(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.

Gatekeeping always has a negative connotation, but that connotation is not always earned. The core motivation of the system exclusionist platform is about protecting a label from being appropriated away from a highly vulnerable group, and that's very reasonable and frankly noble. If that were what their gatekeeping actually accomplished, there would be no problem.

The very serious inherent problem with the approach is that DID and OSDD by their nature are poorly understood even in an expert capacity and also cause the afflicted to live in constant self-disavowal and denial. Therefore, systematically gatekeeping the relevant labels to those who actually need them is fundamentally impossible, because there is no reliable way whatsoever to determine who does or does not actually need them, and trying to do so anyway is extremely harmful because those who do need the labels are by their nature highly prone to embracing any possible excuse to believe they don't.

“Sure it's possible to tell who needs the label, just get diagnosed.” There are two major problems that make that solution unworkable.

First, and more obvious, diagnosis is not accessible to everyone, or for that matter even most people. Psychiatrists willing to diagnose a dissociative disorder are few and far in-between, the diagnostic process is grueling and expensive, and it also costs a lot of money just to see a psychiatrist at all, in general, in the first place.

Second, less obvious, but more important: Even the professionals who are supposed to diagnose the condition actually don't know jack shit about it. I'm not saying they haven't done their research, I'm saying the scientific community hasn't done the research. I'm saying the info isn't out there. We understand a lot about dissociative disorders, and I'm not discounting that. But the modern understanding is not nearly sufficient to even reliably diagnose them, let alone treat them.

We don't even know what causes them or how they work. The trauma model remains in conflict with the sociocognitive model. Granted, all modern research supports the trauma model, and none supports the sociocognitive model—for DID, anyway. But first of all—I would love it if this meant professional opinions would actually follow the research and start actually believing their patients, but for some fucking reason, the sociocognitive model remains the widely preferred and practically applied explanation, which makes it not only more challenging but also more unattractive to seek diagnosis—and second of all, what about OSDD? Sure, it's looking like the trauma model is the correct explanation for example OSDD-1, but what about other presentations of the condition?

Consider: OSDD might also be caused by coercive persuasion including thought reform or recruit by sects or cults, a presentation given as example OSDD-2. Wouldn't certain kinds of endogenic systems, e.g. parogenic, clearly be identifiable as a form of self-inflicted coercive persuasion, particularly in the sense of thought reform or a sect or cult? “I have headmates. I am willfully forcing myself to believe this. If I force it hard enough, then I will actually believe it. Since the belief is metacognitive in nature, actually believing it will make it functionally true.” There's no reason an OSDD-2 system couldn't form by that means. Iatrogenesis of OSDD is unquestionably possible, even if DID cannot result from the same.

But good luck ever being diagnosed with OSDD-2. If you can find the once-in-a-blue-moon psychiatrist who's willing to diagnose dissociative disorders at all, they will almost certainly actually be trauma-informed. Which is great. Except: that their understanding of the (likely) fact that trauma is the real cause of DID and OSDD-1 will almost certainly act as a “curse of knowledge” that blinds them to the possibility of iatrogenesis of OSDD-2 or otherwise.

Compounding upon the many problems with seeking a diagnosis is that people who actually have an undiagnosed dissociative disorder are unlikely to seek a diagnosis due to the self-disavowing effect of the disorder, and if they do seek a diagnosis, the fact that the evaluating clinician understands undiagnosed dissociative disorders make people unlikely to seek a diagnosis makes the clinician less likely to diagnose, because the fact that the patient even came in at all is in and of itself cause for suspicion of imitative or factitious DID.

Finally perhaps the most serious issue with expecting all systems to seek diagnosis is that not all systems want treatment. The plural community largely disagrees with the implicit assumption that plurality is inherently pathological. System exclusionists often feel this attitude minimizes their own struggles with more pathological presentations of dissociative disorders, but fail to take into consideration that their own insistence on understanding all plurality as pathological needlessly stigmatizes less pathological presentations of plurality. Both sides need to understand plurality can be but is not necessarily pathological—but especially system exclusionists in particular need to understand this, because they are the ones who reject it.

I am personally of the opinion that it's very likely that literally every single person who ever claims to be a system has either DID, OSDD-1, or OSDD-2, mostly the latter. (Mostly because claiming to be a system can literally give you OSDD-2, as covered in the previous section.)

It's not so outlandish a claim when you consider that actual dissociative disorders are more common than people think, and online presentations of them are less common than people think. The internet amplifies the loudest voices, and DID really does sit at 1-2% but that's more common than schizophrenia which is something people get disparagingly accused of having all the time, and OSDD is actually estimated at somewhere around an eight percent prevalence. In the non-clinical population. That's one in twelve people. Ever. Most people probably know someone with undiagnosed OSDD. Add that 8% to DID's 1-2%, and it's certainly not unexpected for a community spanning a tenth of the fucking planet to have a significant online presence. That's bigger than most countries. Possibly all of them? I'm pretty sure there literally isn't a single country in the world with a higher population than the worldwide prevalence of undiagnosed dissociative disorders and it's not even close.

Okay so actually there are significantly more people in India than people with undiagnosed dissociative disorders in the whole world but not very significantly more. Like it's not even a factor-of-2 difference. It's insane to me that more than a tenth of the world lives in India by the way. Same story with China actually, there are more people in China than there are people with undiagnosed dissociative disorders in the world, but those are the only two countries you can say that about. If all the people with undiagnosed dissociative disorders got together and formed Undiagnosed-Dissociative-Disorderland it would be the third most populated country on earth.

“But wait, wouldn't that mean the kind of child abuse that causes these disorders is also a serious epidemic?” Yeah! It is! A lot more young girls are sexually abused by adult male family members than people care to think about. Same with parents hitting their kids. And verbal abuse, don't get me started on verbal abuse, yelling at your kids isn't even illegal or culturally unacceptable, of course verbal abuse trauma is going to be fucking everywhere.

“But what about the fact that they're so public about their plurality? Doesn't that make it probably not disordered, because they aren't disavowing it?” First of all, people who publicly identify as plural disavow their plurality all the goddamn time. Most of them compulsively tell themselves they're faking every single day, no thanks to you lot. Also, most plural people don't dare claim to have a dissociative disorder, even if I'm claiming they probably do. Plurality is understood as a related but distinct phenomenon. So they're disavowing having a dissociative disorder even when they embrace being plural. I don't think you understand how many layers of irony they're on, it's like 5 or 6 right now my dude. Also, I sure don't hear system exclusionists disavowing their diagnosed DID, does that mean they don't have it? Of course it doesn't.

Regardless, and in conclusion: Although modern psychiatric practices have a good success rate in treating dissociative disorders, their egregious unreliability in triaging them makes a compelling case that the medical terminology should be appropriated into a less rigorously structured community. That case being: There are fucktons of undiagnosed dissociative patients slipping through cracks in the institution wider than its mom's asscrack and they need somewhere to go, quit turning away your own kind you oblivious fucknuggets.

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.