Fine, I’ll bite. First, I would like to say that your art is very lovely and I’m glad I’ve gotten to see it.
This goes back to what I reblogged earlier, which I doubt y’all would see since it’s a pro-endo post. Nobody is asking for there to be more abused kids. If they are, they probably aren’t speaking in good faith on this argument or they have something else they need to work through.
Let’s say that we know, 100% for a fact, the only way to be a system is through trauma. There is still use for you in that phrase. The point of “the future is plural” is not what it says on the tin, as you’ve shown. We’re not asking for there to be more systems, if we’re thinking strictly in your terms. We’re asking for it to be believed; for it to be taken seriously. We want it to be normalized in the way where if someone says “hey I’m plural” we believe them. We want there to be more understanding and less hate. We want to ensure that those ahead of us don’t have to face what we have, and that what those before us have done was not in vain.
You know why it’s not okay for clinicians to abuse their patients with DID? It’s not because they woke up one day and decided “maybe we shouldn’t be treating our patients like this.” It’s because activists before us did their job. Back in the ‘80s there were so many fucked up practices being done to those with DID, named MPD at that time. Which I must include because it is pertinent to the history of our disorder. Law suits have been brought to court and have been won over these practices. Now, while we are quite a bit better in terms of clinicians that specialize in DID, we aren’t in terms of the general population. They may still believe we are voilent and scary. They may still believe that it’s not a real disorder. They may still believe that it’s just like what they see on TV. Which, as everyone here knows, it isn’t.
We want to make sure they understand that we are humans, too. While we may be many, we aren’t terrible or lying or any number of things others who have no experience with DID think. We, as a community, deserve better. We deserve to be believed. We deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.
And so, I bring it back to one of my first points. Even if we were arguing for there to be more systems, it’s not in the way you desperately want to believe. It’s not begging for more traumatized children. It’s not through pain and suffering. Its a call for pride on all sides. It’s also recognition of the systems that just happen, it’s to celebrate the beauty of those who found their plurality and aren’t traumatized like you or I. You can believe that systems and dissociation ONLY form from trauma, but you wouldn’t be right. To the end where even Dr. Collin A. Ross, one of, if not THE leading researcher in the field, outright states that there are those out there who have been diagnosed with DID and who struggle with dissociation who have no trauma history. He himself has said that there are even people who are multiple that would not fit the criteria or don’t have the difficulty that those with DID must to experience for it to be the disorder it is. (Thanks @sysmedsaresexist!)
If you won’t listen to those who experience endogenic plurality, if you won’t listen to those who have done research and have still come to this conclusion, if you won’t listen to those leading in the field of trauma and dissociation, then who will you listen to? How will you be able to make sure you’re not spreading the same misinformation and hate that the phrase “The future is plural” is a desperate plea to combat? How are you better than the endogenic systems you want to demonize so badly?
