People aren’t gatekeepers or “hatekeepers” for telling you not to roleplay as someone with a very real and serious disorder.
Traumagenic systems aka DID and OSDD-1 systems are the only real systems. You cannot be a system if you have not experienced trauma or abuse and it didn’t happen during your formative years. That’s the only way a system can form. It’s a scientific fact, not an opinion, and not hate.
I get that you see the diagnostic criteria, see it doesn’t fit, and make up a name for a new type of “system” so you can still pretend to have “multiple personalities.” It’s ableist and harmful because people don’t know you’re pretending.
Anyone who doesn’t think to Google it won’t see instantly it’s not a real thing and may think you have a different but related disorder. DID and OSDD-1 are already highly stigmatized, and singlets seeing you play pretend and saying things like “i have evil alters” and “ive been possessed” makes us seem even scarier. That stigma, that fear, causes us to be abused, institutionalized, or even killed. I’ve experienced 2/3 myself and I don’t appreciate you as a ‘community’ feeding into the problem.
It also spreads misinformation which is very harmful! It hurts people trying to learn about the disorder and how it works, particularly systems who are new to the concept and trying to figure out who they are and what happened. I know your ‘community’ likes to make up new concepts such as “system hopping” where an alter can supposedly jump into someone else’s head. This has frightened a bunch of people, mostly minors who are already confused and upset. Alters are real people and a part of our brains, not spirits or demons that can possess you and leave at will. Additionally, alters can go dormant, they can all integrate fully or one alter can combine with another alter but they can not die. They are a piece your brain that while once whole, has been split by trauma, and can split further or combine but can’t die. It’s not possible. These concepts you make up as a ‘community’ are scientifically and factually incorrect and are just scaring people who have already been through so much.
If you want to pretend, that’s what the kin community is for. Though, it has issues of its own. If you feel more like one kin than another, you should say you are kinshifting and not that someone else is fronting because that is system terminology and not yours to take. We have also as a community expressed hurt with the concept of ‘alterhuman’ which is supposedly for people who are kin with non-human things. It’s been said that comparing alters to someone who is not real or not human is harmful. It’s also an issue of stealing terminology again. Speaking of, a “little” is and always has been a child alter in a system but thanks to dd/lg kinksters, actual children don’t feel comfortable using the term anymore. Stop taking our terms, be respectful.
I get that on tumblr there is this desire to be “valid,” to be acknowledged, to be given approval, but please remember that saying ‘i’m valid’ isn’t positivity on it’s own and that saying ‘i’m valid’ doesn’t excuse any type of behavior. It’s at this point a meaningless phrase.
When we say you’re not a system we are not telling you that you’re a bad person or that ‘you’re not valid,’ but it’s important to point out the tumblr culture that is scaring and confusing trauma victims and subjecting them to further abuse and judgment. You are adding to that, whether you mean to or not. I don’t actually have an issue with you in particular, I saw this because you posted in in #traumagenic and #positivelyplural which are not tags you should be using. You probably don’t mean any harm but the behavior and ‘community’ you are partaking in adds to the stigma of real systems, and gets us abused, institutionalized and killed. It needs to end.
If you are a singlet aka not a DID or OSDD-1 system I beg you to read and reblog this. There aren’t a lot of us, and it’s so easy to be ignored. But this is a huge issue and I feel like if people were pretending to have any other disorder it would get more attention. This has been going on for years.
People like this, movies like Split, tropes and stereotypes and misinformation feed into the stigma and fear surrounding systems and has real-world consequences for us. Many of us can only be open about being a system online or with our partners for fear of violence. Just for an example, I talked to a psychiatrist about being a system, and was in and out of psych wards for a few years, as a minor where I had no say in leaving, where I faced additional abuse from staff and other patients.
Please reblog this and any other posts you may see about DID and OSDD-1 systems! The best thing you can do for us all is to help combat misinformation and fight the stigma. We are not scary, or dangerous, and pretending to have a disorder isn’t ok.
