Tw Syscourse

⚠️Tw Syscourse⚠️

Okay, I'm just gonna come out and say it. I have headmates, and I'm pretty sure we're endogenic. By saying this, I know I'm signing up for more fuckin discourse, but honestly that's something I can't avoid. When there are people in your own communities that seek to exclude you, the choice of just standing down and watching it happen is just... absurd.

It's so hurtful to see a post about plurality that I relate to, just to see 'endos DNI' or some shit. Imagine, you see a post that provides comfort and solace for you and your headmates' experiences, just to have the rug pulled out from under your feet in the form of 'Endos DNI'. It's jarring to say the least.

This whole 'ah endos are just faking DID for attention' boils my blood to be honest, because we're not claiming to have DID! That's literally why we are fuckin ENDOgenic and not TRAUMAgenic. Plurality can happen for a multitude of reasons, and by stating otherwise is to invalidate CULTURAL EXPERIENCES such as tulpamancy!

Jesus Christ.

friendly reminder that bigender people who identify as a masculine and feminine gender are allowed to feel monosexual / monoromantic attraction and label it. and they have always. always been who you’ve been talking about when you say men can’t be lesbians. gender fuckery shouldn’t get in the way of the language people use when they experience attraction to one gender. you can be a guy and a girl and identify as a lesbian if that’s the language that feels right. you can also be a guy and a girl and identify as a gay man if that’s the language that feels right.

Endogenic Syscourse Primer

There is a whole lot of misinformation out there about endogenic systems and the history of the plural community, so I wanted to write-up this primer for people who are new to syscourse or otherwise uninformed.

What is Plurality?

This is a complicated place to start since different people have different definitions.

Pluralpedia describes plurality as such:

Plurality is the state of having multiple headmates collectively sharing a single body. A group of headmates is called a system. Plural experiences are extremely diverse. Systems may be spiritual in nature or secular, median or partitionary, small systems or ones with thousands of headmates. Headmates are generally assumed to have their own unique personality. They often have their own names, pronouns, goals, and preferences. Referring to the system they belong to is often done using plural pronouns like we, us, them, and they, although it is best to ask. They may want to be seen as an individual, a part of a whole, an accompaniment to the core or host, or any other state of selfhood. Plurality comes in many forms.

Headmates isn't a universally agreed-upon term but is a catch-all. My own simplified definition would be that someone is plural when they have multiple autonomous self-conscious agents occupying a single body. These agents may identify as headmates, parts, or something else entirely.

Plurality is usually categorized as traumagenic and endogenic. Traumagenic plurality is caused by trauma and most commonly associated with dissociative disorders. Endogenic plurality is caused by anything else. There are also Mixed Origin Systems which may be a result of different causes, Quoigenic Systems with an unknown cause or who refuse to share their origin, and many other less common origins.

Does Plurality Exist Outside of Dissociative Disorders?

The answer to this is spelled out in the 11th revision of the International Classifications of Diseases, or the ICD-11. This is the diagnostic manual compiled by the World Health Organization used in most of the world.

As you can see, the ICD-11 uses the term "distinct personality states" synonymously with "dissociative identities." The example of mediumship is also important, as a common counterargument is that the second entry is referring to more general self-states, like how a person can have a work self and home self with different behavior patterns. This is very different from what's experienced by mediums, where spirits and deities communed with have their own distinct names, personalities, genders, etc.

The existence of non-DID plurality has also been affirmed by psychiatrist Eric Yarbrough in his book, Transgender Mental Health which was published by APA Publishing, the publishing arm of the American Psychiatric Association.

Other forms of plurality are actively being researched, such as in this article on tulpamancy by psychiatry professor Samuel Veissiere which was in a book published by Oxford University Press. (Tulpamancy is a process of intentionally creating headmates. It's usually psychological but a small percentage of tulpamancers take a metaphysical view.)

Consistently, non-disordered and non-traumagenic plurality is affirmed again and again by psychiatrists and psychologists. And these are not some fringe minority going against the grain. There are no counter examples. There are zero psychiatrists saying plurality without dissociative disorders can't exist or isn't real.

Who Can Call Themselves Plural?

We've now established endogenic and non-disordered plurality as a real phenomenon with support from psychiatrists across the board. Another common argument you'll hear is that the term plural can only be used by systems with dissociative disorders.

This one is actually very easy to debunk.

The first use of plural in this way was by non-disordered systems to separate themselves from clinical language. At the time, "multiple" was used much more frequently in the community.

We don't claim that every multiple system/household is a happy loving cooperative one. What we do question is the *identification* of "real multiples" with the characteristics or symptoms of a psychological disorder. We go further: we question by what right or authority doctors and therapists are given sole jurisdiction over the definition of "an individual".

This is one reason our clan encourages use of the word "plural" rather than "multiple". "Multiple", even standing by itself, brings to mind MPD/DID, "multiple personality disorder", "dissociative identity disorder", which are specific diagnoses created by the medical/therapeutic community. "Plural" is a much more neutral word, more commonly heard in the context of grammar than psychiatry. (The other reason, of course, is that plural can be construed to have a broader meaning, applying to anyone(s) anywhere on the continuum who experience themselves as plural in some way. )

Non-Disordered Systems Were Separatists, Not Invaders.

Going on from the last point, this is something that is often obscured when discussing the history of plurality and why so many words are shared.

There's a narrative that non-disordered and endogenic systems were invading the spaces of disordered and traumagenic systems. But as we can see in the above post, this is actually the opposite of the truth.

The articles I've posted showing research into endogenic plurality, as well as the ICD-11 entry, are all from within the last decade.

In the 90s, multiplicity was considered inherently disordered by the public. There were theories that there could be endogenous and non-pathological forms of plurality at the time, such as was referenced in this paper by Kluft from 2001.

But there weren't many people to study extensively because people without mental disorders don't usually seek out psychiatrists.

During this period, if you had multiple self-conscious agents sharing the same body, you were assumed to have MPD/DID. Actual research into non-disordered systems is a relatively recent phenomenon.

And even as these theories of other forms of plurality may have been discussed in academic circles, they didn't make it into the public consciousness.

So people who experienced plurality for other reasons, or their plurality wasn't a disorder, assumed they had MPD/DID and joined up with those communities. There just wasn't an alternative at the time. (Plurality is incredibly isolating, making it hard for plurals to find other plurals and meet up before the internet.) Then, as more people began sharing their experiences, some realized their experiences weren't a disorder and began to break away.

Terminology being shared is a natural extension of this process.

Many of Terms Used by DID/OSDD systems were made by the endogenic and pro-endo community

Aside from the word plural, headmate was another word coined to differentiate them from the more clinical "alter." Fictive and factive originated with the endogenic soulbonders. If you've seen people policing system language from endogenic systems, like with the word plural, there is a good chance that the language being policed came from the endogenic and non-disordered community to begin with.

There is also a common myth you may have seen around suggesting the term system hopping originated with RAMCOA survivors in reference to travel between sidesystems. This claim only dates back as far as 2021, while system hopping has been traced back as far as 2005 by spiritual systems describing movement between systems in different bodies.

Resources like Simply Plural and Pluralkit are also pro-endo, with creators stating they can be used by anyone, and Simply Plural having links to endogenic resources.

Who Can Call Themselves A System?

System is a term that actually does have a long history of use within the DID community, originating from the psychiatric field.

But system has still been used by non-disordered systems for decades. Most of the people arguing over the terminology haven't been alive as long as endogenic and non-disordered systems have existed and been identifying as systems.

Transgender Mental Health uses the term plural system for both disordered and non-disordered systems alike, as have other recent academic papers that talk about endogenic/non-disordered systems.

Additionally, system has been used in similar ways to its use in discussions of plurality at least as far back as the 80s under the Internal Family Systems model.

Dissociative specialists Dolores Mosquera and Colin Ross have also referred to certain autonomous voices in psychotic disorders as dissociated parts of a person's system.

The word system was never treated as a highly specific term in psychiatry that could only be applied to DID and OSDD systems. And as more research is conducted on endogenic systems, it's likely that this research will continue to refer to endogenic systems as being systems.

Conclusion

Endogenic and non-disordered plurality is a real psychological phenomenon supported by multiple psychiatrists, psychologists and the World Health Organization in books that and articles that have passed peer review through the most reputable and prestigious academic publishers, such as Oxford University Press and APA Publishing.

Non-disordered and endogenic systems have identified as systems and been part of the plural community since the 90s. Many modern terms in the plural community originated with endogenic and pro-endogenic systems.

If there's one takeaway for anyone who is reading this that's new to syscourse, it should be that bigotry against endogenic systems isn't based in science or reality. Like most bigotry, it's based on hatred for hatred's sake, and fueled by misinformation.

I hope this was able to clear up some misconceptions.

Thank you for your time and patience.

Since the host has introduced itself and revealed the fact that it has headmates, I feel obligated to introduce myself. After all, this is the first switch in months, so I probably won't get this chance again.. xD

My name is Alastor. No, not from Hazbin Hotel, I am my own person. Yeah.. I don't have much more to say.

Tiktokers not being able to comprehend sexuality and trans identities being wild and confusing and intersecting with each other instead of being sorted into near little boxes is so insane. Like breaking the boxes wasn’t the point in the first place??

Being aromantic doesn’t make me evil and unfeeling. I’m evil and unfeeling for completely different reasons