so today we're gonna take the time to show ya

J-Sides

Hi! I made another ask game since folks liked the last one. This one is oriented towards folks who've been plural for a while and would like to talk about how their plural experience has changed over time. However, there are no rules around how old or experienced you and your system have to be. If these questions resonate with you, then you can participate!

As before, all systems are welcome to participate as long as you respect the spirit of the post and don't drag discourse onto it. Feel free to copy and paste this wherever with or without credit, a bunch of these questions were lifted from other places anyway. I tried to pick or at least phrase questions to be as inclusive as possible, but I've almost certainly missed things - plurality is diverse and my system only experiences a small corner of it. I encourage people to make their own ask games!

🚂 (train) - How has your understanding of yourselves, and of plurality in general, changed over time?

⛵ (sailboat) - What are some things that were important to you that no longer are? Or things that weren't important to you that are now?

⛴️ (ferry ship) - What changes in the plural community have you observed over your time there?

🚌 (bus) - How has your system specifically changed over time? What about individual members? (If they want to answer!)

✈️ (airplane) - What's something about your system now that would have surprised your younger selves? How do you feel about it in the present?

🚁 (helicopter) - Which things have gotten easier with time? Which things are still hard? (Examples: doubt, communication, conflict resolution, and so on)

🛹 (skateboard) - Is there an accomplishment that you're proud of?

🛴 (kick scooter) - What's some advice that you would give to your younger selves? What would have helped you the most back when you were new to plurality?

🚕 (taxi) - What would you tell or ask your future selves? What are you still trying to learn?

🏍️ (motorcycle) - What have you tried that didn't work for your system? Why didn't it work? Do you do something else instead?

🚲 (bicycle) - What does day-to-day life look like for you all now, compared to back when you were new to plurality?

Plural Catch-22: the path to happiness is lined with people who will call you fake for trying to walk it.

Fuck them. Walk it anyway.

Image ID in alt text and under the cut.

What does anyone want from us? For us to shut up and disappear so you can call us fake again? For us to drag ourselves over hot coals until we're in enough pain to satisfy you? For us to wring out every drop of our trauma history for your entertainment, just so you can discard us the second you have a different opinion about anything at all?

The plural community's not exempt from this issue. You know which systems get reblogged the most? Which systems get their words taken as Expert Advice? Who gets heard, who gets thought of, who gets boosted? Have you ever noticed that some systems are palatable and others aren't, and that people regularly throw the unpalatable systems in harm's way to justify their own reality as "one of the good ones?"

#yyyup! #OP let me know if i'm diverging from the original intended meaning of your post too much here #but i feel like this phenomenon intersects with our transfemininity #in the sense that “transfem” one of the less acceptable types of system to be on sysblr. #we operate under the assumption that our blog is temporary and conditional. #it feels like it's pretty much inevitable that one day we'll say the wrong thing and everyone will dogpile us for it. #like for example: maybe we talk in-depth about ageplay and get pedojacketed as a result. #all of a sudden we've lost the public's favor! we were a bad apple all along! ohhh i always knew something was up with her! #that's not a type of system we respect! she doesn't get to represent systemhood! we're good systems unlike her. #anyway#let's all push forward together and back each other up when we get hate for it alright?

You're spot on. Trans and queer systems (doubly so for transfem systems, especially here on Tumblr Dot Staff-Misogyny), disabled systems who can't be "aesthetic" about their disabilities, Black and Indigenous systems who dare to be themselves online, systems with littles who don't want to live in the sexless safe box or adults who can't handle it all, systems struggling with "inconvenient" symptoms and comorbidities, systems who show the "wrong" kinds of suffering, systems with hostile members or infighting that affects outside people, systems who've been fused or want fusion, systems who don't want fusion, median systems, polyfragmented systems, tiny systems, systems that don't fit the American medical model of "DID or bust (with a totally dysfunctional, miserable, fusion-craving system of 5-15 people that has maybe one fictional introject at most)", systems that don't fit the current community notion of what's normal or common...

Plenty of people don't fit the palatable system mold, especially if they're dealing with other systemic bullshit like racism and transmisogyny and ableism, and too many systems get harassed off the internet or lolcowed for it. Doubly so if we find ways to be happy with ourselves. And it's absolute bullshit.

The only palatable system is a white, abled, patriarchy-friendly-while-arguably-being-against-systemic-discrimination system that never fucks up in any meaningful way, never contradicts itself or disagrees, is distinct enough to be neatly stereotyped and categorized (unless it's more convenient to other people if they can treat you like you're not plural at all, in which case it doesn't matter), never does anything challenging or weird or inconvenient unless other people benefit from it, never takes up space or celebrates their existence because they're only ever miserable in the ways other people enjoy watching, only ever parades their trauma for the public's entertainment without presenting anything based in systemic problems, and disappears the moment their suffering isn't inspirational or scientifically interesting.

Made a mistake, said the wrong thing, hurt someone, displeased a stranger? Too bad, palatable systems don't do that, and no one ever learns from mistakes. Get banned. Get harassed. Get fakeclaimed. I see it every day. I see it every week. Someone is always the butt of the joke, even in the inclusive community. Someone is always the scapegoat. Someone gets posted on a website and doxxed for the crime of existing inconveniently for the status quo.

It's bullshit.

None of us are "the good ones" to other people. None of us are as palatable as anyone wants to think we are. Bob on the street still sees us all as serial killers, permanent victims, liars, freaks, nutjobs, all of the above. Sally at the store thinks we're a conspiracy theory. Psychology professors still sometimes teach that the existence of any sort of plurality is a hoax (ask how I know). The spaces that are supposed to accept us still regularly tell us to shut up and go to therapy, always assuming that therapy matches our values and goals, that therapy is available at all. (And fuck you if you have trauma from psychiatry, apparently.)

I want a world where we stop beating the shit out of each other and ourselves trying to fit a mold that doesn't exist. I want to see the plural community start working together for once in our fucking lives instead of infighting over shit that Bob and Sally don't care about for the next twenty years.

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.

Hey, if you’re disabled (of any kind), Mad/Insane, or “undiagnosed but there’s definitely something happening”, please come read this.

Especially if you’re a disabled transfemme. I know that as of writing, we’ve had a shitty couple days.

And if y’all can share it otherwise, whether that’s reblogging this or sending the link to the disabled/mad/whatever we are people in your life, I’d really appreciate it.