this is very brave of me because it's very scary to put myself out there like this, but i've been journalling! and i wanted to share my thoughts and feelings with all of you! maybe my experiences will make some of you feel seen! maybe for others, it will help you understand your system friends better! being part of a system is really tricky. it makes me sad sometimes. but i'm so happy to be here!! (^:
Hi! Would anyone be able to suggest some offline, app-based (so nothing that you can only currently use on a web browser) Simply Plural alternatives? That, yknow, aren't vibe coded?
We're currently using PluralSpace, which we love and is genuinely great, but it being entirely online is making me personally paranoid so I just wanted to hear about any alternatives so I have a list at least ^^;
Hi, we're on android yeah :] I mentioned this in a reply to an ask we got, but essentially we've tried Ampersand out previously and while genuinely what it has currently is great, it's currently lacking stuff we need like the ability to put a member in multiple groups/"systems" and chat stuff. It is absolutely something we're keeping an eye on though!
Also thank you for bringing Lotus Log to our attention, we'll definitely be keeping an eye on that too :D
Yeah, we were using Ampersand for a bit and it's nice... but also does lack features we've been benefitting from like chats. Definitely something to keep an eye on though, thanks for reminding me it exists ::}
I think we also tried Hivemind during the initial scramble and that one really didn't click with us. Definitely keeping it in mind though!
Hi! Would anyone be able to suggest some offline, app-based (so nothing that you can only currently use on a web browser) Simply Plural alternatives? That, yknow, aren't vibe coded?
We're currently using PluralSpace, which we love and is genuinely great, but it being entirely online is making me personally paranoid so I just wanted to hear about any alternatives so I have a list at least ^^;
this pride month, you will respect and defend nonbinary people. and you will especially respect and defend nonbinary people who do not fit into your expectations.
nonbinary people who are neither transmasc or transfem. people who are multiple genders and/or genderfluid. genderfuck people. people who use terms that you feel are "contradictory". people who use xenogenders or any other terms you don't personally understand.
There's a paradox in a lot of plural spaces. System kids are welcome, but only if they're Literal Children who stay in child-only soft boxes where they can be ignored. If a kid wants to have an adult conversation, then they're spoken over, pushed away, or otherwise discounted more often than not- and if they're accepted, then it's often at the cost of expecting them to have absolutely no childlike qualities to "prove" that they're mature enough to stay around. We even see this pattern within systems sometimes.
What are systems without adult members supposed to do if the only place system kids can talk is in the Super Soft Safe Box? What about system kids who want to talk about theoretical physics or drugs or sex or a thousand other taboos? What about kids who function as adults? And what about system kids who are kids but don't want to live their lives in the Super Soft Safe Box like the world expects them to?
Acceptance of system kids as being wildly different from each other in mindset and ability is improving, but we still have a long way to go in treating system kids with a shred of respect and decency in wider plural spaces.
Not to mention... why is there so much intense focus on mental age as some universal concept in the first place? It feels like a lot of the plural community takes the concept of mental age as a given without considering where that idea comes from, how it affects how they treat others, and how it interacts with systemic discrimination and ableism. It can sometimes be a useful construct if approached critically, but I see so little critical thought about it.
If you want some reading on the topic, one of the articles cited is worth at least a skim- it's a fairly good surface overview of eugenics and its tie to IQ/mental age, immigration, racism, ableism, etc.
ID below the cut with the full quotes- sorry to alt texters, I fit as much as I could in there but the text limit is real.
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There's a subtle sort of discrimination to how a lot of plural spaces treat system kids/littles. Especially those in adult bodies, or with a particularly large gap from their body's age.
"Littles must always be supervised in online spaces or else they'll bother adults and be preyed upon." "There must be an adult in your system if you're bodily an adult- they should handle life while the kids go away to never be seen by adults again. Littles should only talk to other littles. Anything else is unsafe and sometimes pedophilic. Right?" "Littles shouldn't be in charge. They're supposed to be cared for by everyone else and kept out of sight." "You're welcome here! You just have to only ever talk in the Baby Zone that no adults ever visit to talk to you. Yeah, it's empty and no one will answer. But you want to talk, right?" "Sorry sweetie, the adults are talking and you can't be here. Even if you're capable of understanding, consenting, etc. You're not allowed to be here with us if you're not a real adult." "Littles can't take care of themselves or handle any adult responsibilities, ever!" "Is there an adult I can talk to?"
Blue, an anthro cat sitting down, looks angry at the above phrases.
What are adult-bodied systems with no "brain adults" supposed to do? Drawing of a family of stick figures, all of whom are either child-short or hunching to be shorter.
What about systems whose caretakers are their children? Systems where there is no older person to supervise? Systems finding ways to live an adult life when no one inside aligns with it? What are you supposed to do when a 5-year-old does your taxes and drives you home?
"Just grow up." Do I get a choice, or are you ripping that away from me too?
[End image one ID.]
[Begin image two ID.]
Why is "mental age" the bar people are using to decide whether someone is worthy of autonomy and respect, anyway? Where does the concept of mental age come from in the first place, and why does it exist?
From Wilson, R. A. (2024). Eugenic Thinking and the Cognitive Sciences. In M. C. Frank & A. Majid (Eds.), Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.c9a5f080:
"Eugenic traits:
Prominent among the eugenic traits found in sterilization laws were those concerning cognitive ability and mental health. These traits, ordered in terms of their frequency in U.S. state and Canadian provincial sterilization laws, included feeble-mindedness, insanity, epilepsy, criminality, imbecility, idiocy, sexual perversion (or depravity), mental unfitness (or deficiency), and moral depravity (or degeneracy). As this listing suggests, these laws especially targeted those perceived to have some kind of cognitive limitation or psychiatric condition on the grounds that they were unfit and would propagate these eugenic traits to their children; approximately 70% of all eugenic traits mentioned in sexual sterilization laws in the United States and Canada concerned cognitive ability or mental health. Given this, there was a clear role for psychologists in programs of eugenic sterilization, given their expertise in psychological testing (Rose, 1985). Such testing and subsequent sterilization were conducted through emerging forms of institutionalization, such as “training schools for the feeble-minded,” especially as eugenics gained state-level backing (Miller et al., 2015).
One of the roles of psychologists was to develop ways to measure those who were cognitively or psychiatrically subnormal. Emerging intelligence tests were adapted to quantify and classify those deemed “feeble-minded”or “mentally deficient” (Thomson, 1998; Trent, 1994). Binet’s famous test of intelligence, for example, incorporated the more specific existing folk categories of “imbecile” and “idiot,” adapting these to designate developmentally delayed children with mental ages, respectively, of 3–7 and 2 years. Following the translation of Binet’s test from French into English by Henry Goddard in 1908, “moron” was coined in 1910 to pick out those in the general population with a putatively fixed mental age of 8–12 years. This resulted in a three-tiered schema of intellectual subnormality—moron, imbecile, idiot—that came to be widely used in the eugenics movement.
In the hands of the psychologist Lewis Terman, what became the Stanford-Binet test initially was deployed in selecting army recruits near the end of World War I (1914–1918) before being used on the general population. The three-tiered scheme was accordingly fed into the newly minted idea of an intelligence quotient (IQ) that remains with us 100 years on, with the fixed mental ages of moron, imbecile, and idiot mapped onto standard deviations from a normalized IQ of 100. From the 1920s, these tests were widely used to identify children who were candidates for eugenic sterilization, whether they were already housed in segregated institutions or within the regular school system or general community."
From Asilverm, & Asilverm. (n.d.). What’s My Age Again: Why Mental Age Theory Hurts People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. Retrieved May 31, 2026, from https://www.disabilitywisdom.com/2018/12/21/whats-my-age-again-why-mental-age-theory-hurts-people-with-intellectual-and-developmental-disabilities/:
The concept of “mental age” was first introduced by Alfred Binet, co-creator of the first IQ tests, in the early twentieth century. Generally, “mental age” has been measured by comparing an individual’s score on a standardized IQ test with the average performance of their same-age peers. For people with IDD, “mental age” may also be estimated by comparing the person’s demonstrated physical, speech, adaptive or cognitive skills against the average for various age groups.
Not surprisingly, “mental age” came about alongside the eugenics movement in the United States. Mental ages were used to classify various groups of “feebleminded” individuals by severity: Adults with a mental age of 9-12 years were classified as “morons”; those with a mental age of 6-8 years were classified as “imbeciles”; and those with a mental age of 2-5 were classified as “idiots.” Individuals from any of these groups were thought unfit to reproduce."
A drawing of Blue looks annoyed and concerned. It's labelled, "TFW it's eugenics again. :("
Oh yeah. Why is it always eugenics?
To be clear: I'm not saying anyone is ableist or practicing eugenics for having a sense of their own internal age. I am pointing out how systemic ableism affects how system kids are treated, how the concept of mental age stems from ableism in the first place, and how terribly many cultures treat children and deemed-children to begin with: how children and disabled people are often regarded as objects, burdens, or annoyances who don't know enough to have a say about their own needs. Is this really how we want to assume all system kids should be treated? How anyone should be treated?
How much of how system kids are treated ties back to some form of ableism, in the end? I wonder about this a lot and I feel like I never see people talk about it.
has anyone on tumblr posted about treblesand's plural journey flag before? because it's probably our fave plural flag(s) actually (and also it is very much public domain!!)
according to the original post, the colour meanings are:
Purple for Mystery. This is learning you are plural for the first time, but it is also learning things later. We are always learning!
Blue for Trust. This is the trust between headmates. Hard but important.
Green for Harmony. This is internal harmony, whether you choose to fuse or choose to stay many.
Black for Diversity. There are many ways to be plural! We are stronger together.
uh yeah obviously these flags are not mine, and i really do recommend checking out the original post on dreamwidth which i linked above for more in-depth info about the flag. i just wanted more people to know about it since it is my personal fave plural flag :]
synqueer flag! (standard, six stripes w/o symbol, and five stripes w/treblesand)
pretty much since we realized that we’re a system we’ve struggled with the idea of “collective identity”; the closest we’ve gotten is with systemgender, which explicitly defines itself as a sum total of otherwise distinct identities, but no corresponding generalized term exists (or at least we haven’t been able to find one).
so: synqueer!
the sum/combination of all queer identities a plural collectively experience(s).
open to all plurals on all places of the continuum; our personal reasons for coining this term aside, you don’t have to be fully differentiated/multiple to use it!
intentionally open; can include gender, orientation, and/or any other queer identities
colors inspired/combined from these plural and queer flags
the prefix “syn“ means “together“ (and forms part of the word symphony, which we thought was a nice connection to the treblesand); “queer“ is self-explanatory
(pluriqueer, multiqueer, and systemqueer are all already ids so we had to pick an unrelated suffix dfjjgsdl)
A flag for plural folks! Colors were taken from various different system type flags I’ve found over the months, and the symbol is the treblesand, a popular plural symbol as of late. This flag is free to use and edit, credit’s appreciated but not necessary.
this is a flag/symbol for queer plurals! lots of people in systems have an extra complicated relationship to gender, orientation and people in general because of their plurality, so i made this for people who want to express that!
and yes before you ask endogenic and non-DID systems are included in this so gatekeepers can fuck off <3
[ID: ten nearly identical icons, save for the flat colors of the backgrounds. Each icon features a white ampersand with swirls at each end and a black border with varying thickness. The background colors of each icon, in order, are: red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, indigo, purple, pink, brown, and dark gray. / End ID]
Not all of the new followers I've been getting recently are bots – some are just newcomers. But all you newcomers need icons that aren't just the default few, or people will block and report you because they think you're a bot. To solve this issue, I present these to you: basic ampersand icons, free to use without credit!! Rejoice, you now look much less suspicious to the vast lands of Tumblr. And as a bonus, you get to show off some covert pride, as the ampersand is often taken as a symbol of plurality. And, well, y'all are following me; I assume most of you are systems.
(Even if you're not new, if you want to use these, feel free to! This are just primarily aimed at the new folk I keep nearly blocking before realizing they're not bots.)
scary plural in your wifi @pluraltv - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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