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 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.
How big is your system?
Technically, infinite; in practice, there are about five of us who come out regularly.
Aren’t you a bit old to have imaginary friends?
No, because we’re not imaginary friends. We do think creativity plays a role in how our plurality manifests, but imaginary friends don’t take control over their creators’ daily lives—they’re more static than that. We, on the other hand, have executive control over things like jobs, bills and housework.
Is there someone called [Government Name] 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. As for the deadname, we got rid of that in court over a decade ago.
What gender are you?
Most of us are men. We transitioned a long time ago and don’t talk about it a lot, except for articles that address the topic directly (eg, Yavari’s ‘Transitioning while Plural‘).
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 a complicated and intricate subjective ‘headspace’, in which people have their own histories and identities independent of 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 have three original members—Hess, Richard and Carmen. For a few years, we erroneously thought someone else was.
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. We were diagnosed with MPD in the late 1980s, but they thought they had ‘cured’ it after one of us learned how to hide the rest of the system. Also, we were offered a new 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. And even if we did continue to express signs of traditional DID, acknowledging system members’ individuality wouldn’t prevent us from healing from trauma.
Does your plurality impede you from engaging in daily-life tasks?
It generally doesn’t—unless we get into an argument over what to eat or do that day. We’re usually good at coming to a consensus, though.
You must have some amazing spiritual powers in order to be this way.
Definitely not.
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.
Mac or PC?
Mac. Windows is dreadful.