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Plural self advocacy is exactly what it says on the tin: plurals taking control of our own lives and being in charge of how we’re represented. It’s what happens when we speak for ourselves instead of letting singlet academics do it for us. Plural self advocacy has a long history that stretches before the existence of the internet, and it has made a difference. Here are some notable milestones, and what they’ve done for us.

1987ish: Truddi Chase is giving interviews (x, x, x), very openly insisting that her headmates are real people and that integration is not a solution for them.

February 1989: The first issue of Many Voices is published. This newsletter for and by trauma survivors with dissociative disorders is likely one of the first places that plurals could speak about their experiences on their own terms. It would run for over 20 years until 2012, when it was bequeathed to the ISSTD so that the issues could be made publicly available.

1993: Richard P. Kluft’s ‘Clinical Perspectives on Multiple Personality Disorder’ mentions Truddi Chase’s outspokenness against integration, disdainfully. ‘Some perceive the alters as real people’, it says. This paints a clear picture of how multiplicity was perceived at the time.

1995: Astraea’s web is created. This site continues to be one of the biggest plurality resources out there, and Astraea themselves have had a wide reach in plural activism - they’ll come up several more times in this article. They have curated a wide selection of sources on early accounts of plurality, plural involvement with legal issues, and the struggle against psychiatric abuse by all kinds of neurodiverse people, not just plurals.

1998: The Vickis begin to compile experiences of the ‘midcontinuum’, giving us the first terminology to describe median experiences. This is also, as far as we’re aware, the origin of ‘plural’ as an umbrella term.

2001?: darkpersonalities publishes ‘why we are not MPD/DID’, generally regarded as the first known instance of a system explicitly separating themselves from the ‘disorder’ definition. The empowered multiplicity movement grows from this. While many people take a cynical, bitter view towards people who still identify with their diagnosis, it begins to be associated with more sympathetic stances as it develops (x, x, x). Many of us look back disapprovingly on darkpersonalities’ attitude towards triggers and survivorship, but their role was still foundational to the concept of empowered multiplicity.

2002: Tim Bayne writes on the moral defensibility of forced integration, laying out a grounded  philosophical argument for considering non-host plurans autonomous people. It’s unknown what influenced him to write this paper, or whether any plurals were consulted.

2002?: The activist group Pavilion is formed. Their activities include outreach towards mental health professionals and academics, interviewing for radio stations, creating informational pamphlets and compiling resources for plurals and interested singlets.

2003: Matt Ruff, author of Set This House In Order, acknowledges Astraea and a plural friend-of-a-friend for introducing him to natural plurality and the idea that plurals don’t have to integrate, inspiring his book.

2011-2013: The Coalition for DSM-5 Reform writes launches a campaign to urge the DSM taskforce to change much of the proposed writing. This gets a lot of attention from plurals, and as such the DSM-5 revises its definition of DID to include distress/impairment, and for the first time accepts the self-reporting of plurality as valid evidence (x, x). It’s worth noting that this is an incredibly small step - as Astraea’s web says, ‘It was not proposed because therapists are beginning to recognize that non-disordered multiplicity exists; it was proposed in order to accommodate members of cultures and races where being more than one person is contextually normal.’ But it’s a step, nonetheless, that begins to recognize that plurals are the ultimate authorities on our own experiences of ourselves.

May 11, 2015: VICE interviews systems including Astraea and Oure Gaiya for a piece questioning if plurality is always a disorder.

2016: The plurality playbook is published internally at Google. It covers advice for plurals on succeeding in the workplace while dealing with the specific challenges that plurals face, and advice for singlets on respecting and assisting their plural coworkers.

January 18th, 2019: The Double Gears system (well known at the time as streamer and speedrunner protomagicalgirl) disclose their plurality on Hbomberguy’s DK64 stream for Mermaids. The hashtag #pluralgang trends on Twitter as a result, encouraging many people on twitter to come out as plural and many more to realize they’re plural by being introduced to the concept for the first time. #pluralgang has been a consistently active hashtag for the year since its inception and continues to be used to share resources, organize meetups, promote activism and generally remind plurals that they’re not alone.

The plurality playbook is also publicly published around now. In the new foreword, the Lizzes cite the activity surrounding #pluralgang as their motivation for this.

March 2019: The first Plural Positivity World Conference is held. It was created as a counter-conference to the one hosted annually by the ISSTD. The fees for attending the World Congress on Complex Dissociation and Trauma start at $200 for just one day, making attending near-impossible for the lay person. As the Crisses put it, “The ISST-D holding meetings, disseminating information, creating policy, teaching new standards for treatment, discussing new options, or sharing their research findings about us should not be done in a place that by design excludes us.” The Plural Positivity World Conference will run again in 2020.

December 25th, 2019: Power to the Plurals announces The Plural Association, a peer network for plurals which intends to provide phone, email and live chat helplines.

To this day, the overwhelming majority of plural activism has happened outside of the medical model. Improvements in the treatment of plurals have come from us being seen as people, and singlets seeing us as people has come from us viewing ourselves that way - by making spaces for us to understand ourselves and create narratives that aren’t bounded by pathology. Even changes within psychiatry have mostly been motivated by pressure from plurals demanding fairer treatment. It is good, and necessary, for us to speak for ourselves. We have done so much, and still have so much more to do.

This month’s article was written by Joey, one of our community mods and volunteers, and voted on by our Patrons. You can write for us by applying through our volunteering page, and decide what ideas we tackle by pledging $5 or more a month.

Lemme propose a little (actually very big) paradigm shift in how we talk about the validity and understanding of experiences, especially others' experiences.

So to understand exactly what I'm proposing, I'm going to start briefly with how it is now.

This is meant to be taken on a general nonhuman community level, just to be clear, and isn't meant to promote anti-science views or anything outside of the intended topic; this is a philosophical construct for the purpose of discussing philosophical topics of being other-than-human.

There's Reality, which is considered to be something you can prove that we all take part in whether we like it or not, and Experience, which is considered to take place in Reality, and yet be subjective to the one experiencing it and their interpretation. (Capital letters to set these concepts apart from the usual usage of the terms.) In Reality, you can Experience being nonhuman, but since you cannot prove in any way to anyone else that you really are nonhuman, you are, basically, at the whim of others' interpretations of your Experience, and Reality functionally does not include this Experience because of its unprovability.

Now this is a realist approach, and it's largely functional for most day to day purposes, but when it comes to philosophical Experiences that are absolutely true to us, even though they run directly counter to someone else's Experiences...you can, probably, see how the realist approach breaks down rapidly and engenders poor faith arguments over believability instead of conversation about substance.

This isn't just a nonhuman/Otherkin/therian/etc. thing either, I've watched the same devolution happen in pagan spheres, in witchcraft spheres, even in gender and orientation spheres...literally anywhere you have intense, internal, personal Experience as a basis for a community, this breakdown will happen. It's unavoidable with the current paradigm, which proposes a One True And Correct Reality, from which is derived judgement on whether or not any given Experience is acceptable or not.

I propose we throw the whole-ass paradigm in the dumpster and start again.

Instead of understanding there to be only one shared reality between all of us, and that some of us must therefore be mistaken with regards to how it works regardless of our own experiences, I propose that instead, we understand that (in the context of engaging with the unknown, anyway, this is meant to be philosophical and not anti-science as I said before) there is Consensus Reality, and Specific Reality. This is an idealistic philosophy, and I think it's potentially a lot more useful in how we approach comparing and contrasting being other-than-human.

Consensus Reality is what we generally live in...sort of. It's a vague average of all the individual Specific Realities that people actually experience. Consensus Reality is influenced by culture, religion, geographic location, politics, current events, history, and the lives and opinions of every person within it, though being an average of all of those things, any single person cannot really influence it meaningfully. It is important to note that Consensus Reality is still not Objective Reality, in the sense that even Consensus Reality will differ from place to place, time to time, and people to people. Objective Reality is essentially outside the scope of the discussion.

Specific Reality is the body of lived experiences, derived beliefs, and assigned meanings of each individual. It's influenced by Consensus Reality to some extent, but not governed entirely by it. One's Specific Reality does not necessarily encompass or agree with anyone else's Specific Reality (though of course multiple people can and do agree to share parts of their Specific Reality, all the time).

For example, my Specific Reality is that magic exists, that I can astral travel, and that when I do so, the body that I inhabit is fae. This is, for me, 100% true. Another person's Specific Reality is that there is no such thing as magic nor the astral nor fae, only God, God's powers, humans, and netherworldly powers that work against God which may pose as magic, astral beings, or fae to trick people. This is, for them, 100% true. Yet another's Specific Reality holds that there is no magic, there are no fae, there is no astral realm, and there is no God nor gods, nor any powers that work against them. For them this is also 100% true.

None of these Specific Realities are invalidated by each other, even though they directly contradict each other, because we are now discussing them in a paradigm in which none of them are more or less valid than any other given thing. In this paradigm, I can only really speak for my own Specific Reality.

The point of this paradigm shift is to encourage sharing information and ideas, rather than being correct, since there is now, technically, no 'correct' to even be. Even agreement with Consensus Reality isn't necessarily being correct. Consensus Reality is a useful tool as a statistical baseline, and a broad space in which it's generally good to be able to function, but it's not much other use to the conversation at hand. The closest concept to correctness that can exist is if the information from one Specific Reality is useful to someone else in their Specific Reality. If it is? Great, they've learned something. If it's not, there is no judgement or being wrong to assign; it just doesn't pertain, and that's fine.

Also, as I said before, there is no direct way that the average single entity can influence Consensus Reality, because Consensus Reality is nothing more than a statistical mean of all the individual Specific Realities in it. No one worldview can be considered the 'default' worldview, only the closest to average, and being closest to average doesn't confer any special meaning or correctness to it. However, unlike Consensus Reality, Specific Reality is infinitely malleable; an idea you share with someone could be the thing that makes things fit together or completely transform for them. Or vice versa!

ALSO, I've been thinking this way for a while, and I can tell people don't really grasp it because of the pushback I get every time I say "humans will always perceive you as a human because you cannot prove otherwise to them." This is not an insult, nor is it an invalidation. It's a factual statement on Consensus Reality, which says that the majority of the time, when a random human sees a random body who looks human, they expect that body to be inhabited by exactly one human mind. It also doesn't matter, because Consensus Reality doesn't get a vote on your own Specific Reality, which is in fact more real by virtue of it being an actually-lived experience and not a vague, statistical conglomerate of a bunch of other people's experiences, which itself has probably not been lived as-is by anyone. The point of the statement is, so what? Understand that people do in fact judge books by their covers, decide to not let this stop you, then do your thing anyway. Actively doing your thing is actually the best way any one person can change Consensus Reality, because by living your Specific Reality as openly as you're able, others may choose to adopt parts of it.

It's not enough to just say, "Ah, okay, I'll just talk about it like that instead," by the way. I'm not proposing a simple change in terminology (and if anyone does want to adopt it, uh, don't worry about keeping the capital letters, it gets to be a bit much to type). You really need to pull your assumptions about what's 'normal' and what's 'default' and what's 'real' up by the roots. Start engaging with other people's nonhuman narratives with the intent to understand them entirely on their own merits and no others, as that other person experienced them; not Consensus Reality's rules, not your own beliefs, nothing at all but their own Specific Reality. Only after that can you really start to grasp what it is and what it means to that person. To be completely clear, under an idealistic philosophy, If I believe I am a fae, and you don't believe fae exist, then I also believe that fae do not exist for you regardless of my beliefs, and you also believe that they do exist for me regardless of your beliefs. This is different than me saying, "Fae exist but this person cannot see them," which would prioritize my beliefs, and it's different than you saying, "Fae do not exist but Nevi does believe that he is one," which prioritizes your beliefs. Yes, you have to juggle holding what seem to be mutually-exclusive beliefs in your head until you get used to it. I swear it's a worthwhile thought exercise, though.

TL;DR version:

We mostly operate under a realist philosophy ("There is only one shared reality, which is Real Reality") when considering and discussing nonhuman stuff

I think we should shift our discussions, with awareness and intent, to an idealistic philosophy ("Everyone has their own reality, each one of which is Real Reality even though they conflict") in which nobody is correct or incorrect, because there IS no correct or incorrect to begin with

This would hopefully make sharing experiences a much bigger conversational focus and a much less daunting prospect

"if you accuse a trans woman of anything I will simply not believe you. by accusing a trans woman of literally anything you will get her harassed by transphobes and that is your fault. and also even if she did the thing by talking about it you're not doing anything about it so it's useless and I hate you."

"what if she's racist? I am a black trans woman and many white trans women are racist."

"you see oversensitive darkie this is exactly why I posted this. she probably has a very human and normal and understandable reason to actively be racist, which is normal for racist people. you can't help if she's racist. unless you are willing to personally put in the work to deprogram her racism why would you want to talk about her being racist? who gave you the authority to do that? what's that? this is actively harmful to you and other people she is being racist to? too bad. by talking about it to warn people or anything kiwifarms will kill her."

Will be doing our own research as well, but wanted to ask here for tips or suggestions too.

For pride we're wanting to attach a snout prosthetic, and add color to our belly teat implants, which have yet to be tattooed. We're wanting realistic tans and browns for our snout/ face, and pale skin-tone pinks for our teats.

We have not done any makeup growing up. No makeup in the house except for one liner pencil we use mostly for doodles on our cheek.

Those who do have makeup experience, what entry level advice do you have? Brands, application techniques, names of things we should know, etc.

i’ve attached cosplay gear to my skin before with spirit gum, which’s this tacky stuff that comes in a nail-polish-sized container with a brush. it sticks well but needs specialized remover to clean off (there might be alternatives to that remover but idk, i only used it a little and don’t have it anymore). if you have sensitive skin tho make sure to test that you’ll react or nah before you put on prosthetics with it

on brands / makeup type names:

i’m not sure if you’re fixing to put the tans and browns across your whole face or just have nonhuman accents blend into your current skin, but if you’re trying to paint your whole face i’d recommend looking into cosplay face paints! similar level face paints might also be tagged “for clowns” too. unlike regular makeup a little cosplay paint goes a longer way, which is better for full face or body coverage ^^

something i like to do to express my canine self is accent my inner eye-corners with black like how theriform wolves + lots of other animals have, usually w/ Maybelline’s pot of cream eyeliner (runs for $8-9ish last i seen)

if you need makeup to stay on and resist rubbing off for a long day, add some kind of makeup finish to “set” it. depending on skin type, some ppl use finishing powder or finishing spray more. powder finish comes in both sheer/clear and tinted for skintone-matching.

i personally use powder finish cuz my hide used to run more oily. it’s more balanced now but the powder is still better since i still sweat easily.

eyeshadows, foundation, contour, other skin stuff also come in powder, cream, or liquid form. powders and cream come in palettes, single pans out of palettes, or pots. liquids come in round or square tubes, or pen-shaped applicators.

whichever form works best is also gonna depend on skin type, but also mind if you have some spots on your face that get more/less oily than others

… like if i was still doing up my face i’d use mostly powder to keep it more light and breathable in general. but my eye-corners get oily on their own real easily, so i use cream eyeliner with sheer finishing powder on top. i don’t use cream or liquid on the rest of my face cuz it feels too thick and suffocating to my skin, but other ppl enjoy em just fine

i never got into contour but if you don’t go for cosplay paint, you might also be able to find the tans/browns you need in a contour set ?? leastwise contour is made to be very blendable and subtle, so if you’re going for that over the bold-painted look, that’s something to consider

we turned the water off and expect to start working on it when we can. but me and him discussed prioritizing the health of the animals and all the things that come with it. theyre very old and need daily medication.

the negligence of the homeowner (both to the leak and the animals) leads us to our need to move out in about 6 months to a year. ill be here writing, jus support me when you can.

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