another reason they bother me is they feel like they're being created by people who are so obsessed with labeling things as a coping mechanism, people who need to label whatever they're feeling to feel secure, and while that's fine with a lot of things, I don't feel like it's the right thing to do with system labels, in comparison to MOGAI labels. It's also not healthy to try and find some kind of label for absolutely everything you're feeling or experiencing. Sometimes it's okay to just let whatever you're feeling wash over you, or to live with your own experience without giving every detail a hyperspecific label.

I don't have a problem with hyperspecific MOGAI labels because gender is a construct, and MOGAI challenges that construct.

Hyperspecific labels for systems aren't challenging anything, they're filling voids that often times aren't there, and they're not going to be used in nearly the same respect as MOGAI labels are.

MOGAI worked because gender is an identity and MOGAI changes the way you view that identity and challenges society's creation of that identity, but being a system itself is not an identity. It can be part of your identity, it can affect your identity, but it's not itself an identity. There's nothing to change or challenge by creating new terms, there's no real lacking void to be filled here by crafting all kinds of hyper specific words for alter roles and the number of alters in your system or hyperspecific system origins that correlate with the creation of every headmate.

There's no real reason to coin a massive amount of these hyperspecific labels, and they'll often times just give people a lot more anxiety trying to attribute everything they experience to some hyperspecific label.

At least, that's the way I see it.

If you have your own thoughts on the subject, I'd definitely like to hear them and discuss with you.

#txt #actuallytraumagenic #pluralgang #actuallyplural #endogenic #actuallydid #actuallymultiple #plural #didmeta #pluralmeta #sysmeta #pluralitycritique

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A Criticism of Origin Labels

Remy again, and I’m here to give my thoughts and criticism on origin labels, and this one might be a little controversial, or a ‘hot take’. I imagine I’d get hate and lose followers over what I have to say here, but I still want to voice my opinion on this subject, because that’s what this blog is all about.

Introduction: What is a System Origin?

I have a little bit of an issue with a lot of ‘origin’ labels lately, and it somewhat ties in with my issues with hyperspecific system terms that people have been coining.

I could handle it when it was ‘traumagenic’ and ‘nontraumagenic’/’endogenic’, ‘parogenic’/’willogenic’, ‘paragenic’, ‘spiritual’, ‘gateway’, etc. These make sense to me, at least somewhat. These are simple enough terms to grasp, even if ‘parogenic’ and ‘paragenic’ are somewhat different and could very well get mistaken pretty easily, which is probably another post for another day, but I digress. These labels are fine because they make sense, at least somewhat.

But a while ago, I saw a label for an origin described something like this:

‘An origin that seems to consume or obscure other origins and can’t be easily identified’. (Paraphrased)

This bothers me for a lot of reasons, and my criticism of terms like this also ties in with the post I made about my issue with the term ‘mixed origin’.

To start, I’d like to lay down a general definition of a system origin:

A system’s origin is the original event(s) that caused the system to form, often labeled with DID or OSDD1 or ‘endogenic’ and its general subcategories. DID/OSDD1 meaning inherently traumagenic, and endogenic, (and its subcategories), simply meaning that the system did not form from trauma.

I think that’s a pretty easy and agreeable definition. With this in place, let’s explore system origins, and why a lot of the new ones being coined don’t make any sense.

See, the thing about origins is that all they are is how your system formed. Your system either forms from trauma, or it doesn’t. There’s no shame in not knowing if you’re traumagenic or not either, (but I have a tag, (endos vs. DID), that can help give you an idea if you’re that invested). You don’t actually have to know or seriously try to figure that out until later. The best way to go about figuring out if you’re a system isn’t to figure out your origin, it’s to connect with your alters/headmates, establish communication and try to function together. Cooperation comes first.

(Side note: someone telling you that you may be DID/OSDD1 is NOT them telling you that you have to go digging for trauma right then and there. You should never, ever do this without the help of a professional. Even if you find out you’re DID/OSDD1 on your own, NEVER do this. Not only can you very easily traumatize yourself trying to do it, but the memories you get will often times be even more distorted and confusing than they might usually be. It’s not a good idea to do this, ever, without a professional’s help.)

My Full, Honest Opinion: Do These New ‘Origin’ Terms Help?

But enough padding. Here’s my full, honest opinion.

Your system’s origin is not a gender. It’s not like a gender. It doesn’t behave the same way because how your system forms is not a gender. Gender is a feeling, a construct, you can make it what you want. A system origin is not like that at all, a system origin is the event(s) that happened to cause the creation of your system in the first place. Nothing else.

I mentioned this in my post about hyperspecific system labels, but the reason why MOGAI works is because it’s challenging an arbitrary societal standard that has oppressed people and stifled them for generations, hundreds of years. It was something created by colonizers to impose upon other people to oppress them. MOGAI works because it challenges that, it shows you that gender is a construct and it doesn’t actually mean anything. You can do whatever you want with your gender because gender is a construct and that means you can construct it into anything you want.

System origins are not like this at all. There’s nothing to challenge here. There’s no real societal standard for how systems form, other than how DID/OSDD1 forms in the DSM. The idea of DID/OSDD1 forming from trauma doesn’t oppress you, if you are someone who is endogenic. We, as people with DID/OSDD1, are inherently oppressed by those who are nondisordered, by ableism, whether you want to believe it or not. If you believe your plurality is nondisordered, then you are inherently the oppressor here because you cannot experience actual ableism for your plurality, only misdirected ableism, and DID/OSDD1 systems cannot truly oppress you for being nondisordered. The idea that the nondisordered can oppress the disordered because we are people who have experienced repetitive childhood trauma is ableism against the traumatized. There are plenty of examples of nondisordered plurality of all kinds being represented fairly in media, where someone becomes a murderer or dangerous the second they’re revealed to have DID/OSDD1 in similar medias.

The point is, DID/OSDD1 systems do not hold any kind of real, societal, structural power over nondisordered plurals, and creating all of these new terms and origins doesn’t actually do anything, because there’s nothing to challenge, there’s no status quo, there’s no agenda, there’s no oppression, there’s nothing. DID/OSDD1 systems don’t hold any structural power over endogenics, and we especially don’t hold any kind of structural power over endogenics that would call for the challenging or changing or hyperspecification of a system’s origin.

So, we’ve thoroughly established that system origins are not genders, and system origins are not MOGAI or comparable to MOGAI.

So why are people treating origins like MOGAI labels?

It makes even less sense to coin terms like this if you bring up the concept of system origin in the first place.

No, Really, What is a ‘System Origin’?

Let’s make a callback to that system definition I mentioned earlier.

I think this is a pretty easy definition to agree upon, and when you think about it, the idea that a system origin can ‘consume other origins’ starts to make a lot less sense. It sounds far less like a system origin, and more like someone is trying to describe a gender, or like they are trying to describe an origin similarly to a gender, and this is wrong because being a system and being LGBT are absolutely nothing alike, and comparing the two is a gross misrepresentation of both communities. It is beyond disrespectful to the experiences of both communities to compare the two, speaking as someone who has DID and is LGBT.

Like I said before, your system’s origin is not a gender. It doesn’t ‘consume’ other origins, because you can only really have one origin, which is something I explain in my post on ‘mixed origin’ as a term. If you don’t want to read that post, I can paraphrase what I mean here:

You can only have one origin that actually caused your system because only one thing can have /originally/ formed your system. The origin of your system does not include the origin of every alter/headmate you have, it does not refer to tracking down the origins of every single alter/headmate you have and applying that to your system’s origin. You aren’t ‘mixed origin’ if you have alters that split from trauma and alters that split from regular day-to-day stress, you’re DID/OSDD1 and are exhibiting normal DID/OSDD1 behaviour by splitting when you’re stressed. You aren’t mixed origin if you’re DID/OSDD1 and have a parogenic headmate, you’re just DID/OSDD1 with a parogenic headmate. You aren’t ‘mixed origin’ if you have parogenic system and spiritual headmates, you’re just a parogenic system with spiritual headmates.

This is because the origin refers to what /originally/ formed your system. Not how every single headmate formed individually, not how you feel about your system’s origin, not anything like that. In the same post, I coin new terms for people to use instead that are more accurate than ‘mixed origin’ as well, in case you’re interested.

You can’t have a system origin that ‘consumes other origins’ because you can only have one origin, and it’s not a feeling, it’s an event.

You experience repetitive childhood trauma and become a system to cope, that could be your event(s). You choose to create a system to help cope with your day-to-day stresses, and that could be your event. Your spirituality somehow invited an entity of spiritual origins to live your life with you, that could be another event. Hell, your event could even be that you were born a system, but your event is not a feeling. It is not something you /feel/, it’s something that happened, either to you, or an event that you chose to make happen.

I’m just stuck on the idea of a system origin ‘consuming’ other origins. It doesn’t make sense, it makes no sense at all, and nobody coining these terms really seems to think about the terms they’re coining or what they actually mean when they’re talking about a ‘system origin’. You can’t be an origin hoarder the same way that you can be a gender hoarder, and you probably shouldn’t, anyways. It just leads to people coining hyperspecific terms for the kinds of trauma that caused their system, and people calling themselves something like ‘mothergenic’ or something, because people feel pressured to call their system a term that tells other people, whether they want to know or not, that your mother caused you such trauma as a child that you ended up with DID/OSDD1 because of it.

I have no idea if ‘mothergenic’ is a term, but for the love of god and for the comfort and safety of others, not just your own, please don’t call your system something like that, and don’t coin terms that refer to the specific traumas you went through. Not only can it be extremely uncomfortable to hear when you didn’t want or need to know that, but that information can very, very easily be used against you and it puts you in a vulnerable spot where people can and likely are going to take advantage of you for it. Terms like that are dangerous and deeply unnecessary.

Just because you may have anxiety and cope by labeling yourself with hyperspecific labels just to have a sense of identity doesn’t mean that is a healthy coping mechanism. This applies to both hyperspecific system terms and LGBT terms, as well, though my opinions are a lot more lax on the latter subject.

Conclusion

My point is, if you’re coining all kinds of system origin terms, you’re vastly misunderstanding what a system origin actually is, as well as misunderstanding what made MOGAI work, on top of misunderstanding the LGBT experience--and you can do this even if you’re LGBT yourself. Younger LGBT people often times don’t have the same knowledge or experience of LGBT elders and often times don’t understand why some things are the way they are, and it’s deeply important to understand the structure behind things and what makes them work (or not) before trying to imitate them, because otherwise you end up with things like ‘OSDD-2 system’ pride flags, and pride flags for all kinds of things that don’t need to have pride flags, seriously, why does everyone feel the need to make a pride flag for everything?

But like usual, that’s another post for another day.

If you have any opinions on the subject, disagree with me, or want to talk about your experiences, you can reply to this post or come into my ask box and we can talk about it freely, I enjoy hearing other people’s opinions and experiences.

[Do not derail.]

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