Plures House FAQ
This FAQ is inspired by several excellent plural FAQs out there, including the Loony-Brain system’s ‘Questions’ comic, and Amorpha’s FAQ page. For more information read Em’s Plurality for Sceptics.
What are your preferred pronouns and forms of address?
As a system? Third-person: they/them/theirs/themselves; first-person: we/us/ours/ourselves. As a group, call us Plures. We use plural grammatical constructions: ‘Plures are busy’, etc. We refer to ourselves as ‘people’ or ‘system members’; don’t call us ‘alters’, ‘personalities’, ‘ego states’, ‘parts’, ‘fragments’, ‘personas’ or anything like that. Individuals have their own pronoun preferences; ask them what they prefer if you’re not sure.
How big is your system?
Technically, infinite; in practice, there are about five of us who come out regularly.
How long do you think you’ve been plural?
As long as we can remember, but we didn’t come to terms with it until we were in our early twenties.
Aren’t you a bit old to have imaginary friends?
Whose imaginary friends? You presume that there’s a ‘real person’ underneath all of us who’s conjuring up ‘imaginary friends’. No, we’re just people, thanks.
Is there someone called [name on the ID] or [deadname]?
No. Nobody has either of those names here; the name on our ID is a government-recognised name that functions more like a stereotypical online handle.
What gender is your body?
If you can say that our body ‘has’ a gender, we’re trans male with genderqueer leanings. We all have our own gender identities and expressions, though.
How can you have people in your body that have different ages, ethnicities, species or personal histories?
Short answer: We just have.
Long answer: We have complicated and intricate subjective ‘headspace’, in which people have their own histories and identities independent from the front’s. It’s also common for plural systems—even trauma-based systems—to have system members whose appearance and background are different from the front body’s.
Do you have a ‘host’, ‘core’ or anyone who identifies themselves with the body?
Yes and no. We found out in 2018 that we do have an original member, but he doesn’t consider himself a host or core.
How do you sometimes say ‘I’ and sometimes ‘we’?
If one of us says ‘I’, it refers to their individual experiences or emotions; ‘we’ refers to the system at large (or the people present at the time). Language is slippery, and we recognise that it can be confusing.
Isn’t multiplicity a rare disorder? Why do you claim to have it? Why do you perceive yourselves as having several people in your brain?
We find it the most convenient way to describe the subjective psychological and existential perceptions we have. Also, ‘rare’ doesn’t mean ‘non-existent’.
Aren’t you glorifying a serious illness?
We don’t suffer from our plurality, and there are many DID-diagnosed systems who don’t view their system as a means of suffering. Also, we were offered a DID diagnosis in the early 2010s—we refused it, because we didn’t think that it would make much of a difference in our recovering from trauma. We suffer from the effects of the trauma, like depersonalisation, derealisation and flashbacks, not plurality itself.
Does your plurality impede you from engaging in daily-life tasks?
No, it doesn’t.
You must have some amazing spiritual powers in order to be this way.
Errrr, no. There are quite a few of us who don’t actually believe in any spiritual phenomena; those of us who do are a (quite vocal) minority.
You must have undergone severe abuse to be plural.
Yes, we are abuse survivors, but the details of that abuse are none of your business.
How ‘out’ are you?
It varies.
Why do you spell differently on your website? I noticed that some of you use British spellings and some of you use American spellings.
Each of us has individual preferences. Our website house style uses International English spellings.
Mac or PC?
Mac. Windows is dreadful.