I am not entirely sure if I am using the correct tags for this, so please notify me if I am wrong.
Anyways, I have a request to make of my fellow DID, OSDD-1, and trauma systems. I would like you to help supply me with terms and phrases that specifically are only meant to be used by DID, OSDD-1, and trauma based multiples. Terms like alters and system as opposed to headmates and collective, which anyone who is multiple outside of DID, OSDD-1, and trauma systems can use.
I wish to make it clear what terms are appropriative of non-DID, OSDD-1, or trauma based multiples to use. People who take our terms without our illness or struggles should be able to have their own terms instead of ours.
While we complete support the overall message of this post… Is there -any- proof anywhere that “system” is -only- for DID, OSDD-1, and trauma based multiples? People keep bringing this up, and in all the years we’ve spent in various communities, we have never known the term “system” to belong -only- to trauma-based groups (unlike terms such as “alter").
It’d just be nice to see it put to bed, really.
But best of luck with this, otherwise.
Well, did-research.org defines a system as “[An] entire collection of alters within one body.” Which, with alters being a term for DID, OSDD-1, and trauma based multiples only, as you state, this makes system a term that only they are able to claim.
There are still other terms for non-DID, OSDD-1, and trauma based multiples to use, such as multiple or collective.
I have almost completed a smaller post on what terms are for DID, OSDD-1, and trauma based multiples specifically and terms that are okay for other types of multiples to use.
It may be the definition that website uses because the website is directed at DID research, and they are placing it in a DID context. That doesn’t mean it’s the one and only true definition ever; many other websites define the term differently, and more neutrally.
Especially considering this site only appears to be a couple years old, correct me if I’m wrong there… When was this website created? And by who? What resources were they using to create their glossary? They must have gotten their information from somewhere.
Again… having been in the community for over ten years now, it is only VERY recently that people have started the idea that only trauma-based systems are allowed to use the word “system”. Obviously yes, there ARE other terms people can use, but that doesn’t change the fact that “system” never belonged solely to trauma-based systems in the past.
As I’m sure you can imagine, it’s just a bit strange to have systems who haven’t even been alive as long as we’ve been multiple telling us that we’re not allowed to use a word that has been around, and used by all types of systems, since at least the early 2000s. One website– even if it is a VERY good website– using the term “alter” in a definition doesn’t reverse 10+ years of history.
@lb-lee @solipsistful Any knowledge/insight into this you lovely folks would care to offer? You all seem to know more about this than we do, anyways.
We very much want traumagenic and non-traumagenic groups to have a greater awareness of terminology! But we also would love it if that information was… you know, accurate.
Hoo boy, wow, okay. The idea that ‘system’ is a DID-only term seems to be very much a recent tumblr thing. Back when we joined up on LJ back in ‘07, ‘system’ seemed to be the neutral term that everyone could agree on–and believe me, I saw PLENTY of terminology turf wars.
I was at a DID con this past October, and NOBODY knew what the fuck I was going on about when I used the term ‘system.’ NOBODY used it. And digging through DID articles, I can find one citation of any expert using it–Kluft, back in 1999. There may be more, but I am really not down for wading through dense academic articles right now.
However, a fair number of well-known specifically non-DID systems have been using the term ‘system’ to refer to themselves a good while, and that I have a much easier time tracking and dating. Amorpha specifically uses the term ‘system’ to mean any kind of multiple, and the Wayback Machine proves this back to 2004. Astraea was using it in 2003–you can dislike them and their page all you want, but their page is proof that non-DID systems were using the word over ten years ago. And while there has been many pissing contests between the various sects of plurality over the years, over the most banal, trivial shit you can imagine, I don’t remember a fight over that term until tumblr.
And the ‘system’ word didn’t suddenly drop out of use and get reclaimed by DIDers either–I used the term ‘system’ as a general purpose word in MPD for You and Me, the script of which I wrote in 2007. Going through the member names of the old LJ multiplicity comm, I find folks with ‘system’ in their name from 2006, 2008, and so on, and many of them didn’t claim DID. A lot of these systems, like Plures House, have been out as multi longer than me, are among the most civil, language-conscious systems we know, and have been active and a positive force in the online multi community for… god, ten years! I would consider it an act of colossal douchebaggery to strip their terminology from them, when the term started getting used, far as I can tell, as a NEUTRAL EQUIVALENT.
What I’m saying is, it’s horseshit. Bunk. Flagrant lies. Far as I can tell, DID folks NEVER claimed ‘system’–at best, it was applied TO US by therapists. It is not part of the major therapeutic lingo, at least not at the Ivory Garden Trauma and Dissociation conference and in the scholarly articles I could look up on a cursory glance.
There you have it, folks.
((Not directly relevant to fictionkin, but there is enough crossover between kin and multiple communities on tumblr that I think this is good discussion to share. Remember, fictionkin are not fictives, fictives are not fictionkin. http://fictionkin.net/what-kin-isnt/kin-multiple-difference/ ))
