The Plural Experience: Terminology

i hate pluralpedia. i think a mistake you can make with plurality is sort of over-labelling yourself. though i have always been sort of anti labels with my queerness.

so i think the issue with labels is that they can sort of become prescriptive instead of descriptive. like if you give your self a label, your true self may not perfectly align with it, or might change over time. i think mindfully using labels is important. like, is this label serving me? does it help me understand something within my self? consider this a mindfulness exercise, i suppose.

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okay but terminology isn’t just labels. in plurality, there are a lot of labels for things:

the whole being is typically referred to as a (plural) system. the parts of this system can have multiple terms. i’ve been a bit conflicted between them.

common part terms are:

• member
• alter
  • (this has a medical etymology(?), some might not like it)
• facet/aspect
  • these mainly seem to be used to refer to median systems
• headmate
  • i personally don’t like this one, but i use it when talking to other systems about plurality, as it is a specific and widely accepted term.

another aspect is the sort of. “mechanics” of plurality. the syskinetics, if you will let me make up words. in the process of discovering your selves, you will do modelling to figure out how and why your system behaves. the sort of ‘typical’ system model is:

• you have a ‘front’, and a ‘back’. your front usually seats/houses/contains one member, but can have more.
  • more than one member in front is usually called co-fronting.
• the back is referred to as headspace, and it’s where your non-fronting members go.
• the process of front seat changing is called switching. usually it is one member in, one member out.
• determining who is in front can be challenging, and if you can’t determine who is in front (or maybe have multiple members merged in some way) you are blurry.

this is the model that most people are familiar with (at least in my spaces) but it is not in any way authoritative. if you do not fit this model, you are not doing plurality wrong. specifically, median systems do not really fit this model.

let me be clear: you can make up or use any terminology you want. it is okay. you do not need to use approved wiki terminology. the only issue with this is that it might be a struggle to communicate your model to others, which is why you may want to write up an explainer or use more common terminology when communicating with others.

that’s about all i have to say on this topic for now. one of us might come and add more to this later.