#queerality

Like firstly that is requiring me to know exactly who and what I am at all times so that I don't "invade" the space, which is difficult to impossible because I get blurry, I dissociate, I experience identity confusion, or I literally just guess wrong sometimes.

And then it's a question of cooties. Am I disallowed if I have any alters of an unacceptable gender? If over half of my alters are of an unacceptable gender? If they're bleeding over into me? If they're co-conscious as I front? If we're co-fronting? How much presence is too much presence – how much of the reality of being plural is too much?

And then even if I'm allowed to some degree I have to out myself as a system or lie, lie, lie, because if I switch to someone of an unacceptable gender I've got to leave lest I break the core rule of being there (and haha even supposedly progressive and accepting people get maaaaad at you for "invading" a space "not meant for you"), perhaps in the middle of a conversation, and people tend to want explanations about that.

Or. You know. They could always just erase those of us that complicate their neat little acceptable/unacceptable binary, misgendering those alters based on the fact that other alters have different (acceptable) genders. That's another hurtful option they could take.

"x folks can't be in y space" is soooo ridiculous to me because if you're a system with both x and y alters, the best you're gonna get is x being far away from the front when y is hanging out there. Like I just do not feel safe in any space that might suddenly turn on me and tell me to gtfo just for switching (something I cannot always control). We are a package deal, and any exclusionism acting like everyone's identities are neat and tidy and thus everyone can be directed to specific, "appropriate" spaces is going to hurt systems – even systems whose members are all of a specific, acceptable gender, because 1) more folks = more chance someone discovers they have some complicated gender stuff going on, and 2) they could always end up gaining a new member with an "unacceptable" gender for that space, as such see point number two.

If your plurality and queerness are intertwined in any way, or you are queer because of your plurality, how does that work for you? Consider this an invitation to talk about all the complexities of who you are and how these two areas of your life connect to each other!

They can conceptualize these experiences as Plural Things but cannot comprehend that if a Plural Thing affects your gender, sexuality, relationships, etc., then it's also gonna be a Queer Thing nine times out of ten. When it's a Plural Thing, they can just shrug and say they don't get it. But when it's a Queer Thing? When it becomes something that challenges their understanding of queerness? When we take up space because our plurality and queerness cannot be separated into neat little boxes? That's when they throw a fit.

And I'm not surprised, because I saw the exact same thing happen to autigender people a few years ago when they blurred the lines between what was an Autism Thing and a Queer Thing. People love to talk about intersectionality and say, "we need weirder queers", but they can't handle it when someone dares to say, "This thing that affects the entirety of my life naturally affects my queerness, too, since gender/sexuality/the relationships I am or am not in with other people/my relationship with my body and what I choose to do with it/being queer is/are a part of my life."

Tough shit. You don't get us. I thought that didn't matter? Wasn't that exactly what you were claiming not too long ago, that you need to respect someone even if you don't "get" them? Now, I'm seeing so-called "inclusionists" backpedal on that, but tough shit, we're not going to silence ourselves so you can continue thinking of queerness as this neat, simple thing that never overlaps with other categories. We're here, we're queer, and we're more-than-one, too.

Of course, the assumption is that one body equals one [unified] person, and that each person in the world is (to at least some extent) defined by their body, so when you gender a body you also automatically gender the person inhabiting that body. Gendering a body and gendering a person goes hand-in-hand in these situations. But this assumption of one-to-one can be incorrect; it is incorrect when applied to my system, for example. People are not gendering "the person" when they gender my-our body because there is no singular, unified person within this body for them to gender. Instead, they are gendering the imaginary "person" they made up in their heads based on my-our body. They saw our body, assumed that body equaled/defined one person, sorted that body into a gender category based on its appearance, and in doing so assumed the "one person" in this body is that gender... but that "one person" doesn't exist. We are not a singular, unified person, after all. They intended to gender the singular, unified person that they thought inhabits this body, but the only way to do that is to erase our plurality, which they do in their parroted assumption that one body = one singular, unified person.

Therefore, by gendering me-us based on our body, our appearance, people simultaneously erase our plurality, because they reduce us down to their mistaken assumption of a singular, unified person in a singular body whose gender is easily identifiable based on that body. That is to say, they assume we are a singlet and designate us as a singlet in their gendered assumptions of us. They are not really gendering us in the way they intend to, but are Instead gendering their assumption of who we are; they are adding to and clarifying their assumption of who we are by sorting us into the gender binary (or deciding we are some third, other gender).

To gender someone based on their body is to reject plurality as an option. It is to dismiss the idea that they could be plural. It is to spread and act upon singletnormative ideas. As such, I see gendered assumptions of this nature as evidence and examples of pluralmisia.

Trans alters with exomemories that complicate their gender modality and identity 🤝 trans and otherwise genderqueer intersex folks