The Orbital System

Very, very few people will notice overt plurality without being directly told about it. The few that might notice tend to be plural themselves or have plural friends, and they tend to be safe to be spotted by anyway because they're familiar with plurality and how to handle it respectfully.

The average person doesn't have plurality on their radar in the first place. Heck, they barely know what DID is, assuming that they live somewhere it's a diagnosis option, and they've never heard of anything beyond that. Most people will see overt plurality and think "oh, they're moody, or genderfluid, or just use a lot of names, or do a lot of things, or..." if they notice anything different at all.

Seriously, people are oblivious. You can introduce yourself by three different names, have wildly different preferences and modes of expression, and even toss in an accent. The most you might get in response is "are you okay?" (to which the non-disclosure answer is something like "yeah, just feeling different today" or "yeah, I'm just like this sometimes, it's normal". They'll usually let it go if you don't make a fuss about it).

You've given me a chance to talk about it!

Starting from the bare bones:

An endogenic system is basically any system that does not attribute its existence to trauma in the clinical sense. That can include spiritual frameworks, identity based frameworks, neurodivergent experiences that don’t fit DID/OSDD, cultural understandings of plurality, etc. It’s a very broad umbrella, not one single “type.”

A traumagenic system is what falls under DID, OSDD, and related diagnoses. That’s a medical framework rooted in western psychiatry, where plurality is understood as something that forms in response to trauma, usually early and repeated.

On their own, these are just two different frameworks for understanding plurality. Neither one is inherently tied to race or culture.

The issue is what “anti-endogenic” belief actually does with those categories.

Because anti-endo talkpoint is not just “I personally don’t relate to endogenic experiences.” It’s exclusively -

“Plurality only and exclusively exists as a trauma disorder”

“If it isn’t DID/OSDD it’s fake and/or roleplay”

“There is only one real origin for systems”

“Non-traumagenic systems are inherently harmful or appropriative”

And that stance becomes a problem because it treats a very specific, very recent, very western medical model as if it is the golden universal truth about how human identity works.

That’s where the racial and cultural aspect comes in.

Because plurality did not originate in the DSM. It did not originate in western psychiatry. And it has never been understood in only one way across cultures.

A lot of non-western and Indigenous cultures have long-standing, documented traditions that involve forms of plurality that are not framed as trauma disorders!

For example;

Across many Indigenous Turtle Island cultures, like mine! there are beliefs and practices involving multiple presences within a person, spirit relationships, or things like shared identity with non-human entities.

These are often spiritual, relational, or ceremonial, not pathologized. My own people recognize the modern diagnosis of DID/OSDD as real, but that’s not the only framework we have for understanding plurality.

In many West African traditions and religions and related systems, spirit possession and spirit co-presence are important, meaningful, and should be espected as experiences.

People can have ongoing relationships with spirits that permanantly inhabit or move through them. That is not treated as “you are disordered,” in those cultures even if they recognize both as existing.

In South and Southeast Asia, you have long histories of spirit mediums, trance states, and possession practices that are socially recognized and integrated. Again, not automatically medicalized.

Even when not explicitly labeled as “systems,” the idea that a person is not strictly singular in a western individualist sense is not foreign.

If you go back historically in Europe to those indigenous populations, there were also beliefs around possession, divine inspiration, multiple souls, external influences on identity, etc. These were not always treated as illness. They were often religious or spiritual interpretations.

Western psychiatry took a wide range of human experiences and said, “this specific subset, defined this specific way, is the correct and legitimate version, and everything else is either misinterpretation or pathology.”

That doesn’t mean western psychiatry is useless or wrong across the board. DID and OSDD are real conditions. Traumagenic systems are real and deserve recognition and care.

I am mixed origin. I have DID. I am literally traumagenic. I'm just also endogenic. And in my culture, off of tumblr where it matters, my people recognize that as a valid cultural experience.

But it does mean that when you take that framework and try to say

“This is the only valid explanation for plurality anywhere”

you are erasing every other cultural and spiritual framework that does not match it.

And that’s where anti-endo rhetoric becomes racist in actual tangible effect.

it’s enforcing a western, medicalized worldview as the only acceptable reality, and dismissing everything else as fake, harmful, or appropriative of 'real' systemhood (which a lot of the medical system actually does not recognize in the west, like, sorry but most doctors think we're all fake).

That’s a pattern that shows up in a lot of different contexts among (usually white, but not always) westerners or people who are so completely removed from anything other than their modern medical only culture, not just plurality

offhand examples are things like non-western spiritual practices being labeled as mental illness, Indigenous knowledge systems being dismissed as “unscientific”, it's all the same treating western frameworks as objective truth instead of one perspective among many

It’s the same underlying racist thought pattern.

this doesn’t mean every individual anti-endo is consciously thinking “I want to erase non-white cultures.” That’s not how racism usually works like most ppl are not mustache twirling cartoon bigots.

It’s more that they are operating inside a framework that has already centered western definitions as default, and then defending that framework as if it’s neutral and universal when it isn’t.

It also doesn’t mean every single endogenic system is rooted in culture or spirituality. Some are just personal identity frameworks. Some are neurodivergent experiences that don’t map cleanly onto DID/OSDD. Some are still figuring themselves out.

But anti-endo ideology doesn’t usually make those distinctions anyway and there's nothing wrong with those experiences either, but you can't separate any of those concepts from some flavor of racism or ableism anyway. It just flattens everything into “real vs fake,” with “real” defined exclusively by the medical system that doesn't have any business or interest in cultural beliefs, and trauma-based, clinically recognized systems.

plurality is just not one single thing with one single origin and one single explanation. It’s an extremely broad category of experiences that different cultures have interpreted in different ways for a very very VERY long time.

Anti-endos are taking one culturally specific framework and treating it like the only legitimate one, and in doing so, they are dismissing or invalidating other cultures’ (overwhelmingly BIPOC) understandings of similar experiences.

It’s not about denying that DID is an experience that deserves sympathy and care.

It’s about rejecting the idea that DID is the only way plurality can exist, and recognizing that insisting on that exclusivity has broad and nasty implications whether people intend it or not.