Sharp, Dangerous Things

Side blog. See with eyes unclouded by hate. | They / Them | 30+ | Be good to one another. No DNI.

[patience-knowledge-focus]

Who We Are

Time for an updated pinned post.

This secondary Tumblr belongs to a system of dubious origin and will be used as a space for us to record our shenanigans and talk about system-related content. If you have somehow found your way here and have questions, throw an ask over the fence, and we might answer.

When we started this blog, there were three of us (April, Keith, and Kai). Since then, that number has grown slightly, and we don't bother keeping a list nowadays.

We do what most people do: go hiking, consume far too much media, occasionally write (however poorly), and try to make life work from one day to the next. I love stuffed animals, Keith owns a guitar and a sword, and Kai will talk your ear off about frogs. Wander is our archivist, and Micah does magic.

Our policy regarding all discourse is live and let live. On the whole, we're friendly to anyone and everyone, and believe in such lofty principles as radical acceptance, harm reduction, and the power of hope.

We will occasionally post about our experiences in the syscourse tag because it turns out that our existence is somehow a discussion point. We strongly believe in people and despise fakeclaiming in all its forms.

Just in case, let me be clear on behalf of our system:

Systems and singlets -- basically anyone you come across -- are people and should be treated with kindness and dignity afforded all human beings. It's not controversial. It's not discourse. It's basic decency.

Below are a couple of servers we frequent and enjoy:

Check out the Ooze 18+ Sys Social community on Discord - hang out with 43 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

[patience-knowledge-focus]

no people are in this instance very specifically saying the complex dissociative disorder DID is not trauma based. this isn't about plurality, it's specifically about DID.

They've said everything recently from "endogenic DID" to "either you have DID or you're not plural." Let me be clear that syscourse is a never-ending repetition of the same basic premises. It doesn't stop and it rarely changes.

The people discussing DID are probably the same people who will then go on to claim that plurality can't happen outside DID, and then someone will say that they have DID without trauma (when trying to explain their plurality). And the cycle repeats. Over and over again.

[patience-knowledge-focus]

I think the whole "DID is/is not a trauma disorder" is coming from a place of miscommunication about what the fuck that means and how that looks.

DID is a dissociative disorder that's characterized by, you might have guessed it, dissociation. DID patients showing up at the doctor's office are going to be talking about symptoms like dissociation, depersonalization, loss of time, amnesia, mood swings, and so on. They may or may not mention childhood adversity or trauma.

For many of them, they will first notice the disorder as teenagers or adults, so somehow correlating that to shit that happened to them when they were six might not even register. Like, we're all human beings, some of us have shitty memory, and it makes sense that memory problems would make figuring out the why of it all difficult, if not impossible.

But a clinician looking at their symptoms and working with them might turn to trauma-management techniques to help them with some of their symptoms because underneath the dissociation, there is a very good chance that childhood trauma was involved. That is something important for the clinician to know, that there's a heavy-ass correlation between DID symptoms and childhood awfulness.

And remember, this is about DID (the disorder, the shitty thing that lands you in a therapist's office). This is not a discussion of plurality (the experience of being many that likely isn't the reason you're in a therapist's office).

DID being a trauma or not being a trauma disorder is actually not that relevant. If you show up to therapy with dissociative symptoms, your therapist isn't going to force you to remember childhood trauma before diagnosing you. But if you remember whatever heck you've been through, that will help them better support you (hopefully). And if you show up to that office and never remember any trauma at all (maybe you had a perfect childhood and still ended up with DID symptoms), the therapist isn't going to panic and toss you out.

So, to recap, a disorder can have dissociative symptoms and underlying those symptoms might well be childhood trauma, but you're not showing up in your therapist's office because of it (or maybe you are, and you're also multiple people, and that might not be DID).

And you might be plural and not have DID and therefore, childhood trauma might not apply to your particular plurality whatsoever. DID being a disorder that occurs because of underlying trauma does not invalidate anyone who doesn't have that trauma. You have the fucking symptoms, you get the funny-named disorder. That's how it rolls.

Edited to add: Anyone screaming "you can't have DID because you were fine as a kid" needs to sit down and shut up. Symptoms are how we identify the disorder, whether or not we can find the underlying trauma. If someone says they have DID but no trauma, well, then, fuck knows -- their brain did a weird something that was unexpected and that's just how it fucking goes. Brains are not great at being consistent.

[the0peratingsystem]

I love you.

[badly-drawn-syscourse-comics]

is it considered a hate group to *checks notes* have an unusual way of viewing your sense of self that you don't want to be seen as a medical condition for yourself

A one panel comic.

One figure to the back left is waving. A second figure is leaning towards the front right with wide eyes.

Left: I'm multiple people in one body without a dissociative disorder and I think I and others should be allowed to exist and talk about our experiences and acknowledge there's a bigger plural spectrum.

Right: THIS IS A DANGEROUS HATE GROUP OF ABLEISTS THAT WANT TO STEAL YOUR RESOURCES

[badly-drawn-syscourse-comics]

"I don't have a CDD" "they're claiming to have a CDD!!"

Panel 1

Two simple figures, left pointing at right, and right looking confused with a question mark.

Left: DID is more than just alter disorder!

Right: I agree, that's why I don't have DID

Panel 2

Left is now pointing more aggressively and right still looks confused and is looking more at the viewer

Left: BUT YOU HAVE ALTERS SO YOU HAVE DID!

Right: I don't even call them alters?

Right: We're just multiple people?

[cambriancrew]

It feels really weird to me when people try to argue that endogenics started as a hate group when like. There's been nontraumagenic systems for literally millenia. See: Socrates and his daemon. Or for a much more recent example, Chris Costner Sizemore, born in 1927, famously diagnosed with MPD in the 1950s, the woman behind the story of Three Faces of Eve. She always insisted, like many endogenics with CDDs today, that her plurality predated her trauma.

My system is older than the empowered multiples movement. Our plurality has zero relation to that movement. We were plural before it, we are plural after it, we'll be plural till we die (and if most of us are right, we'll be plural after that too.)

[patience-knowledge-focus]

The first time we heard of the empowered multiples movement was here on Tumblr about ~2ish years ago. And we've been a system for like 30+ years now. I think there is a desire to paint endogenic plurality as coming from a place of hate, and this is how they want to do it.

[cambriancrew]

I find it really weird that some people are so anti-endo that polyminds — people who insist they're not systems, they're not plural even, they're singlets giving names to their parts to better understand themselves — get lumped in with endogenics.

Like they're explicitly saying they don't have anything even remotely similar to CDDs and yet you hate them anyway.

[cambriancrew]

There's nothing wrong with endogenics referring to their headmates as "parts" ESPECIALLY if they're a median system! You can be an individual person and also a part of a system, or part of another person in your system, or part of the system as a whole. None of that is exclusive to traumagenics or CDD systems. We Willows are individual Willows and ALSO parts of the gestalt identity of Willow that we share.

Besides that, "part" is just a normal part of the English language. And everyone's got parts. "Part of me wants to sleep in, another part says I need to get up and go to the gym" or whatever.

[ribbon-system]

As a guide:

{pro} endos think that since plurality is an identity, saying you must fit certain requirements- usually suffering- to be plural is like saying you must experience constant dysphoria to be trans.

Anti-endos think that since CDDs are disorders {and are the only way to be plural}, people who claim to be plural without a CDD are like people who claim that they're "so OCD" for liking their pencils to be arranged by colour order.

You are arguing different things. This argument can never be solved, because you're talking past each other.

[cambriancrew]

We love willow trees in this house. They're the best trees. Resilient, beautiful, great for shade and shelter.

The fact a quarter of us are named Willow has zero bearing on our fondness for their trees.

[council-of-the-void]

Willow trees are gorgeous, there are so many types actually, some species are even shrubs, one barely grows above 6 centimetres.

There's something magical about them as trees. Weeping willows especially are beautiful. We plan to plant one in our back yard when we manage to find one of suitable size. We have the perfect spot for it!

[phantasm-masquerade]

[Image ID: Tumblr tag reading "The concept of endos in real life scares me. What do you mean they walk among us."]

This is the kind of shit that people - people here, at least - would generally classify as bigotry if it were directed at some other group.

Do not be 'soft' on people who hate my and many of my friends' existence.

[pro-endo-emet-selch]

If a queer person is a system, then that system is queer.

We keep seeing anti-endos post that being a system isnt an identity nor can it be queer.

Gatekeeping how other people see themselves is a bad take. So many queer people are systems thats why the two are associated together.

A lot of queer folks were subject to trauma growing up so thats why there are so many people who are queer with CDDs. As for people who are systems that didn't form from trauma a lot of them are queer as well!

Really getting tired of the identity gatekeeping. Stop telling other people who or what they're allowed to be, or what identity labels they can use. Mind your own business.

[patience-knowledge-focus]

The way we look at the anti-endogenic stance (and really any anti-anything stance) is that tolerance is ultimately a social contract.

Denying someone's lived identity or experience and/or fakeclaiming breaks that contract, and we block people who demonstrate that they are not willing to be tolerant of others.

It's not about any particular belief or internal view of the world, but it is about willingness to exist in shared spaces in good faith.

Most people manage just fine, regardless of their beliefs and opinions. But the occasional intolerant bastard is removed from our dash with prejudice.

Brought to you by Alexis, the Shard System's most asinine and pedantic headmate!

[patience-knowledge-focus]

The thing I don't get when I see anti-endos posting (especially in plural tags) about how they hate seeing endogenic-friendly content: If you want a space populated by only people diagnosed with a CDD, why not make that?

What is stopping you from creating a private Discord server or forum? Like, you could be interacting only with other CDD-havers right now! Today. For the low price of "free."

I feel like some anti-endos walk into an auditorium full of people of all shapes and sizes and go, "Well, I only want to speak to those who have one eye. The rest of you, don't talk to me."

Wrong audience, my dude. Wrong audience.

[daydreamers-choir]

"Fictives need to source separate"

"it's harmful to be so connected to your source."

As a source separated fictive I will have to disagree with these two statements I have seen in the past. Being attached to my source didn't really have a super negative effect on me. Obviously every system, and it's members are different, but still I dislike the sentiment of the two statements above.

Even being source separated I still remember the memories of my friends from my source, and the lessons I had learned from it.

-Kaia

[patience-knowledge-focus]

When it comes to a disorder, there is no single right answer for everyone, I think. What works for you might not work for me, and vice versa.

[positivitygenic]

it's okay to not have all the answers, it's okay to just be here. you don't have to understand yourself to be respected and accepted.