Facing Challenges

Systems are challenged in their self-acceptance, day in and day out, from without and from within.
Here's what to look out for in the wild, and what that one internal conflict might just boil down to.

Normativity

With more than one's myths already covering the ways sysphobia is rooted in misunderstandings of plurality, this chapter shifts to focus on how the definition of "normal" held by systems and onlookers creates internal conflicts, hate, and exclusion.

Singlet-normativity presents a basic but pervasive challenge. Because wider society sees singlethood as a compulsory default, deviating from that experience can lead to social rejection. Through singlet-normativity, elimination of systemhood through medical intervention is seen as essential. Through singlet-normativity, plural experience is unacceptably complex, such that it must be delusioned or fabricated in some way. Through singlet-normativity, the needs or desires of any system member can be dismissed as an obstacle. Through singlet-normativity, it becomes acceptable to demand the details of a system's composition or current front, as the "confusing" or "dangerous" complexity entitles others to know.

This creates a pressure to be "normal enough" that spreads far beyond accepting the existence of your own or another's systemhood. Whenever a system un-represses (or "gains") a new headmate, they're challenged with the question - how many headmates can a system have without becoming unacceptable? Faced with normative pressure, "a System of 2/3/4" feels more believable and acceptable than starting with "a System of 40" and suddenly feeling obligated to explain where exactly those lines blur in an attempt to seem "more normal" and avoid rejection. It's not just numbers either - whenever a plural experience doesn't line up with the simplest, most widely propagated analogies, it instills this fear.

Through this rejection of plural diversity, restrictive definitions of plurality emerge that harm systems of all kinds. Singlets with these limited understandings can easily leave one system feeling objectified (treated as "fun costumes"), and another unable to express their systemhood (treated as purely individuals). And of course, without a widely propagated diverse definition, questioning systems are left wondering if they can call themselves plural at all.

Imposter syndrome, and the feeling that you might be being plural wrong, is pervasive. However, this struggle is not purely internal - many systems turn that fear of abnormality towards others, choosing their own imposters to exclude instead.

Sysmedicalism

Sysmedicalists are those that ostracize systems based on adherence to medical models, diagnoses, and associated assumptions. They exclude systems from communities and support, and insist they do not fit under the plural umbrella. Recommendations for diagnosis of and the impacts of DID are changing slowly, and practice even slower - diagnosis criteria excludes many system configurations and systems not in distress, improper and abusive treatment for DID is still widespread, and a DID diagnosis is still a common blocker for voluntary medical procedures and asylum discharges. As a result, sysmedicalism pushes out and shames a large portion of systems by insisting that plurality is objectively observable, and that only medical criteria and professionals can guide that observation.

Owing to the medical classification of DID as a "trauma disorder", predominant online sysmedicalism focuses on whether a system exists "through trauma" (deemed acceptable), or through some other mechanism (deemed fake, or unacceptable). The trouble with making this differentiation is that it's not falsifiable - there's no way to validate that you possess an objective and correct understanding of the reason a system exists as it does, even in yourself. As a result, this form of sysmedicalism segregates systems into the diagnosed and the overconfident as the in-group, and everyone else as the out-group. The distinction of whether plurality (and therefore causality) is able to be objectively observed and concluded upon by a system or onlooker is fundamental to this avenue for exclusion. That means language is key, even among the inclusive - when more than one's causes use the phrases "trauma plurals" and "plurals who were not originally plural", they accidentally enforce this idea of objective observation. When sysmeds promote usage of the words "traumagenic" and "endogenic" (the in- and out-groups) to categorize all plural systems, this is an attempt to deliberately enforce these as observable facts, not beliefs. Critically, this means that bystanders often unknowingly validate and enforce sysmedicalist exclusion by using their language - even if it's used not in an exclusive ("endos dni") fashion.

Syscourse

On a finer level, all kinds of systems are ostracized for having specific experiences - with a majority of systems and purported allies having a "weird" or "problematic" line above which a system being visible in public becomes unacceptable. Most of this discourse boils down to applying a generic singlet-like understanding of plural internal experiences and the language used to describe them. Taken this way, all of our previous nuanced examples can easily be made objectionable. The Minotaur is cultural appropriation, intrasystem relationships are cheating, familial terms are disrespectful to "real family", Fictives are copyright infringement and stealing, and the cultural and moral expectations of family members, children, and animals in the outside world can be placed strictly on headmates that resemble them - inviting exclusion based on singlet definitions of irresponsible caretaking, immaturity, and inhumanness - along with the occasional accusation of incest, rape, and bestiality. In many ways this resembles proship discourse, wherein the same accusations are placed on fanfiction. Naturally, if someone can't accept the reinterpretation of usually-wrong actions and relationships in fiction, they're quite unlikely to accept those reinterpretations within the nuanced individually-defined language of plural experience.