dismallyOriented

When "I'm literally 12" becomes abruptly and immediately true

For Alice, who asked me to write this.

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One of the unique features of plurality is how people within the system don't have to be like the body. Just because they live in it doesn't mean they all must resemble it, or have their personal proprioception match up with the body’s external shape. This means that system members can vary in all kinds of ways - height/weight, ethnicity, species or body plan, and the topic of today’s essay: age.

It can be tricky sometimes for people to wrap their heads around what it means for a system member to look and be different from the body. After all, you’re not in their head with them, so all you have to go on perception-wise is the body, and it’s gonna look however old it is. What does it mean for someone to be 7 years old when their external body is 38? How should you interact with a system member who's much younger than the members you know? In what ways are internal children similar or different from external children? I'll be talking through the ways I’ve learned how to treat them well and care for them.

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( Read more )

So, dating and plurality are topics that get covered a fair bit online, when you know the right places to look. (Hell, dreamwidth is one of those right places.) Unfortunately, the broader public not knowing a ton about plurality also means that there's a lot of facets of my relationships that I don't really get to share or talk about. I had a handful of opportunities to write about it recently, so now I'm making a big ol' post about it here. In case it helps people learn, or understand something a little better, or maybe gives some folks an idea of what their lives could look like.

Also! If you want to hear more about dating from plural folks themselves, I'd recommend you check out the work of LB Lee (on dreamwidth and itch.io), and the many videos available on the plural events youtube channel, the archive for the Plural Positivity World Conference. There are other written accounts on people's personal blogs and youtube channels, but these are the ones I personally go back to often.

 

( Alright, onto the rest of the post. )