(Namespace: plural glossary)

Broadly, a system exclusionist is anyone who believes there should be rigid rules or standards, of any kind, about who is allowed to call themselves a system. I personally think they are idiots.

System exclusionist attitudes occupy a vast spectrum. The core and most restrictive variation on the concept is that only traumagenic systems professionally diagnosed with DID should be allowed to call themselves systems and anyone else is appropriating the label, but there are various less restrictive variations, such as being willing to acknowledge undiagnosed or self-diagnosed traumagenic systems, being willing to acknowledge OSDD systems, or, more rarely, being willing to acknowledge endogenic systems as long as they are professionally diagnosed with DID.

There are further differences among system exclusionist attitudes concerning what attributes of a system indicate they are faking, such as the presence of fictives, the presence of introjects at all, or the ability to be coconscious.

Some system exclusionists are just bullies, but many are DID-diagnosed traumagenic systems who jump at any possible excuse to exclude others and lord their trauma over others not because they're just mean people like that, but because they are fucking traumatized and unable to ever feel safe. And that's how they end up making it everyone else's problem and perpetuating the cycle of violence.

It's really sad. I'd probably be like that too, if my abusers had done any worse than what they did. For that matter, if a system exclusionist is reading this right now, they probably think I am the one who's like that, and they are the victim here—assuming they don't simply think I'm not even traumagenic at all. And to that I would have nothing to say except that I'm sorry for the hell on earth they had to live through.

I speak harshly of them in this glossary, but I don't think so little of them as it may seem. They aren't idiots. That was an exaggeration. The way they adapted was actually brilliant, on the contrary, and they should be proud of surviving. Their opinion is just egregiously incorrect, in a way that causes lots and lots of hurt, and I think their own pain blinds them to that—as by definition it does to many other things.