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lb_leeTitle: Plural History, Part 3 (see also: Part 1; Part 2; Part 4)
Series: Essay
Summary: "Welcome to the jungle, everyone.” --Wednesday
Word Count: 2700
Notes: Ahaha, remember when this was going to be a two-part essay? Sorry guys. It's going to be four; no way could I cram in LJ-multiplicity, its downfall, and the exodus to tumblr and the genic wars. As usual, this essay was sponsored by the Patreon crew. Also, the (much shorter) video version of this essay went up while I was busy loony-braining. Thanks to our wonderful little studio audience!
Usenet: ASAR, ASD, and their spin-offs
The first place online (as opposed to BBS) that I’ve seen medicalized multiples congregating on is Usenet—specifically, alt.sexual.abuse.recovery, AKA ASAR, which was already in full swing by December 19, 1991 (which is when the Google Groups records start). ASAR was big enough to spawn its own domain, asarian.org (Fuzzy, 1994 December 15), which was owned by a multiple (Astraea, 1998 January 15) and hosted other multiples’ webpages, including Vickis’ Wonderful World of the Midcontinuum, the first version of Astraea’s Web I’ve been able to find, and Households for Equality, all of which we’ll come back to.
Although many multiples were on it, ASAR wasn’t multi-specific, so on August 28, 1994, a poster named Jonathan Grobe created alt.support.dissociation, AKA ASD. Grobe writes, “this newsgroup was originally going to be to discuss JUST multiplicity (aka MPD aka Multiple Personalities aka Multiple Personality Disorder aka Dissociative Identity Disorder) […] [but] someone mentioned calling it alt.dissociation and including other dissociative disorders as well as MP. I thought this was a wonderful idea, because many people who aren’t ‘really multiple’ experience the same types of problems and handle their dissociative states in a very similar way. So, with that in mind, alt.support.dissociation was born.” (Grobe, 1994). ASD is still sporadically active today, making it the longest continuously running multi group I know of, of any kind.
Just about every plurality community builds its own norms and rules over what is “acceptable” or “real” plurality, and ASD is no exception. While focused on dissociation, there is some ambivalence and flexibility over whether that requires trauma or dysfunction. For example, within less than two weeks of its creation, a poster named Leigh Ann appears, stating, “I was told a.s.d. was to be a support newsgroup for mp’s [multiples] or those who dissociate, regardless of how dysfunctional they are or are not. [...] I do not consider myself to be disordered or broken” (1994, September 6). And a day after that, the first version of the ASD FAQ, made by Discord and the Sapphire Gazelles, gives space for non-abused multiples in the case of those raised with dissociative caregivers (1994, September 7). Eight months later, the FAQ has been expanded to make room for multiples who come to their multiplicity via role play, “alternate social structures,” or “identity games” (Discord and Sapphire Gazelles, 1995, May 14).
Probably inspired by online support group norms, ASD and ASAR also build a culture of trigger warnings, which require warning for intense material, and “splats,” the censoring of words that might be triggering. (In the course of my researches for this essay, I found everything from “rape” to “trauma” to “parents” disemvoweled—written as “p*r*nts” or “tr**m*.”) One rando on Fanlore describes the atmosphere as “constant lengthy discussions, often involving vituperative language, refractive accusations and dogpiling, about who had triggered whom and which members were ‘unsafe’” (Unknown, n.d., paragraph 8).
Some multis get so sick of these endless trigger fights and smothering “safe space” debates that they leave and create their own groups. This includes Discord, one of the creators of the ASD FAQ; they leave ASAR in disgust on January 7, 1995 (see Sikorski, 1995) for greener pastures, like Sanctuary (Sikorski, 1994)—which sadly, I know little else about (Yavie, 1997). There’s also alt.abuse.transcendence, which splits off ASAR on June 20, 1994; creator Wednesday describes it as a “group I proposed a little while ago for the discussion of alternate models of understanding and dealing with abuse in all of its manifestations (sexual emotional physical mental ritual...). It's the no-spoiler [splat/trigger warning] zone, basically. The group is designed to be dangerous space rather than safe.... discussing BDSM, NLP [neurolinguistic programming], magickal/shamanistic approaches, cutting, nontraditional therapies and models... Welcome to the jungle, everyone.”
There’s also Dark Personalities, made by the Anachronic Army in 1998 (Anachronic Army, 2000, October 2, footer), known for its cage fight atmosphere—no warnings and embracing of headmates who were considered too “dark” or “demonic” in more traditional support atmospheres. In their own words, “If you are a multiple who requires trigger warnings and spoilers in order to function, go somewhere else” (Anachronic Army, 2000, October 19).
Dark Personalities is not, as far as I know, the source of the “empowered multiple” or “natural” multiple idea, which comes up by 2000, but they certainly help spread it through headmate Sharon’s essay, “The Empowered: A New Brand of Multiple” (Anachronic Army, 2001 April 14). The term itself is coined by Shaytar (and possibly their housemates, Bekaio/Bekariso) who apparently never intended to start a movement and seem a little exasperated at the explosive response. Shaytar member Jeren Tay’avamar explains their frustration at trying to exist online as a multiple who had not been diagnosed with MPD/DID, were outside the medical system, and had headmates who weren’t created by dissociative split: “Therefore, in the eyes of many in the community, our multiplicity was suspect. And we were tired of feeling like we should ‘prove’ how MPD/DID we were” (Shaytar, 2001, April 12). They separate MPD/DID from their multiplicity, which is “natural, as a way of life, not a disorder or something to be cured or healed from. […] Not better, not superior, not more advanced. Just Different” (ibid, emphasis theirs).
The term causes controversy, to say the least, which will be repeated almost verbatim fifteen, twenty years later in “the Genic Wars.” Jeren Tay’avamar is prescient when they say, “What it comes down to, in my opinion […] is a debate about language. Because some people have a different definition of two words - empowered multiplicity - they are seen as unsettling, if not downright dangerous. Somehow, by the way they use language, they are seen as invalidating a whole other group of people who choose to define the same words differently” (ibid).
The empowered multiples aren’t perfect, of course. Ableism still rears its ugly head; Sharon of the Anachronic Army writes, “Empowered multiples are employed and do well in the marketplace,” (2001, April 14), while Shaytar emphasize their education and employment status: “We are a high-functioning group of individuals who just happen to all share one body” (emphasis mine, Shaytar, 2001, March 3). But this is a nigh-universal problem in plural circles, the need to prove that one is a healthy, productive member of society (and not like those other bad multiples). It’s nigh-impossible to find any plural who doesn’t fall into this now and again; we certainly have!
Dark Personalities’s other notable contribution to online plural culture is their big glossary of multi terminology, which Lancers/Pavilion Hall and then Astraea will later lift and edit (Dark Personalities, 2001, May 19; Astraea, 2003, January 11; the Lancers version is lost). And speaking of Astraea…
Astraea are jerks (Lee, 2020, January 9) but it’s impossible to talk about online plural history without them. They gain online precedence by hosting the ASD FAQ on their site, Astraea’s Web, which existed by April 22, 1997 (Jackie). Astraea’s Web becomes a clearinghouse for information on multiplicity, mostly made by others, at times badly sourced and giving Astraea disproportionate credit.
For example, the Multiple Code expresses a lot of info about a multiple, condensed into an esoteric string of text. The Consortium created it (2001, June 13 and August 2) with nineteen different sections, all with at least five options, plus wild cards and modifiers (and some sections, like “Job” and “Species”, had dozens). When the Consortium and their website disappeared by 2003, Astraea picked the code up and put it on their own website with the claim that they made "edits and updates" (2004, April 27). There was exactly one change: the addition of the modifier "Vanilla Sex, no kinks" to the sexuality section (2004, May 5). They made no additions of any substance for two years (2007, April 23).
Of more interest is Vickis. They join ASD and coin the term “midcontinuum” in 1997 to describe “those who do not fit all the DID diagnostic criteria” (1997 January 25). In other words, people who are in-between multiple and singlet, have the then-diagnosis of Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (DDNOS), or don’t fit in the “acceptable” box. Vickis make it clear that this does not apply solely to medicalized plurals; they state "we begin to wonder whether 'plurality' and 'dissociation' are actually two different things. And we take as our starting point that plurality is not the problem" (1998, January 15). Vickis’ website, the Wonderful World of the Midcontinuum, starts collecting stories from other midcontinuum people, many of which are still of interest and relevant today. In a singlet world, it is all too easy to over-correct and focus on the most multi of multiples; we ourself are guilty of this. Vickis are an unusual instance of a plural fighting for fluidity and spectrum, and it’s fitting that the Wonderful World of the Midcontinuum is also the first place I see someone using “plural” as an umbrella term for multiples, midcontinuums, and other box-breakers. As far as I know, Vickis seem to be responsible for first attempting to create a plural umbrella outside of diagnostic terms.
Unfortunately, Vickis’ embrace of fluidity is not shared. Dark Personalities, in their glossary of plural jargon, list midcontinuum, but with the criticism, “many people feel the idea of a continuum to be inaccurate, [and] many are seeking a new term instead of mid-continuum" (2001, May 19). They do not succeed, but Astraea and Pavilion Hall will later on, erasing and reappropriating Vickis’ contributions for their own devices.
Chris Roche (who I know nothing about, asides from their plurality) sends out the first official email for Households United for Equality on February 13, 1999 (Astraea, 1999, November 17). HUE is “a proactive educational network devoted to correcting public misconceptions about multiplicity and to help protect multiples through education and awareness and hopefully through a legal defense fund” (ibid). Astraea host the initial web page, and Vickis design some logos; future goals include a bigger website, pamphlets, and a mailing list (ibid). It never does anything that I know of after March 9th, and it may seem like a blip on the radar, but it’ll be reprised in a couple years, with Pavilion/Lancers.
Meanwhile, other non-medical plural-umbrella groups are forming in their own places, completely independently, who’ve never heard about any of the “empowered multiple” fights.
Sidenote: Plural Otherkin
Okay, so, otherkin (non-human-identified) multiples exist and have for decades, but I know very little about them. They seem to have had their own hangouts on IRC, mailing lists, Yahoo, all this stuff that I don’t know much about. The little exposure I’ve had is from the paper magazine Kinships, the “first in print magazine for Otherkin and ‘other people who exist anyway’” (Joyner, 2006 May 10). Kinships ran for seven issues, printed mostly from October 2000 to December 2001, with the last two printed around 2007. At least two pretty high profile otherkin multis contributed: Crisses, creators of United Front Boot Camp and Kinhost (Crisses, n.d.; 2001, February 24) and Arhuaine and Casteylan/Casteglan of downtide, who created the Otherkin star (Various, 2001 fall, pg. 9; Arethinn n.d.)! So there’s a huge gaping void in my knowledge.
Soulbonders
Meanwhile, the soulbonders are also forming. Creativity and artwork interacting with plurality has been a thing since at least the Spiritualists and the “heteronyms” of Fernando Pessoa, and probably much farther back than that. But “soulbonding” as a term to describe fictional characters as autonomous entities comes from Amanda Flowers on the private mailing list Just for Writers, AKA JFW, sometime in the mid-’90s—the dates I’ve got range from 1996 (Amorpha, personal communication) through 1999 (Eclective, 2001, June 26). The term then spreads via Elective’s website (2001, June 26) and Kurai’s list of soulbonders (2000, December 7), which runs from 2000-2003 and is then picked up by Nichole who adds oral histories through 2005 (2005, December 4). Laura Gilkey (AKA Half-Esper Laura) also seems to have helped spread the term with her fictionpress story, The Trinity (2002).
That same year, someone creates the Livejournal soulbonding community (soulbonding, 2009 January 1). At first, there isn’t much overlap between LJ-soulbonding and LJ-multiplicity, but folks start crossing between the two by December 11, 2003 (bekkypk), and the two communities have more and more cross-fertilization as time goes on. The incomplete overlap invites soulbonders and multiples alike to question their respective ideas of what’s acceptable or “real”. The classic soulbonder interacts with their characters internally, but the characters don’t front or interact with daily life. But what happens if the characters do? What’s the difference between a multiple making “fiction” about their headmates and a soulbonder who talks to their characters? An old chestnut about people with DID (which I haven’t researched but am dubious of) is that they’re unusually creative, so should soulbonding really seem so separate a phenomenon? It’s not hard to find MPD/DID multiples with deep internal attachments to works of fiction—we’re one of them, and so is Madison Clell, who “developed an elaborate imaginary world as a child. ‘Every year I started to write it, but thought it sucked. I’d wait and try it again the next year. I thought for sure by fifth grade I’d have it,’ she says. […] Once I knew that these fantasy characters were actually alters, I knew that I couldn’t go back and do this as a fantasy epic” (San Francisco Examiner Staff, 2007).
Questioning one’s experience, reality, and sanity is a harrowing experience, never mind the implications that crazy/sane and singlet/plural may not be strict binaries. Despite (or maybe because of) their similarities, soulbonders and multiples sometimes sneer at each other. Kurai, when taking down their list, remarks on how what used to be fun turned into “a big, scary, monster of un-fun-ness, especially by people who are taking it WAY too seriously […] This is NOT MPD. If your SBs [soulbonds] routinely take control of your body during offline situations, then you need help. You have a problem” (2001, October 18). Meanwhile, Riesz of Eclective explicates the issue that some multiples take with soulbonders: “the majority of SoulBonds originate not from spirit walk-ins or other planes of existence, but from things that nobody ‘in their right mind’ considers real. Books, plays, movies, comics, television. In fact, this is the main bugbear that some Multiples (and the majority of ‘normals’) have with SoulBonders - ‘how can they be real people when they're just characters from some cartoon?’ (Eclective, 2002 September 18).
Like all plurals, soulbonders are easy to make fun of. A number of well-known mockeries pop up online: the FF7 House cult warning page from around 2005 (Unknown, n.d.), Fandom Wank’s Snapes on an Astral Plane (narcissam, 2006, October 22), and Encyclopedia Dramatica’s Soulbonding page (2008, August 26). Perversely, though, public excoriation may have help raise soulbonding’s profile, introducing the concept to a new audience—everyone loves a trainwreck. We know at least one plural who has privately admitted that their gateway to recognizing themselves was through the mockery groups.
Soulbonders at this time frame or perceive these mockery posts as an us-vs.-them thing: “jerk singlets are infiltrating our groups to make fun of us!” And this was not a baseless concern (Encyclopedia Dramatica, 2006 March 3). But the reality was more complicated: often, soulbonders and other plurals used mockery communities to shame, abuse, and police each other. Wondershocked gets a lot of soulbonders put on Encyclopedia Dramatica and ridicules people’s openness on the Internet… while at the same time claiming to be plural in private conversations with those same soulbonders (Lee, 2019, April 18 and July 21). Shoiryu lists herself on Kurai’s soulbonder list (Kurai, 2000 December 7), but as far as I can tell, she’s also a Fandom Wank mod at the time of the Snapes post. Chronic plural predator Draven has no problem outing a soulbonder ex on Fandom Wank as punishment for trying to escape (Lee, 2018, pg. 82-87). And plenty of plurals (publicly or privately) read the mockeries and laugh along as a way of whistling in the dark—“at least we’re not like these dorks!”
But we are. Every single one of us.
--continue to Part 4, which is the end!
Sources and Recommended Reading:
(n.d.) 209 Area Code BBSes Through History (80’s Version). Retrieved from http://bbslist.textfiles.com/209/oldschool.html
(n.d.) 760 Area Code BBSes Throughout History. Retrieved from http://bbslist.textfiles.com/760/
(n.d.) 804 Area Code BBSes Through History. Retrieved from http://bbslist.textfiles.com/804/
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Baldwin, Louis. (1984). Oneselves: multiple personalities, 1811-1981. Jefferson: McFarland.
A short digest of a bunch of old multiples of yore that’s out of print. Read this instead of Wallace et al; it does about the same job, but more thoroughly and with citations, and they mention a lot of the same people, making us suspect that they had similar inspirations.
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Boring as hell and finding this stupid article took me forever.
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Eclective. [Riesz of]. (2001, December 26). soulbonding faq [web page]. http://childofmana.tripod.com/soulbondingfaq.htm Internet Archive. Retrieved 2019/03/17 from https://web.archive.org/web/20011226155411/http://childofmana.tripod.com/soulbondingfaq.htm
Eclective [Riesz of]. (2002, September 18). clowns to the left of us, jokers to the right… [web page] http://childofmana.tripod.com/multiplemidcont-intro.htm Internet Archive. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20020918063730/http://childofmana.tripod.com/multiplemidcont-intro.htm
Encyclopedia Dramatica. (2006 March 3). Talk:Otakin [wiki page]. http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Talk:Otakin Internet Archive. Retrieved 2019/04/30 from https://web.archive.org/web/20100426004714/http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Talk:Otakin
Encyclopedia Dramatica. (2008 August 26). Soulbonding [wiki page]. http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Soulbonding Internet Archive. Retrieved 2019/04/30 from https://web.archive.org/web/20080826105532/http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Soulbonding
False Memory Syndrome Foundation. (n.d.) Advisory Board Profiles. Retrieved from http://www.fmsfonline.org/?about=AdvisoryBoardProfiles#elizabethloftus
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Franz, Shepherd Ivory. (1933). Persons, One and Three: A Study in Multiple Personalities. New York: Whittlesey house. Retrieved from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015002704081&view=1up&seq=15
Hard to find, but surprisingly readable. While digging for this stupid thing, I found someone applauding Franz for doing so much incredibly boring-ass work, and this is accurate. A lot of this book is him trying to piece things together and be as thorough as possible.
Freyd, Jennifer J. (1998) Science in the Memory Debate, Ethics &Behavior, 8:2, pg. 101-113. Retrieve online from http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327019eb0802_1
Fuzzy. (1994, December 15). ADMIN: Fuzzy system has new domain name [Usenet message]. Retrieved from https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/alt.support.dissociation/asarian.org|sort:date/alt.support.dissociation/iJdJw6Cux0I/uB-Eip_vaZEJ
Gilbert, J. A. (1902). X. New York Medical Record, pg. 207-11.
Gilkey, Laura. (2002). The Trinity [Fictionpress story]. Retrieved 2019/04/18 from https://www.fictionpress.com/s/735472/1/The-Trinity
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Harris, Jonathan G. (1997 May 19). WITCH HUNT INFORMATION CENTER. http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/harris/witchhunt.html Internet Archive. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/19970519144556/http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/harris/witchhunt.html
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Lee, LB. (2018). Cultiples #2: The Fandom Cults of Draven [ebook]. Self-published.
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Loftus, Elizabeth, and Katherine Ketchum. (1991). Witness for the Defense: The Accused, the Eyewitness, and the Expert Who Puts Memory on Trial. New York: St. Martin’s Books.
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Mann, B. A. (2004). Iroquoian women: The gantowisas. New York: Peter Lang. (326-329)
You can read the transcription Polyfrazzlemented sent us here: https://lb-lee.dreamwidth.org/1094585.html#cutid1
Many Voices Press. (1989, February). Many Voices: Words of Hope for Clients with MPD and Dissociative Disorders. Vol. 1, No. 1. Retrieved from http://manyvoicespress.org/backissues-pdf/1989_02.pdf
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Many Voices Press. (1992, June). Many Voices: Words of Hope for Clients with MPD and Dissociative Disorders. Vol. 4, No. 3. Retrieved from http://manyvoicespress.org/backissues-pdf/1992_06.pdf
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Many Voices Press. (1993, October). Many Voices: Words of Hope for Clients with MPD and Dissociative Disorders. Vol. 5, No. 5. Retrieved from http://manyvoicespress.org/backissues-pdf/1993_10.pdf
McGuire, Danielle L. (2010). At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power. New York: Vintage Books.
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narcissam. (2006, October 22). "Severus, come to me/ Be the light for me/ So I can see/ Life's beauty/ Guide me to destiny." [Fandom Wank Journalfen post] http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/1015949.html Internet Archive. Retrieved 2019/04/18 from https://web.archive.org/web/20071213013651/http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/1015949.html
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Plumer, William S. (1860). Mary Reynolds: A case of double consciousness. Harper’s Magazine. Retrieved from https://harpers.org/archive/1860/05/mary-reynolds/
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Various. (2001 fall). Kinships Magazine Issue #4. Pentegram Komix and Graphix.
Vickis [Vicki(s)]. (1997 January 25). New web page [Newsgroup message]. Retrieved from https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.support.dissociation/Dg4ZDCSBsMc/NJgeh7QSYlMJ
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Wallace, Wallechinsky, Wallace, and Wallace (1980). The Book of Lists #2. Bantam. (377-380)
Outdated, unsourced, often incorrect pop culture article on multiples of yore. You can read our transcription here: https://lb-lee.dreamwidth.org/873671.html
Wednesday. (1994, June 20). alt.abuse.transcendence is up! [Usenet message] Retrieved from https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.abuse.transcendence/__5_0EU8D2g/XkJ_LXvusWEJ
Yavie. (1997, May 23). SANCTUARYites Home Pages [web page]. http://www.inlink.com/~chack/sanct/sanctuary.html Internet Archive. Retrieved 2020/07/29 from https://web.archive.org/web/19970522111106/http://www.inlink.com/~chack/sanct/sanctuary.html
Young, Kevin. (2017) Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press.
Series: Essay
Summary: "Welcome to the jungle, everyone.” --Wednesday
Word Count: 2700
Notes: Ahaha, remember when this was going to be a two-part essay? Sorry guys. It's going to be four; no way could I cram in LJ-multiplicity, its downfall, and the exodus to tumblr and the genic wars. As usual, this essay was sponsored by the Patreon crew. Also, the (much shorter) video version of this essay went up while I was busy loony-braining. Thanks to our wonderful little studio audience!
Usenet: ASAR, ASD, and their spin-offs
The first place online (as opposed to BBS) that I’ve seen medicalized multiples congregating on is Usenet—specifically, alt.sexual.abuse.recovery, AKA ASAR, which was already in full swing by December 19, 1991 (which is when the Google Groups records start). ASAR was big enough to spawn its own domain, asarian.org (Fuzzy, 1994 December 15), which was owned by a multiple (Astraea, 1998 January 15) and hosted other multiples’ webpages, including Vickis’ Wonderful World of the Midcontinuum, the first version of Astraea’s Web I’ve been able to find, and Households for Equality, all of which we’ll come back to.
Although many multiples were on it, ASAR wasn’t multi-specific, so on August 28, 1994, a poster named Jonathan Grobe created alt.support.dissociation, AKA ASD. Grobe writes, “this newsgroup was originally going to be to discuss JUST multiplicity (aka MPD aka Multiple Personalities aka Multiple Personality Disorder aka Dissociative Identity Disorder) […] [but] someone mentioned calling it alt.dissociation and including other dissociative disorders as well as MP. I thought this was a wonderful idea, because many people who aren’t ‘really multiple’ experience the same types of problems and handle their dissociative states in a very similar way. So, with that in mind, alt.support.dissociation was born.” (Grobe, 1994). ASD is still sporadically active today, making it the longest continuously running multi group I know of, of any kind.
Just about every plurality community builds its own norms and rules over what is “acceptable” or “real” plurality, and ASD is no exception. While focused on dissociation, there is some ambivalence and flexibility over whether that requires trauma or dysfunction. For example, within less than two weeks of its creation, a poster named Leigh Ann appears, stating, “I was told a.s.d. was to be a support newsgroup for mp’s [multiples] or those who dissociate, regardless of how dysfunctional they are or are not. [...] I do not consider myself to be disordered or broken” (1994, September 6). And a day after that, the first version of the ASD FAQ, made by Discord and the Sapphire Gazelles, gives space for non-abused multiples in the case of those raised with dissociative caregivers (1994, September 7). Eight months later, the FAQ has been expanded to make room for multiples who come to their multiplicity via role play, “alternate social structures,” or “identity games” (Discord and Sapphire Gazelles, 1995, May 14).
Probably inspired by online support group norms, ASD and ASAR also build a culture of trigger warnings, which require warning for intense material, and “splats,” the censoring of words that might be triggering. (In the course of my researches for this essay, I found everything from “rape” to “trauma” to “parents” disemvoweled—written as “p*r*nts” or “tr**m*.”) One rando on Fanlore describes the atmosphere as “constant lengthy discussions, often involving vituperative language, refractive accusations and dogpiling, about who had triggered whom and which members were ‘unsafe’” (Unknown, n.d., paragraph 8).
Some multis get so sick of these endless trigger fights and smothering “safe space” debates that they leave and create their own groups. This includes Discord, one of the creators of the ASD FAQ; they leave ASAR in disgust on January 7, 1995 (see Sikorski, 1995) for greener pastures, like Sanctuary (Sikorski, 1994)—which sadly, I know little else about (Yavie, 1997). There’s also alt.abuse.transcendence, which splits off ASAR on June 20, 1994; creator Wednesday describes it as a “group I proposed a little while ago for the discussion of alternate models of understanding and dealing with abuse in all of its manifestations (sexual emotional physical mental ritual...). It's the no-spoiler [splat/trigger warning] zone, basically. The group is designed to be dangerous space rather than safe.... discussing BDSM, NLP [neurolinguistic programming], magickal/shamanistic approaches, cutting, nontraditional therapies and models... Welcome to the jungle, everyone.”
There’s also Dark Personalities, made by the Anachronic Army in 1998 (Anachronic Army, 2000, October 2, footer), known for its cage fight atmosphere—no warnings and embracing of headmates who were considered too “dark” or “demonic” in more traditional support atmospheres. In their own words, “If you are a multiple who requires trigger warnings and spoilers in order to function, go somewhere else” (Anachronic Army, 2000, October 19).
Dark Personalities is not, as far as I know, the source of the “empowered multiple” or “natural” multiple idea, which comes up by 2000, but they certainly help spread it through headmate Sharon’s essay, “The Empowered: A New Brand of Multiple” (Anachronic Army, 2001 April 14). The term itself is coined by Shaytar (and possibly their housemates, Bekaio/Bekariso) who apparently never intended to start a movement and seem a little exasperated at the explosive response. Shaytar member Jeren Tay’avamar explains their frustration at trying to exist online as a multiple who had not been diagnosed with MPD/DID, were outside the medical system, and had headmates who weren’t created by dissociative split: “Therefore, in the eyes of many in the community, our multiplicity was suspect. And we were tired of feeling like we should ‘prove’ how MPD/DID we were” (Shaytar, 2001, April 12). They separate MPD/DID from their multiplicity, which is “natural, as a way of life, not a disorder or something to be cured or healed from. […] Not better, not superior, not more advanced. Just Different” (ibid, emphasis theirs).
The term causes controversy, to say the least, which will be repeated almost verbatim fifteen, twenty years later in “the Genic Wars.” Jeren Tay’avamar is prescient when they say, “What it comes down to, in my opinion […] is a debate about language. Because some people have a different definition of two words - empowered multiplicity - they are seen as unsettling, if not downright dangerous. Somehow, by the way they use language, they are seen as invalidating a whole other group of people who choose to define the same words differently” (ibid).
The empowered multiples aren’t perfect, of course. Ableism still rears its ugly head; Sharon of the Anachronic Army writes, “Empowered multiples are employed and do well in the marketplace,” (2001, April 14), while Shaytar emphasize their education and employment status: “We are a high-functioning group of individuals who just happen to all share one body” (emphasis mine, Shaytar, 2001, March 3). But this is a nigh-universal problem in plural circles, the need to prove that one is a healthy, productive member of society (and not like those other bad multiples). It’s nigh-impossible to find any plural who doesn’t fall into this now and again; we certainly have!
Dark Personalities’s other notable contribution to online plural culture is their big glossary of multi terminology, which Lancers/Pavilion Hall and then Astraea will later lift and edit (Dark Personalities, 2001, May 19; Astraea, 2003, January 11; the Lancers version is lost). And speaking of Astraea…
Astraea are jerks (Lee, 2020, January 9) but it’s impossible to talk about online plural history without them. They gain online precedence by hosting the ASD FAQ on their site, Astraea’s Web, which existed by April 22, 1997 (Jackie). Astraea’s Web becomes a clearinghouse for information on multiplicity, mostly made by others, at times badly sourced and giving Astraea disproportionate credit.
For example, the Multiple Code expresses a lot of info about a multiple, condensed into an esoteric string of text. The Consortium created it (2001, June 13 and August 2) with nineteen different sections, all with at least five options, plus wild cards and modifiers (and some sections, like “Job” and “Species”, had dozens). When the Consortium and their website disappeared by 2003, Astraea picked the code up and put it on their own website with the claim that they made "edits and updates" (2004, April 27). There was exactly one change: the addition of the modifier "Vanilla Sex, no kinks" to the sexuality section (2004, May 5). They made no additions of any substance for two years (2007, April 23).
Of more interest is Vickis. They join ASD and coin the term “midcontinuum” in 1997 to describe “those who do not fit all the DID diagnostic criteria” (1997 January 25). In other words, people who are in-between multiple and singlet, have the then-diagnosis of Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (DDNOS), or don’t fit in the “acceptable” box. Vickis make it clear that this does not apply solely to medicalized plurals; they state "we begin to wonder whether 'plurality' and 'dissociation' are actually two different things. And we take as our starting point that plurality is not the problem" (1998, January 15). Vickis’ website, the Wonderful World of the Midcontinuum, starts collecting stories from other midcontinuum people, many of which are still of interest and relevant today. In a singlet world, it is all too easy to over-correct and focus on the most multi of multiples; we ourself are guilty of this. Vickis are an unusual instance of a plural fighting for fluidity and spectrum, and it’s fitting that the Wonderful World of the Midcontinuum is also the first place I see someone using “plural” as an umbrella term for multiples, midcontinuums, and other box-breakers. As far as I know, Vickis seem to be responsible for first attempting to create a plural umbrella outside of diagnostic terms.
Unfortunately, Vickis’ embrace of fluidity is not shared. Dark Personalities, in their glossary of plural jargon, list midcontinuum, but with the criticism, “many people feel the idea of a continuum to be inaccurate, [and] many are seeking a new term instead of mid-continuum" (2001, May 19). They do not succeed, but Astraea and Pavilion Hall will later on, erasing and reappropriating Vickis’ contributions for their own devices.
Chris Roche (who I know nothing about, asides from their plurality) sends out the first official email for Households United for Equality on February 13, 1999 (Astraea, 1999, November 17). HUE is “a proactive educational network devoted to correcting public misconceptions about multiplicity and to help protect multiples through education and awareness and hopefully through a legal defense fund” (ibid). Astraea host the initial web page, and Vickis design some logos; future goals include a bigger website, pamphlets, and a mailing list (ibid). It never does anything that I know of after March 9th, and it may seem like a blip on the radar, but it’ll be reprised in a couple years, with Pavilion/Lancers.
Meanwhile, other non-medical plural-umbrella groups are forming in their own places, completely independently, who’ve never heard about any of the “empowered multiple” fights.
Sidenote: Plural Otherkin
Okay, so, otherkin (non-human-identified) multiples exist and have for decades, but I know very little about them. They seem to have had their own hangouts on IRC, mailing lists, Yahoo, all this stuff that I don’t know much about. The little exposure I’ve had is from the paper magazine Kinships, the “first in print magazine for Otherkin and ‘other people who exist anyway’” (Joyner, 2006 May 10). Kinships ran for seven issues, printed mostly from October 2000 to December 2001, with the last two printed around 2007. At least two pretty high profile otherkin multis contributed: Crisses, creators of United Front Boot Camp and Kinhost (Crisses, n.d.; 2001, February 24) and Arhuaine and Casteylan/Casteglan of downtide, who created the Otherkin star (Various, 2001 fall, pg. 9; Arethinn n.d.)! So there’s a huge gaping void in my knowledge.
Soulbonders
Meanwhile, the soulbonders are also forming. Creativity and artwork interacting with plurality has been a thing since at least the Spiritualists and the “heteronyms” of Fernando Pessoa, and probably much farther back than that. But “soulbonding” as a term to describe fictional characters as autonomous entities comes from Amanda Flowers on the private mailing list Just for Writers, AKA JFW, sometime in the mid-’90s—the dates I’ve got range from 1996 (Amorpha, personal communication) through 1999 (Eclective, 2001, June 26). The term then spreads via Elective’s website (2001, June 26) and Kurai’s list of soulbonders (2000, December 7), which runs from 2000-2003 and is then picked up by Nichole who adds oral histories through 2005 (2005, December 4). Laura Gilkey (AKA Half-Esper Laura) also seems to have helped spread the term with her fictionpress story, The Trinity (2002).
That same year, someone creates the Livejournal soulbonding community (soulbonding, 2009 January 1). At first, there isn’t much overlap between LJ-soulbonding and LJ-multiplicity, but folks start crossing between the two by December 11, 2003 (bekkypk), and the two communities have more and more cross-fertilization as time goes on. The incomplete overlap invites soulbonders and multiples alike to question their respective ideas of what’s acceptable or “real”. The classic soulbonder interacts with their characters internally, but the characters don’t front or interact with daily life. But what happens if the characters do? What’s the difference between a multiple making “fiction” about their headmates and a soulbonder who talks to their characters? An old chestnut about people with DID (which I haven’t researched but am dubious of) is that they’re unusually creative, so should soulbonding really seem so separate a phenomenon? It’s not hard to find MPD/DID multiples with deep internal attachments to works of fiction—we’re one of them, and so is Madison Clell, who “developed an elaborate imaginary world as a child. ‘Every year I started to write it, but thought it sucked. I’d wait and try it again the next year. I thought for sure by fifth grade I’d have it,’ she says. […] Once I knew that these fantasy characters were actually alters, I knew that I couldn’t go back and do this as a fantasy epic” (San Francisco Examiner Staff, 2007).
Questioning one’s experience, reality, and sanity is a harrowing experience, never mind the implications that crazy/sane and singlet/plural may not be strict binaries. Despite (or maybe because of) their similarities, soulbonders and multiples sometimes sneer at each other. Kurai, when taking down their list, remarks on how what used to be fun turned into “a big, scary, monster of un-fun-ness, especially by people who are taking it WAY too seriously […] This is NOT MPD. If your SBs [soulbonds] routinely take control of your body during offline situations, then you need help. You have a problem” (2001, October 18). Meanwhile, Riesz of Eclective explicates the issue that some multiples take with soulbonders: “the majority of SoulBonds originate not from spirit walk-ins or other planes of existence, but from things that nobody ‘in their right mind’ considers real. Books, plays, movies, comics, television. In fact, this is the main bugbear that some Multiples (and the majority of ‘normals’) have with SoulBonders - ‘how can they be real people when they're just characters from some cartoon?’ (Eclective, 2002 September 18).
Like all plurals, soulbonders are easy to make fun of. A number of well-known mockeries pop up online: the FF7 House cult warning page from around 2005 (Unknown, n.d.), Fandom Wank’s Snapes on an Astral Plane (narcissam, 2006, October 22), and Encyclopedia Dramatica’s Soulbonding page (2008, August 26). Perversely, though, public excoriation may have help raise soulbonding’s profile, introducing the concept to a new audience—everyone loves a trainwreck. We know at least one plural who has privately admitted that their gateway to recognizing themselves was through the mockery groups.
Soulbonders at this time frame or perceive these mockery posts as an us-vs.-them thing: “jerk singlets are infiltrating our groups to make fun of us!” And this was not a baseless concern (Encyclopedia Dramatica, 2006 March 3). But the reality was more complicated: often, soulbonders and other plurals used mockery communities to shame, abuse, and police each other. Wondershocked gets a lot of soulbonders put on Encyclopedia Dramatica and ridicules people’s openness on the Internet… while at the same time claiming to be plural in private conversations with those same soulbonders (Lee, 2019, April 18 and July 21). Shoiryu lists herself on Kurai’s soulbonder list (Kurai, 2000 December 7), but as far as I can tell, she’s also a Fandom Wank mod at the time of the Snapes post. Chronic plural predator Draven has no problem outing a soulbonder ex on Fandom Wank as punishment for trying to escape (Lee, 2018, pg. 82-87). And plenty of plurals (publicly or privately) read the mockeries and laugh along as a way of whistling in the dark—“at least we’re not like these dorks!”
But we are. Every single one of us.
--continue to Part 4, which is the end!
Sources and Recommended Reading:
(n.d.) 209 Area Code BBSes Through History (80’s Version). Retrieved from http://bbslist.textfiles.com/209/oldschool.html
(n.d.) 760 Area Code BBSes Throughout History. Retrieved from http://bbslist.textfiles.com/760/
(n.d.) 804 Area Code BBSes Through History. Retrieved from http://bbslist.textfiles.com/804/
Allen, Denna and Janet Midwinter. (1990). Michelle Remembers: The Debunking of a Myth. http://xeper.org/pub/lib/xp_lib_wh_DebunkingOfAMyth.htm Internet Archive. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20040511131253/http://xeper.org/pub/lib/xp_lib_wh_DebunkingOfAMyth.htm
Alt.support.dissociation (n.d.) alt.support.dissociation [Newsgroup archive] Retrieved from https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/alt.support.dissociation
Amorpha, [Anzeu of] [lithophiles]. (2017, September 22). RE: This is one of those Just Me (tm) opinions, but... [Dreamwidth Comment] Retrieved 2019/03/14 from https://lb-lee.dreamwidth.org/881645.html?thread=4702701#cmt4702701
Anachronic Army. (2000, October 2). Dark Personalities – The Dark Side of Multiplicity [web page] http://www.darkpersonalities.com:80/index2.html Internet Archive. Retrieved 2020/07/29 from https://web.archive.org/web/20001002094513/http://www.darkpersonalities.com:80/index2.html
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A short digest of a bunch of old multiples of yore that’s out of print. Read this instead of Wallace et al; it does about the same job, but more thoroughly and with citations, and they mention a lot of the same people, making us suspect that they had similar inspirations.
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Hard to find, but surprisingly readable. While digging for this stupid thing, I found someone applauding Franz for doing so much incredibly boring-ass work, and this is accurate. A lot of this book is him trying to piece things together and be as thorough as possible.
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You can read the transcription Polyfrazzlemented sent us here: https://lb-lee.dreamwidth.org/1094585.html#cutid1
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no subject
Date: 2020-08-13 02:45 am (UTC)Admittedly, these days, in more tumblr-inflected plural circles, I think they've kinda dealt with that by erasing the old concept of what I knew as "insourced soulbonds" (AKA: headmates of your own characters). Now the concept of "fictive" seems to be explicitly outsourced (other people's characters--Bugs Bunny, Othello, etc.) and insourced fictives are considered to just be... I dunno, labeless "normal" headmates, which to someone from our online generation is just WEIRD.
if your OC starts talking to you, do they have to make their overall debut for even existing at the same time as their first words to you, or if you've ever so much as drawn a picture or roleplayed as them or whatever even once before speaking to them then they're automatically no longer valid, or...?
I THINK the question was often treated as one of autonomy, how dependent they were on the story. For example, us non-fiction headmates (like me, Rogan) often got shoehorned into stories because we couldn't fathom us as anything but "characters missing a story." But these efforts were pretty much always failures that puttered out within a couple pages, and none of us ever said, "oh yes, that story was MY LIFE, man!" While our fictive people have, "Wow, that's uncanny, that IS my life, sort of, run through a game of Fiction Telephone..." reaction. (And then there are a couple oddballs who seemed to bounce in-between; we're still figuring THAT out.)
That said, except for those oddballs, every single one of our fictives, the story came first before we met them; that was HOW we met them.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-13 05:56 am (UTC)So like, for us, Sara used to be a "general purpose" OC (she wasn't bound to a specific setting; she just kind of existed in a general roster for things like getting commissions, roleplay and the like) whereas Ardei definitely had a specific (never actually made or released but definitely planned out in my/our head) RPG-type game setting he was from. On the other hand, despite having less of a concrete setting origin, Sara identifies much more strongly with the old character--that is, the headmate is Sara, she literally and actually is that actual character, Pinocchio'd to life. Meanwhile, Ardei the OC had more of a specific project setting he was tied to, but Ardei the headmate is much more open to the idea of being... like... various formative influences, strong memories, traumas, and a whole soup of bits and pieces of me from all around my life that melted together and descended on Ardei the OC like "yes, this seems like a fitting identity to claim, a fitting shape through which I can present myself."
(This means we coincidentally don't have an answer to how they the "that story was my life!" question applies to them because both of them have ways to sidestep it entirely; Sara doesn't have a story to be her life or not, and Ardei is less attached to the notion that he is the Ardei from Ardei's story.)
But neither are fictives because both are insourced, and both are label-less "normal" headmates despite the very different ways they each relate to the characters that were there before they woke up and started talking to me, apparently.
I don't know, terminology is weird.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-13 11:44 pm (UTC)After all, our fictive headmates might be insourced and thus have a different relationship to story than outsourced folks would, but they still have categorical differences from the rest of us!
no subject
Date: 2020-08-26 06:03 am (UTC)Yeah, the insourced vs. outsourced definition was what people were using the last time we were in a soulbonding community. It didn't always work perfectly (for example, if you've got someone who identifies with a particular canon, who started as a roleplaying OC or similar), but it was a lot better than what exists now, where headmates from your own works aren't, like... even really acknowledged. Or, I mean, they're technically acknowledged, but discussions of stuff like you mentioned, "the story we were writing vs. the life I remember" and similar, just don't seem to exist in the Tumblr discourse. People are assumed to not want, need, or be interested in such discussions, or that they can't be meaningfully compared to the experiences of outsourced people. Or something.
In the JFW, people often seemed to get both kinds through writing. The experience of "I started drafting/writing the story, and then the main character showed up in my head" didn't seem to be significantly different, for a lot of people, based on whether the story was fanfic or original. And a lot of the same issues would come up-- having expectations based on another world when this one doesn't work the same way, wanting to talk to people who shared experiences that don't happen at front, etc. And that was something that really didn't change for us when we switched from identifying as a soulbonder to identifying as multiple.
ETA: And when we did join the multiple community through places like Other Worlds and Dark Personalities, there were quite a few groups who were saying things like "our main person started out writing this as a science fiction/fantasy novel, but it turned out that we were real people." It seemed to be one of the most common ways for systems with large subjective spaces to become selves-aware in that era, at least within those self-selected samplings of people. There was a time when we were actually considering writing an essay for our page specifically for systems who'd had that experience, and about how, among other things, it can make you try to contort yourselves to fiction tropes even once you acknowledge you're real. (NGL, talking to people who are trying to be walking fiction cliches can be just as awkward as talking to people who are trying to be "the (insert thing here) alter" cliches. And Astraea had this thing where they wanted everyone else to have dramatic stories so they could get in on it and become the heroes.)
-Istevia