On systems and plurality
With very few exceptions, I try to keep this blog strictly gender-focused, or at least mogai/pride focused: I donât make posts about lots of other things that are important because thatâs not what this blog is for. I am going to make an exception here, but Iâll also bring it back to gender at the end. Itâs also a long post, so Iâll bold key points and have some tl;drs
Systems, specifically plural systems, refer to instances of multiple people residing in one body. âFrontingâ refers to being in control of the body. Sometimes people cofront, and share control, or have one person perceiving and another person acting. Sometimes people have a complete memory barrier, and canât remember what another person did when they were fronting. Some system members can communicate with each other, some canât. Sometimes people can perceive whatâs happening irl even if theyâre not fronting. Sometimes people go âinworldâ when theyâre fronting, and inhabit a completely different mental space, which can be very complex. Sometimes people arenât entirely separate - this is called a median system.
I, Kai, am a median (sub)system. Specifically, there are two, sometimes three people who operate this blog. Our names are Sapphire, barker, and protector. Sapphire and barker together make up Kai, who is both one person and two people - think Garnet from Steven Universe (actually where Sapphire got eir name). Probably no oneâs noticed the tone shifts, but more goofy and casual posts are generally from barker, and most of the posts, especially more formal and intellectual ones (like this) are from Sapphire. Protector, as the name suggests, usually only comes out when things turn nasty. When he cofronts with Kai, weâre collectively called dragon, who is also a median subsystem, both three and two and one people - think a fusion of Garnet and Amethyst. There are a couple other, completely separate people in our system who donât come on this blog.
Systems are sometimes created as a result of trauma, especially childhood trauma, but not always. The clinical explanation for traumagenic systems is that the mind canât handle the trauma, and so either creates a new entity capable of handling it, creates a new entity that remembers the trauma so you donât have to, or splits into multiple entities to take on these various roles. The various entities that may emerge and the roles they may fill are usually more complex than what Iâve stated, but you get the general idea. Some systems believe one or more of their members entered the system externally to help with the trauma, which is a just as valid hypothesis.
Some systems donât form to handle trauma, and just happen naturally. In some cases, the body was seemingly born with two entities. In other cases, a single person spontaneously splits into multiple people. As above, sometimes people just appear who do not resemble the current residents in any way, and are believed to originate externally (these are called soulbonds or walk-ins, depending on how they entered). There are also people who deliberately or, occasionally, accidentally create new members, called thoughtforms (youâll also see âtulpaâ used, but itâs appropriative) essentially by talking to someone until they manifest consciousness and start talking back. These systems are neither ruled out nor much acknowledged by scientific literature. I don't know for certain why this is the case, but I assume it's generally because 1. people with traumagenic systems go to get treatment for ptsd, and their systems are relevant and come up and are studied, and 2. traumagenic systems have a cause thatâs easier to place, so theyâre easier to study, and since theyâve been studied, itâs easier to keep talking about them than to track down different forms of systems. It's also possible that the psychiatric community has wished to pathologize systems and prefer to talk about them as "unnatural" phenomenon as a result of trauma, though besides the obvious response, I would add that lots of neurodivergencies aren't a result of trauma, so this doesn't seem like a sound motivation.
These non-traumagenic systems, called endogenic systems, are sometimes invalidated by people akin to truscum. Endogenic systems are told that theyâre lying because theyâre not possible, that theyâre delusional, that theyâre in denial about the reason their system formed, and even that they must be repressing trauma if theyâre plural and donât remember a traumatic experience. All of these claims rely on the fallacious argument that if something isnât well-documented, it does not exist. They fall into the circular trap of thinking a. this hasnât been observed, therefore b. itâs not possible (this is a fallacy), and so c. if it is observed, the observation must be false. Since c is based on b, which is based on a, which would be negated by c in the first place, the last claim doesnât make sense.
We personally consider ourselves multi/quoigenic - we do not believe it matters how we formed except as a matter of curiosity, but since curiosity is rampant in our system, we've thought it out and as far as we can tell, we're both endo- and traumagenic. Protector emerged as a result of trauma, becoming the host (well, at least the primary host - dragon was really the host I suppose) until Kai, then Sapphire became the host later. We can't place a time when barker and Sapphire weren't both present, so we consider ourselves endogenic twins. We ask that everyone respect our conclusion, and respect the fact that we know our own life better than anyone, certainly better than a random person or follower on the internet, and that we have both done our research and thought things through.
tl;dr: Systems not formed by trauma exist and are valid, and we consider ourselves one of them.
Individuals in systems are often different genders. This can result in a lot of experiences similar to singlet transgender experiences, but with added complications. Sometimes a member's gender can be influenced by another's. Sometimes what causes one member euphoria causes another dysphoria. Sometimes one member wants to physically transition and another does not. It's complicated, and hard, and shout out to everyone who's struggling with this issue because being trans is hard enough, but it's even worse when there are multiple people who own one body, and can't agree on what to do with it. Sometimes this is similar to what some genderfluid people experience in terms of dysphoria and euphoria, and similar compromises need to be reached.
Sometimes systems have a systemgender that they present to the rest of the world - for instance, one member is a man, one member is a woman, so they call themselves bigender or genderfluid, especially if they're closeted as a system. This specific instance is different from a singlet being bigender, but there are also a lot of similarities - wanting both genders to be represented and acknowledged, sometimes conflicting gender euphoria/dysphoria with regard to pronouns, style, and body traits, not fitting into the "one gender per body" norm, not fitting into the "gender=gender assigned at birth, no deviations, no extras," etc. I also coined mediangender, which can either be the systemgender of a median system, or the gender one facet (person in a median system) often identifies as because of the effects of being in a median system, despite having a different gender independently. There's also systemfluid, which just means the gender of the system changes depending on who's fronting, which is a given if different fronters have different genders, so seems questionable as a term, and medianfluid, which is when the median system's gender changes depending on which facet is fronting, or more at front, which makes much more sense when you consider that a median system is in some sense a single person.
In our system, we have a member who would not want top surgery or testosterone, and another two who want to look exactly like cis men.For our system, we've agreed to get top surgery but will also get breastforms once we have, and we're only planning on being on enough testosterone to be suitably androgynous. I (Sapphire, current host) am happiest with this anyway, but barker, protector, and Cat are all having to compromise. We all have to compromise on hair, too - it's an adventure. My gender is bigenderfluid(flux?), while barker is probably a binary trans guy, but identifies with bigender as a mediangender because we're so blurry a lot of the time that he feels some of my gender too - or he's not binary. We're not sure at this point. At any rate, Kai's mediangender is bigenderfluid, and dragon's mediangender is bigenderfluidflux, so this blog is still run by people who, together or separately, all identify with being bigender in some way. (Protector is proxvir on his own, but he wouldn't touch this blog on his own.)
tl;dr: Gender is often complicated in systems, and this blog is still run by bigender people
So anyway I hope this post was informative, and I'm happy to answer any questions people may have. We'll also start publicly signing asks with the names Sapphire and barker in addition to Kai, as the case may be, and tag the posts that we make with our names.
