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Therianthropy and Plurality

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  • #16
    Re: Therianthropy and Plurality

    To answer these questions from my experience alone (many systems experience these things very differently):

    When one of us is "fronting" (controlling the body), the others are generally "asleep", in a sense. They're not alert to what's happening in the moment, but our brain fills them in later when they do front. The littles are not alert when sexual stuff is going on, but they *are* able to remember the events after the fact. Generally they deal with that by emotionally distancing themselves from it and just choosing not to think about it much; for the most part they don't care, but it *is* kind of awkward sometimes. They know more than most kids their age would know, which is not ideal but we have no way of avoiding it.

    Other than that sexuality can be difficult for some of my systemmates due to incongruency between their identities and their bodies (for instance our gay 35 year old male member who is stuck in a female 21 year old body). We're honestly still working out some those issues. At the moment we only have one sexual/romantic partner, who is only my (the host's) partner, and is only a platonic friend to everyone else. Because our presences in the body are compartmentalized, and don't happen all at the same time, whoever is awake and fronting at any one time just makes decisions based on their own tastes (ie. in regard to food, clothing, or sexual preferences). There is no argument or frustration because they're the only one around to make the decisions or care, because of the whole "awake/asleep" deal.

    When it comes to nonhuman members, all of our nonhuman members are actually fairly humanoid. I personally identify as a therian, and consider myself to be both human *and* animal. Our other nonhuman members are a demon, and a skinwalker (which is based on a Navajo myth about evil witches who can shapeshift into various animals). So we're basically all fairly human-like, and can think and speak like humans. I am basically an "animal person", our demon is a humanoid mythical entity, and our skinwalker is like an "animal person" in a completely different interpretation of that phrase. Regardless, our nonhumanity doesn't hinder our communication or functioning.

    In regards to your last point, yes our experiences could probably help advance knowledge of complex subjects, potentially in the fields of psychology and philosophy. BUT, sadly that is not possible at this point. Psychology has already determined its stance on plurality, which is essentially this (paraphrased by me):

    "Plural systems are a result of a mental disorder (either DID or OSDD) and are invariably caused by severe childhood trauma. The "people" in the system are actually just fragments of one whole, and are more like separate dissociative states than full, separate people. Plurality is innately harmful and pathological, and the ideal treatment is to combine the parts back into one whole (normal) person."

    And those are just the psychologists who believe in our existence at all - many are actively and loudly against the idea that such a thing could possibly exist, and claim that it's absurd. For reference, some of those points do hold true for some systems - for instance, the "caused by trauma" bit is true in some cases, and the concept and treatment of DID is helpful for some systems. I don't believe that the disorders themselves are completely non-existent - it's just that the model doesn't fit for quite a few systems. But what all of this means is that psychologists are mostly only interested in studying disordered systems that fit into *their* idea of what plurality is. In my experience the idea of multiple people in one body is so mind-blowing and goes against people's assumptions and psychological viewpoints so much, that psychologists will do back flips in order to either deny or stereotype our existence and assert that we're not *really* separate people. It's pretty depressing, honestly :/

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