maybe you did do something wrong. maybe you hurt someone. maybe you have said awful things. maybe you were just as bad as them. maybe. but what matters is that you move on. you have to try. you have to wake up and be kinder. you have to learn and listen and grow. maybe you did do something wrong but that doesn't mean you have to keep doing that. as long as you are alive, you can change
🏍️ (motorcycle) - What have you tried that didn't work for your system? Why didn't it work? Do you do something else instead?
We've tried a lot of things that didn't work, or didn't work well enough, or sometimes that actively made things worse. I'll give you the highlights.
System roles. They tended to limit us more than they helped- we often got stuck trying to play to the role instead of learning who we were as people and growing into something more than what we were forced to be in the past.
We'd get stuck in the trap of, "I'm supposed to be A Protector and Trauma Holder, so this pain is mine and mine alone to suffer through. That's my job, my reason for existing: being in pain so that no one else has to suffer. It doesn't matter that I hate it. This suffering is what I am. It's what I'm good at. So I have to do it- who else will?"
(Did they ask you to suffer for them? Do you want this? Is the suffering really worse if you share it, or do many hands make the load lighter to bear? What would you do if there were no more suffering to take? What else could you be good at? Do you have hobbies, interests, chances to breathe and feel safe? Does anyone deserve to be reduced down to how much pain they can take without breaking? What if your existence didn't hold any higher meaning? What if you could just be here?)
Only one of us uses a role in any sense now, and it's more of a way of acknowledging her view of the world and where she's been in her life than it is some fundamental aspect of her. It's the kind of thing she holds loosely and sets down the second it grows into more than just a word- especially if other people decide to define her by that label more than they define her as a living, breathing person.
Dividing our system into ANP/EP (or other strict categorizations based on arbitrary traits). We're affected by trauma. All of us are affected by trauma, even the events that we personally did not handle at the time. Everyone shares those scars. Some of us hide them in more socially acceptable ways than others, some of us get more flashbacks or struggle harder with different things, but it seems ridiculous to try to divide ourselves based on lines of "stuck in trauma" and "avoids trauma" when all of us do both.
We kind of hate this categorization system, honestly. It works fine for PTSD. It makes sense there, where trauma and emotions do seem to intrude on baseline consciousness as distinct states of a person. Applied to DID and other plurality, it turns into "either you're a Perpetually Broken Trauma State or the Real Person In Denial", and that rubs us wrong. We don't use it anymore.
Internal ages. Eugenics-based origins of "mental age" aside, the idea of internal ages is a lot less useful to us than answering the actual questions people care about when asking our age: "Can they consent? Can they handle this task? What do they need support with? How should I treat them?"
Telling you how old I feel doesn't actually answer any of those questions. We've been happier tossing aside internal ages as a concept and focusing more on understanding our strengths and needs.
Treating every new presence as a permanent member of the system. Voices come and go. Some of us stay a while until we change into someone else, some of us just vanish, and some of us actually manage to stick. Many of us don't exist as the same entity long-term.
Trying to treat every new voice as a permanent entity meant that we were trying to track 80+ entities- most of whom were never heard from again, or only heard from extremely situationally, or whose theoretical existence just felt wrong for some reason. It's been more helpful to treat all of ourselves as creatures that can come and go- really, we did away with strict headcounts altogether. Whoever's here is whoever's here.
Ironically, we have a much better idea of who's here and how we work after getting rid of the "we have to have a completely accurate and permanent headcount!" mentality.
Apps and strict system profiling. SimplyPlural, while it was around, didn't give us much useful data for the time cost of using it. We'd spend considerable time marking switches, updating info, making yet another custom status to handle edge cases, and yet none of the resulting information helped us.
Other apps had the same issue. Paper profiling had the same issue. It just sat there to look pretty and feel satisfying, which is fine, except that it wasn't satisfying or helpful, and it ate more time than it was worth.
We don't make profiles like that anymore. We'll sometimes draw ourselves, make a map to understand something, or toss together a website for ourselves, but we're done making "plural community style" profiles and using tools designed for systems because they're never designed for our sort of system (not to mention the longevity concerns- a lot of people got a rude shock when SimplyPlural shut down, and this is an inevitable happening for most apps and websites nowadays. One day, your app or digital tool of choice will shut down. Will you still have your information when it does?).
Punishments. In literally every case, punishing someone made the situation worse, not better. It bred resentment and spite, which doesn't exactly inspire someone to act differently next time (especially if they had a reason to do what they did), but it did give them plenty of reason to dislike and distrust everyone else.
We've had a lot more success with compassionate intervention and discussion: "you did this thing that hurt us, and I trust that you had a reason for that. Why did you do it, and what do you need? Are you okay? Is there something missing, or something bothering you, or some other change that needs to be made so this stops happening? Or does it actually need to happen and we're missing information that you have? Talk to us, fill us in so we can figure this out together."
System origins. This one is a rant, so I saved it for last. Strap in.
They don't help us live our life. They don't help other people interact with us. They don't reduce intra-community conflict or make singlets accept us more easily. They don't save on explanation when someone actually wants to discuss origin theories with us. They don't account for us disagreeing about how we got here or why we exist. They don't account for the fact that most of us don't remember when we showed up in the first place, let alone care anymore. They don't capture the fullness of our experiences.
For words that seem near-universally expected or even demanded in system spaces, origin labels aren't doing a lot for us.
Origin labels do consistently lead to harrassment, hostility, and general ugliness towards other people depending on their opinions about origin labels. They do drive people away from each other and keep them arguing over the same damn topics for decades. They do consistently lead to our friends getting hurt by strangers.
Origin labels do make it harder for systems to work together to make positive change in the world for ourselves- we're all so busy infighting over origins that many of us seem to have forgotten that Sue at the grocery store not only doesn't know what the hell "willogenic" means, she doesn't care. We're still "multiple personalities" to Sue.
Ever seen a social group that insists that you disclose whether you have an identity-affecting trauma history- especially one that demands disclosure under threat of rejection or harrassment? Does that sound like a safe place to spend your time, trauma history or otherwise? Why is this the norm in system spaces?
Maybe system origins work for other people. Great. The only real benefit that we've seen from system origins is that they occasionally make it a little easier to find resources from specific community subsets, which sounds great, except that those same resources can often help other types of system who aren't looking for them because they use a different origin label. We're not a system that practices tulpamancy, but you bet that we've learned a lot from resources made by tulpamancers and soulbonders and all the other subgroups that get treated like shit in plural spaces. We'd never have seen any of it if we insisted on only looking for advice from systems exactly like us.
We stopped caring about origins years ago and we don't miss them. We're here. It doesn't matter why. Deal with it.
real talk tho ive seen ppl talk abt how long hair on men isn't intrinsically feminine & assuming so is racist can we get the same convo going for Black women w short hair can we start talking abt how short hair isn't intrinsically masculine or is that a step too far
in case it's not clear: deformed is a slur used against people with major visible differences (limb differences and facial differences). the word "differences" in this context is a replacement for the more commonly used "deformities". it refers to significant, lifelong differences in the shape/size of a limb, absence of a limb, or major facial abnormalities such as those caused by certain genetic syndromes.
while major burns and scarring can cause visible differences, it would be highly unlikely for the vast majority of self harm scars to fall into this category. this isn't to say that people with self harm scars don't experience forms of discrimination or maltreatment, or aren't made to feel bad for showing their bodies! that absolutely happens, but as someone with both self harm scars and a limb difference, i can tell you the way i'm treated for showing my scarred arms vs the way i'm treated for showing my legs are very different. it's an important topic to discuss, but it doesn't mean you are "deformed".
minor variations in appearance, such as clinodactyly (a curved finger), low-set ears or a high-arched palate, affect around 1 in 5 people and are not considered deformities/visible differences. a limb difference means a major difference in the fixed shape of a limb - for example, having severely curved, absent or shortened bones. hypermobility, mild foot abnormalities such as pes cavus, and reduced range of motion are not limb differences. while some people with these conditions might have been described with the word "deformed" or feel it resonates with them, they are not part of the group whose lifelong oppression has been perpetuated by the word "deformed", and therefore should not "reclaim" it.
this isn't about invalidating anyone or gatekeeping a word - it's about the way those with limb/facial differences are almost always mistreated and swept under the rug by the rest of the disabled community, and the very real harm that is done to our community when conversations about us and our oppression do not include us. i was really excited to see that discussion of the specific oppression focused by those with limb/facial differences has been increasing on tumblr, and the rise of terms like "deformimisia". however, once again, very few people are making any attempt to listen to us and our experiences, and the conversation is dominated by those with minor differences who wouldn't traditionally be considered "deformed". even when the conversation is literally about us, we're excluded.
tldr: calling yourself a deformed freak with no critical analysis or input from our community isn't punk, it's ableist.
(important context: this resident is an ally and this is funny)
so i work in a care home w elderly people and one of my residents called me an intelligent girl, before apologizing and saying intelligent man, before apologizing again and landing on "youre an intelligent transsexual"
There's a somewhat-unstated division in social progressive circles that goes "being socially inept for autism reasons is fine, but being socially inept for regular reasons is bad and mockable." And then in practice everyone assumes it's for regular reasons when it comes up
Gods help you is you have a personality or schizospec disorders. You’re no longer “quirky” socially inept you’re a child up until they want to persecute you
