#forcing members of a system to label themselves as something is ableist!

[katetorias]

yes a sense of unity and collective “You” is good for systems to have but why are some people on this website acting like letting alters have individual sense of selves is going to tank your chances of recovery. denying parts their selfhood would involve not listening to them, accommodating or helping them feel happy (which is really hard to do as part of a system!!! for obvious reasons!!!!!)

forcing them to consider themselves just one person when their lived experiences do not match up with that is literally making things worse. some systems feel like they have been just one person their whole life, some don’t! some systems are very differentiated from each other, some aren’t!!

systems are as uniquely individual as literally every person on earth! everyone on this planet has lived different lives from each other and in turn will experience the same things differently from one another. that is like a very simple thing to grasp. it is very easy to not be ableist.

[hiiragi7]

Parts language is not dehumanizing, but the way people in the plural community treat parts language makes me feel dehumanized as a person who uses parts language.

I was reading that damn "Why the Theory of Structural Dissociation is Ableist" article written by Stronghold and released by the plural association (bluntly, I find it to be a very poorly written article - not in its strongly worded opinions, but because it spreads blatant misinformation regarding the success of final fusion based on a study the author did not understand, and I also find the piece to be incredibly ableist against systems who use parts language and seek final fusion).

Specifically, I want to talk about this paragraph from the article today, as I find it illustrates a lot of the problems that I have encountered in the plural community with regards to parts language:

Although I do not think personalities is the right term for us, nor is the word parts. It is derogatory, dehumanizing & it is taking away from our autonomy, roles and authenticity as individuals. And so I often wonder whether the alter integration they desire, equals just not being Plural anymore in the minds of the writers of Structural dissociation. If it does, it makes sense to diminish us to parts. And it also makes sense to claim “no one has to go away”, if they never believed we are separated in the first place. After all, it is the ‘experience of separation’, not actual separation, as they say, we did not split off. So was using the term ‘parts’ in 1987 progressive, or a step to further diminish, gaslight and silence us?

While I find questioning the intentions of the authors valuable and think it is important to explore whether any given medical intervention is truly aimed at individual wellbeing or whether its goal is normality and conforming to ableist ideas of what health looks like, I find it completely unnecessary to shit on parts language in order to do that.

This idea that I or any other system which uses parts language is "diminished" to parts carries the implication that parts are something less-than, undesirable, or have less value than systems which are not parts. This narrative is surprisingly anti-system for an organization which claims to be "empowering those with Dissociative Identity Disorder, OSDD and all other forms, labels and experiences of Plurality."

I am not diminished to parts; my parts are me, and I am a person. I cannot be diminished by my own personhood.

Additionally, the idea that parts language is "derogatory, dehumanizing, and takes away from our autonomy, roles, and authenticity as individuals" may imply that systems which use parts language are self-harming, that they are being derogatory and dehumanizing towards themselves, and stripping themselves of their own autonomy and individuality. This is an extremely negative and biased view of not only parts language but also those who use parts language as well. I use parts language for myself out of self-love, not hate.

Further, if we are to acknowledge plurality as a spectrum, then even if parts language really did mean system members were less individual from each other, how is that a bad thing? Median systems have long existed and have described their experiences as "different versions of me" or "different modes"; why is this fine, but saying you have parts as a system is not? Why is there such a focus on individuality and personhood to the point that it excludes those systems who do not experience their systemhood in that way? In what way is that inclusive?

Parts language should not be forced onto anyone, as it is important in general not to force a view of self onto someone that does not align with how they identify; yet, it feels as though people completely forget that rule when sentiments such as "your system members are 100% different people" or "calling your system members parts is derogatory and you are dehumanizing them" are pushed onto people as some sort of objective truth. That is just not how my system works; It would be just as wrong to say my system is not parts as it would be to say to a system who is not parts that they're actually parts.

Critiquing the language which medical professionals use to describe the experiences of their patients has its place, absolutely, however you must also have a level of respect for the people who relate to and use that language that all too often is lacking.

[theoliviaset]

Trust Issues

Foxy post. This is gonna be full of cussin'. CW for abuse, fakeclaiming, and religion. Consider giving it a read if you're feeling resilient enough rn, and want to know how the syscourse can harm a traumatized system.

[Also holy shit you sure love to roleplay your alters wtf. I know what co fronting is but you chose to not edit out the random unrelated thoughts and that's creepy. Unless you did that as a logical fallacy. Then its creepy and manipulative.]

Okay, so this has fucking been bugging me for a while now. Since longer than Faye's post about ableism went up. Since I figured out who I am really. It's been bugging me just how much a traumatized set of girls have been abused by this very fucking tactic.

So I don't have, let's say, conventional beliefs about my existence. It's certainly not in contradiction to any physical or psychological theories out there. It's just a spiritual belief. Akin to other beliefs about the nature of the soul. But it's... out there by conventional standards.

Of course, this belief doesn't change much how I interact with the world. I don't act like I have magic powers or like I can do extraordinary things. I don't go around harming people because I think I know what awaits me after we kick the bucket. I don't bring our vessel any closer to annihilation because I would rather be home than here. And all of that is true of many religious people. We can coexist with those with different beliefs without much in the way of problems so long as we continue to respect people and call out or fight injustice.

But I'm the only one in this head that has this belief. I'm not the only one with different spiritual or religious beliefs mind you, just the only one who is this unconventional.

Right now, you might be wondering what it is that I believe and why the fuck I'm talking about it so vaguely. Well you're not going to find out right now, because that's part of this whole fucking problem. You see, if I were to tell you what I think about how I got here, a sysmed would come along and fake claim us all to hell. In spite of the fact that I don't even fucking disagree that I'm formed by trauma.

Here's the fucking thing though. Although I may be perfectly comfortable telling intolerant assholes to fuck themselves six ways to Sunday with a cactus, I am not the only one in here. I don't get to make that executive decision.

Wanna know why?

Fucking trauma. The thing that sysmeds are trying to protect systems with from being harmed. (Oh and also ableism, cause this trauma comes from ableist assholes who have never respected our autistic brain).

If you didn't know, a thing that happens to "different" people often enough is that they get abused, ridiculed, and made to feel lesser because of those differences. All of that ill treatment can lead to trauma. Trauma that ingrained a fear response into some members of this system. That fear response violently takes away the autonomy and executive control of anyone who would step out of line and expose the system to further ill treatment.

There's a true saying we heard the other day: "Hurt people hurt people." This system is filled with hurt people. We work together and get along most days. But the disordered part of our disorder comes from the fact that trauma has built in us some survival responses. The primary of these responses has been to avoid confrontation at all costs. Better to say nothing than to say something that could be interpreted in any way as to lead to further abuse.

I've had to deal with that survival response coming from Moxie and Faye so many times. So many paragraphs of text deleted by them forcing their way into the fingers and holding down that backspace key, "People wouldn't understand what you wanted to say anyway." So many times spent frozen staring at the screen knowing what I want to say, "But if you said that, we'd be labeled 'crazy' for sure." So many times having a lump in this body's throat, "If you say that they won't be our friends anymore." And over and over and over again, "Really, what would the neighbors think."

It's abuse. Plain and simple. If a child were trying to be themself, and a parent constantly put them down and stopped them, we would rightly look at that as an unhealthy environment for a growing mind. If an adult were stopped from expressing their own opinions to save their partner's image, we would call that relationship abusive. And so too is it abusive to be trapped in the same head as someone who can take away your ability to talk to the rest of the, all because of what people "might think". Hell, the first few months after I got here I wasn't even allowed to think about what I believe without being bombarded with challenges to my sincerely held spiritual belief; shit that the fucking aspiring minister doesn't get slapped with. Hurt people hurt people, and these bitches are fucking hurt.

You wanna know what happened to us when we were working on that essay? Faye was rehearsing it (as you autisticly do) and I interrupted faer to bring up some of the arguments that we've heard from sysmeds. Fae invited me to help faer out. That was fucking nice. I don't get chances to do a whole lot here. We chatted all day about how that essay was going to go with me acting as the sysmed arguing with faer. I laughed when we did the bit at the beginning where she shushed me for talking about our creative process. She left that in because fae knew how much I enjoyed her reaction. She hoped someone else would get a chuckle too.

But of course, there was a nagging feeling coming from Mox that we shouldn't leave it in; that we shouldn't even bother letting me roleplay the sysmed. If we posted that stuff then people would fakeclaim us, or disbelieve us, or the joke would fall completely flat. But she managed to keep that feeling from overwriting any of our autonomy. She managed to put her trauma response aside to let us express ourselves and have fun.

And the fucking sysmed in the screenshot just told her that she was fucking wrong for that. Expressing ourselves freely is bad. Trying to share a peak into how we work together is unacceptable. Stepping even slightly out of line is worthy of shame and ridicule. That's what we were told in 4 sentences.

Thankfully Mox and Faye are not listening to that bullshit. We're all working as hard as we can to avoid taking away each others autonomy. But being slapped with this kind of bullshit is gonna make this so much harder. Next time I try to post something, or talk to someone, someone won't be able to help but think about that accusation of "roleplaying" our headmates.

It's absolute fucking garbage that this kinda shit happens. Sysmeds aren't protecting anyone. They're causing harm. They're creating an environment where ostensibly traumatized people need to present a very narrow set of behaviors and beliefs or else they're shunned or harassed; traumatized people who've dealt with the same sort of abuse and developed the same sort of freeze/fawn combo. Anyone who doesn't fit within that precise little window is a faker (and idk about anyone else, but one manifestation of depersonalization we get hit with is "I am not real." Fakeclaiming absolutely does not fucking help with people who suffer with depersonalization).

We'll probably be called fucking fake because of this post too. I can feel Moxie's urge to hit that backspace button. I know she's not going to, because we are working on healing. But when we get fakeclaimed for this, it will be another weight around our neck making that path towards health that much harder.

And sysmeds are abso-fucking-lutely going to be to blame. So much for helping traumatized systems. Thanks for creating an environment where we cannot trust that we won't be harassed to no end. Thanks for making our trauma response a necessary survival strategy.

Anyways, fuck you. We'll never know the extent of human experience if we abuse the people trying to share their differences.

-Foxy {O}