The Quandary

Prog - Untitled

24 x 24, acrylic on wood panel. Comments and reblogs welcome.

Since this painting is meant to be explored by touch, I’m adding a detailed description.

This painting is a commission for a wedding gift for a bride who is blind. Since she has almost no vision at all, Prog decided to make a painting that is meant to be felt, not seen.

And believe it or not, it gets better. Rosa’s also gives out sweatshirts to the homeless (or sells them to the general public) that has information on local soup kitchens and even computer training in the area, on an insert sewn inside the sweatshirt.

(Details)

black and white morality wherein anyone who doesn’t believe/think/live exactly as I do is a dirty sinner Problematic and probably a predatory monster

everyone is a sinner Problematic but true believers people who activist the right way according to my worldview are still better than everyone else, and I will act in accordance to this belief in my own superiority to let everyone else know I’m better than them because I found Jesus am the most woke

casual and fucking omnipresent equations of womanhood with softness/goodness/purity/nurturing to remind every woman who isn’t/doesn’t want to be any of those things that they’re doing it wrong

aggressive desexualization (particularly of women’s sexuality, to the point where it may as well not exist at all) accompanied by pastels [not a criticism directed ace ppl having a right to sex-free content and spaces but specifically targeted at a wider problem resulting from the previous point]

YOU’RE VALID AND JESUS LOVES YOU and neither of these platitudes achieves a goddamn thing

historical context is for people who care about nuance and we don’t have time for either (see: black and white morality)

lots of slogans and quotes and nice little soundbites to memorize but does anybody actually study the source material with a critical eye to make their own informed analysis

the answer is no

I’ve been to bible study groups don’t @ me I know what the fuck I’m talking about

Good Christians™ Nice Gays™ don’t fraternize with/let themselves be influenced by non-Christians those terrible queers

all the media one consumes must be ideologically pure or it will surely harm the children

it is Our Sacred Duty to protect the children from Everything, thus ensuring their innocence/purity/etc until such time as they are idk probably 25 years old

literally just “think of the children” moral panic y’all can fuckin miss me with that

people who don’t conform to the dominant thinking WILL be excommunicated/driven from the social group, and any wrong treatment they suffer will be seen as a justified consequence of their wrong thinking

Like, right now, I’m trying to imagine what my life would’ve been like if non-DID plurals hadn’t been existing publicly on the Internet.

And I really do think the idea that our multi was not trauma based was HUGELY useful to us at the time!  We COULD NOT handle our trauma history at that time.  To do so would’ve… I mean, if I’m honest, it would’ve ruined everything.  We would’ve crashed, while still involved with our family, which would’ve meant moving back in with them, and… it would’ve been really, really bad.  I only see it ending with us being institutionalized, committing suicide, or ending up homeless on a more long-term basis.  I mean, the Homeless Year was bad, but we had long since come out, transitioned, and built up a strong support network.  Once it was over, we were in a position to actually DEAL with all that trauma.  We would not have been able to really any sooner than we were.

Exclusionism just makes both groups look bad.

That being said, if you are acephobic, transphobic, terf, swerf, anti-endo, biphobic, ableist, or any related stripe of human being who is trying hard to gain respectability by passing on the disrespect of your oppressors to the next group down the chain:

That thought isn’t helpful right now.

Now is not the time to think about it. I can think about it later.

This is irrational. I’m going to let it go.

I won’t argue with an irrational thought.

This is not an emergency. I can slow down and think clearly about what I need.

This feels threatening and urgent, but it really isn’t.

I don’t have to be perfect to be OK.

I don’t have to figure out this question. The best thing to do is just drop it.

It’s OK to make mistakes.

I already know from my past experiences that these fears are irrational.

I have to take risks in order to be free. I’m willing to take this risk.

It’s OK that I just had that thought/image, and it doesn’t mean anything. I don’t have to pay attention to it.

I’m ready to move on now.

I can handle being wrong.

I don’t have to suffer like this. I deserve to feel comfortable.

That’s not my responsibility.

That’s not my problem.

I’ve done the best I can.

do you know how harmful and fucked up it is to tell every endogenic system that they are “misguided systems with DID or OSDD1″?

you said that youre “helping them find resources” but like

if they dont have trauma youre going to be directing them to resources that they dont need and that might confuse them or harm them

these are resources with systems with DID and OSDD1

these are resources for people with trauma that caused their systems

there are spaces for endogenic systems that can help them

these exist for a reason

they exist to help people and give them advice and support for what they’re going through

instead of directing them to these supportive places where they can meet people like them and get help and support that they need

youre sending them to spaces for people who are specifically people with trauma and telling them that they HAVE to have trauma even if they dont

people have said a shit ton of times in those spaces that endogenic systems dont belong in spaces specifically for traumatic systems and they hate it when they end up there

it makes them feel uncomfortable and its invading their space along with hurting the confused person you were trying to “help”you cant diagnose DID or OSDD1 over the internet

saying that endogenic systems all secretly have DID and OSDD1 is doing this

you are not their therapists

you have no right to tell them what disorders they have or what theyve been through

Not saying that’s what all, or maybe even most folks out there are aiming to do, but the pervasive double think regarding why endos are simultaneously shunned from trauma-focused spaces because they don’t belong there AND simultaneously forced to conform to the standards OF those spaces is… interesting.

Wouldn’t be surprised if it were the result of different types of militant gatekeepers working against each other or something.

So every once in a while, up here in the frigid north, I find myself in the unenviable position of explaining the Texas penile, er, penal code to Yankees.  For those of you who don’t know,  yes, it IS still illegal to sell a dildo or a vibrator in the state of Texas. (Butt plugs are okay, since the anus is not considered a sexual orifice in the state.) The sodomy laws finally got repealed in ‘03 or ‘04 or so, but the sex toy laws are still on the books.  And it is a FELONY to own six or more, because then you’re considered a distributor.

This means that should you have the misfortune of trying to buy a sex toy in Texas, you CAN NOT call them by their names.  They are internal massagers or educational models. (And god have mercy on your poor kinky soul should you want a VIBRATING dildo.  Good luck with that!  Have you considered sticking with butt toys?  It’s easier.)

A documentary got made a while back on the whole ridiculous thing, Dildo Diaries.  The Youtube clip above sums it up better than I ever could, though the film predates the decriminalization of sodomy.

Now, we grew up in the state of Texas.  We spent more time there than anywhere else on earth.  We were there to celebrate when the sodomy laws got repealed!  This is still recent history to us!  And it’s pretty transparently obvious that these laws exist for no other reason than to control those of “deviant” sexuality, particularly those of women and queers.

All of which boils down to: I am hardly EVER going to be on the side of people trying to purge fandom or tumblr of “problematic” sexuality.  Because for Chrissakes, I grew up not actually knowing what a sex toy was until high school, being given those awful abstinence talks where a non-virgin girl was compared to a torn-up paper heart with nothing to offer her husband.  I grew up in a state that seemed to hope that if it just made everything but heterosexual marital reproductive sex inconvenient, dangerous or illegal, they’d prevent those things from happening.

But the thing is, it didn’t work.  People still sold sex toys, still had premarital, queer, strap-on sex.  No matter how hard you push back, you CAN NOT STOP someone who is truly determined from having the sex you morally disapprove of.  You just drive it underground.

“Gay” is used as an insult. It is used to be demeaning. Its used to discriminate. And yet its used as the all mighty umbrella - gay rights, gay marriage, gay community - when discussing the entire community.

Gay gets used as a slur. Queer gets used as a slur. But I don’t walk up to gay people and say “your identity is a slur, you know that right” or get pissed when they say “the gay community” when they mean the whole community.

Personal identity and preference in terms, even harmful words that get used as slurs, are not questioned; except for the word Queer.

Queer gets shut down. Queer people get others in their faces saying “your identity is a slur!” Queer people don’t have the freedom to identify in a community, but are forced under other terms against their will due to hypocrisy and double standards.

It was meant to denote sexually perverse people, most frequently sex workers and those who hired them. Anyone who participated in anything but married, vanilla, straight sex might have been referred to as “gay,” including any suspected LGBT person.

The word (already being one frequently used on the community,) was reclaimed as a community identifier when the community wanted to disconnect from the clinical and diagnostic implications of “homosexual.”

There is record of queer being reclaimed and used as a personal identifier literally before the popularization of gay. Both words are reclaimed slurs with negative histories, and BOTH are used as slurs against the community still to this day.

Also, queer is reclaimed in a particularly empowering way. It doesn’t just mean “same-sex attraction” but encompasses a whole spectrum of attractions and gender orientations. It’s a word that says to asexuals, pansexuals, bisexuals, trans folks, genderfluid and genderqueer and genderless folks and people who are still figuring themselves out, “hey, you’ve got a home here. We don’t need to categorize you to love you.” 

This is important because there are a lot of divisions within the LGBTQ+ world, and in particular cis gay men and cis lesbians often overlook or exclude trans, bi and asexual people. Queer is the only word that not only demands equal acceptance for everyone, but leaves the door open for words and descriptors that haven’t even been invented yet. 

Lmao yeah! the pushback against this idea is overt and disgusting and I don’t trust anybody who perpetuates it. 

Queer is full of the types of people who don’t make good poster children for the middle class assimilationist cis gay couple just looking to get married and have some kids. Queer forces us to realize the fight didn’t end with gay marriage, and cis gays are gonna have to step out of the spotlight sometimes, and realize cis gays have privilege, and fight for someone with less. Trans people, nonbinary people, people in nontraditional relationship structures, aromantics, asexuals, sex workers. Heck more and more bisexual people these days are switching over to queer because the amount of biphobia in the so-called lgBt community is so alienating, and also because so many of us feel the term bisexual reinforces a false gender dichotomy and we’re too tired of jokes about kitchenware to use pansexual.

Text of a manifesto originally passed out by people marching with the ACT UP contingent in the New York Gay Pride Day parade, 1990. -

An Army of Lovers Cannot Lose Being queer is not about a right to privacy; it is about the freedom to be public, to just be who we are. It means everyday fighting oppression; homophobia, racism, misogyny, the bigotry of religious hypocrites and our own self-hatred. (We have been carefully taught to hate ourselves.) And now of course it means fighting a virus as well, and all those homo-haters who are using AIDS to wipe us off the face of the earth. Being queer means leading a different sort of life. It’s not about the mainstream, profit-margins, patriotism, patriarchy or being assimilated. It’s not about executive directors, privilege and elitism. It’s about being on the margins, defining ourselves; it’s about gender-f— and secrets, what’s beneath the belt and deep inside the heart; it’s about the night. Being queer is “grass roots” because we know that everyone of us, every body, every c—, every heart and a– and d— is a world of pleasure waiting to be explored. Everyone of us is a world of infinite possibility. We are an army because we have to be. We are an army because we are so powerful. (We have so much to fight for; we are the most precious of endangered species.) And we are an army of lovers because it is we who know what love is. Desire and lust, too. We invented them. We come out of the closet, face the rejection of society, face firing squads, just to love each other! Every time we f—, we win. We must fight for ourselves (no else is going to do it) and if in that process we bring greater freedom to the world at large then great. (We’ve given so much to that world: democracy, all the arts, the concepts of love, philosophy and the soul, to name just a few of the gifts from our ancient Greek Dykes, Fags.) Let’s make every space a Lesbian and Gay space. Every street a part of our sexual geography. A city of yearning and then total satisfaction. A city and a country where we can be safe and free and more. We must look at our lives and see what’s best in them, see what is queer and what is straight and let that straight chaff fall away! Remember there is so, so little time. And I want to be a lover of each and every one of you. Next year, we march naked.

We’ve met some bad eggs in the non-trauma part of the community community. But we’ve also met a lot of bad eggs in the traumagenic part, and so very many awesome people on both sides. As it simply goes with communities in general. 

Stand on one foot.

Pat your head. (keep going)

Move your other hand in circles over your belly. (keep going)

Move your airborne foot in circles (and keep going)

Cross your eyes. (keep them crossed)

Sing / recite a poem / recite your times tables.

This may sound impossible, but I can do this and I don’t know why. I can even spontaneously switch motions, and start patting my belly and rubbing my head, or switch direction on a circle or turn it into a spiral.

Anyway, we can do all of this right up to the last two bullets, which doesn’t surprise us given how damn difficult making words and mouthsounds is for us, and how obscuring of vision immediately throws our brain into a panic. We can hum along to a song that’s playing, though! 

The less we think about doing any of this, while we do this, the better we can do it. The best we can describe it is that we sort of set up a mental “script” by paying attention to the action and its feeling, then splitting it off from us and putting it “away” from us. So yeah, it’s a dissociation thing for us!

(We can’t switch motions, though. That requires attention.) 

I kinda want to make a taxonomy of Tumblr Social Fallacies, ala the Geek Social Fallacies of yore.  Because while there are many things about the UI of tumblr that facilitate confusion and discord (stripping context from everything, broken functionality), I feel there are also some specific social tropes in play that give tumblr a distinctive flavor of fail.

To quote from Michael Suileabhain-Wilson, “Social fallacies are particularly insidious because they tend to be exaggerated versions of notions that are themselves entirely reasonable and unobjectionable. It’s difficult to debunk the pathological fallacy without seeming to argue against its reasonable form; therefore, once it establishes itself, a social fallacy is extremely difficult to dislodge.“

Here’s what I’ve noticed so far, in my random tumblr circles:

- creating a person with a detailed history and past that they can never return to is likely to be deeply traumatic

- creating a person who’s confined to a world where their experiences will never be taken as seriously as everyone else’s is likely to be deeply traumatic

- creating a person who will forever be made to doubt their reality, identity, and whether their emotions and thoughts “count” as much as other people’s is likely to be deeply traumatic

- body dysphoria

- creating a person who can never escape your mind with the intent that they’ll be your friend, help you learn things, etc is… ethically dubious at best and i’m resisting the urge to scream “IS HORRIFYING SLAVERY” but i recognize that i don’t have all the details here i just… this squicks me out i’m sorry

- they are going to want to go home. they are going to want to go home. if you can give them at least a facsimile of home and their friends and family in your head then great but otherwise remember that ｔｈｅｙ ａｒｅ ｇｏｉｎｇ ｔｏ ｗａｎｔ ｔｏ ｇｏ ｈｏｍｅ

- you are creating life and you should take this with the seriousness of having a child or, if the intelligence level is appropriate, a pet

source: all the people i know who were brought here UNintentionally and have these problems

The usual advice is to avoid giving tulpas a backstory or another world where they’re from. This is somewhat confounded by the inevitable chorus of “well I gave my tulpa a backstory and they turned out fine,” which… while they’re probably not lying, I would very much like to know the factors that go into this somehow not being a big deal for them.

It’s also a standard line that making a tulpa should be treated with the seriousness and responsibility of having a child, but again I doubt this is always heeded in practice. I think this is the right framework for thinking about tulpamancy ethics, and – as a neurodivergent trans person – I do think it’s morally permissible to bring someone into the world even knowing they’ll face challenges and difficulties that others might not. 

… but at the same time, it’s absolutely not okay to bring someone into the world without honestly evaluating whether they’ll have a life worth living, and it’s not okay to ignore or downplay the challenges they’re facing or going to face. Whether a negative experience is traumatic or merely very unpleasant has as much to do with your support system, environment, and coping ability as it does with the event itself, and I don’t think the tulpamancy community spends nearly enough energy trying to provide this. It is awful and potentially traumatic that people don’t take your experiences or your existence seriously. It is awful and potentially traumatic to doubt your identity or your reality or innate worth. It’s tulpamancers’ responsibility to mitigate these things as much as they can, and the first step of that would be to acknowledge them.

(Sometimes I see a comment to the effect of “For my fourth birthday my host let me have my own reddit account to talk to people” and I briefly want to burn the whole world to the ground.)

I too am incredibly squicked out by the idea of creating someone specifically to be a friend, or study buddy, or (and it happens, despite all the warnings) lover. I of all people know how much believing you exist for a particular purpose can fuck you up – and in my case that belief wasn’t even anyone’s fault. Add to that the power imbalance between creator and created and the impossibility of making a clean break when you share a brain with someone and you get an even worse mess. 

In the end I stick around in tulpamancy spaces despite all this, for the sake of the people who exist regardless of whether their creator’s decision was wise. But that doesn’t mean I’m particularly comfortable with the creation process in general, or even that I think singlets can possibly know what they’re getting into. 

i’m not a tulpa and i’ve never actually been around the tulpamancy community - i’ve just seen posts on here that, individually and collectively, were really starting to make me uncomfortable. i’m disappointed to hear that my worst suspicions were true. glad to have started the conversation about it, at least. it’s good that people are speaking out and i hope more feel able to.

Before anyone in our group ever heard of tulpas, someone here realized that a new system member could be created intentionally and that some of us were born this way about 20 years ago. We don’t talk much about this because people tend to come down hard on the idea. We don’t remember much about how or why someone decided to expand our system back then, but the impression is that it was a matter of necessity.

When our group started to come to terms with being multiple and accepting each other about 9 years ago, several members of our group started to realize that there was some kind of “gap” in our system, like there should be a member there but there was no one. I don’t really know how to explain this. I wasn’t around much at the time. But from what I understand, a member of our group suggested that we work together to create a new person.

The idea was brought up in the LJ multiplicity community, and the result was a mix of disgust, confusion, and outrage. The points you brought up above were mentioned. However, in the end, the group decided to still go ahead, because:

- We were coming to terms with who and what we are, and decided that there was nothing wrong with us. We were creating a new person under the understanding that we are okay and have every right to exist.

- The new member of our group would have no “backstory” other than “we thought you should exist and wanted to welcome you into the world.”

- Regardless of whether the world at large would ever accept them, we would, and that was more important. We accept each other and that keeps us sane, and the opinions of other people are not as important.

- The new member would be allowed and encouraged to help create themselves as they formed, including choosing their own body image and personality. He eventually settled on a form that looks mostly like our body.

- We recognized that we were creating life, and took that seriously, and recognized that we could never promise any new person that their life would be easy- only that we would support them and affirm them in any way we could.

That new system member is now a very valued and respected member of our group. He’s not perfect, but he’s loved. He completes our system and rounds it out in way I can’t explain- he just belongs here. He’s happy to be here.

I don’t know much about tulpas, but I like to imagine that this is how things are done. It’s frustrating and saddening that others don’t put the time and consideration into what this entails.

Backstory: mixed-origins system (endogenic, traumagenic, and one tulpa who we accidentally created) who discovered plurality via the tulpamancy community over three years ago, and initially thought we were purely tulpamancy in origin. We eventually branched out to the wider plural communities and began uncovering our true origins, but with the exceptions of a few hiatuses here and there we’ve maintained a steady presence in the community. We do a lot of thinking on the topic, have talked to a lot of tulpamancers and tulpas publicly and in private and help out as mods around some of the spaces. This post will be several of us speaking.

Long post, more below the cut. Don’t consider this a direct answer to the OP or any of the other posts, but something more like a supplementary reading.