Multi with Bornstein and Sullivan

[lb_lee]

So, we're reading Kate Bornstein and Caitlin Sullivan's Nearly Roadkill, a fiction book about gender identity and politics in cyberspace--only it was published in '96, before 4chan, Google, and all the other things that have become fixtures of the World Wide Web, so the story has that slightly off-kilter feel.

Anyway, it's mostly about gender, politics, and cybersex, written entirely in chat logs, journal entries, and e-mails, when there's this little odd bit that made us blink:


>>Email #1:
To: Scratch@FarmReports.com
From: TheStLouis7
Subj: We are... are you?

We are M.P.D. Multiple Personality Disorder.  Only one of us likes the "Disorder" word, but that one is Boo who is down on everything about himself anyway.  We want to know: Are you a gang like us?  Is Winc?  Is that why *you* are so many people online?

We look hard for others like us.  We have certain signs we look for.  The actual individual actions of each personality is probably the surest way to tell.  And of course, sometimes there's time loss when one of us is being so much stronger than the rest.  We've found among ourselves and other multiples is a fear of mirrors on the part of the host.  She avoids looking in mirrors because she never sees the same face.  Is it like that for you?  Is that why you "change"?  She also doesn't like clocks, they scare her.  One of us like them.  Time is an enemy, because time always disappears.

Do you have some time to write to us?

--StLouis7<<

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Toobe Entry

>>To: Toobe
From: Scratch
Subj: Don't laugh...

I'm intrigued with these Multiple folks.  They don't sound like kooks, you know, they sound cool, if you try to forget the fact they "they" is one person.  Or "one person" as *we* know "one person."

How different from them am I?  Maybe it *is* weird to insist on multiple genders.  Or maybe it's not so weird to insist on retaining multiple personalities?  They don't sound eager to "integrate" them all, or whatever the shrinks say they're supposed to do.  Seems a sane response to the world.

Should I answer it?

--S.<<

>>To: Scratch
From: Toobe
Subj: Multiples

I had a long talk once with somebody who was diagnosed as MPD.  Only ze called it Dissociative, I guess that's the newer term.  I found hir to be totally together. (I didn't mean a pun there.)
--T.<<



And then the narrative goes right back to all the genderfucky outlaws being pursued by the government and big business.

It's kinda eerie.  It sounds enough like e-mails I've gotten from other systems online (even down to the whole "don't like mirrors" thing) that I get the sense this has actually happened to the writers before.

Creepy.  Odd use of language--but fuck, this was '96!  Damn!