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lb_leeDigging around in Ye Olde Plural Sites, figured I'd toss some stuff up here before I forget it all.
I found the Vickis' old site from ~1998. As far as I understand right now, they may have propagated the term "midcontinuum," before "median" was in use. (And it turns out that "median" was apparently associated with Pavilion Hall, a multi "activist" group that was a rolling trash fire and had their own bizarro quasi-metaphysical explanation for what being in-between multi and singlet was. It made no fucking sense.) The Vickis might also have helped start the idea of "plural" as an umbrella term, more expansive than "multiple," a term they were using by 1/15/1998. I'll probably have to dig through the alt.support.dissociation archives to test this for sure.
Their site has some really good stuff on it! I especially want to bring attention to the following three essays:
Does it work? -- An essay that tackles the question of "I am multiple?" and fears of faking better than anything else I've seen.
The Power of Naming -- Who gets to decide what a "real" multiple is, and why?
Building Safety and Trust -- a post by BigVicki (and a couple of other ASDers) on how to build safety, trust, and communication within your system/household, especially if you've gotten off on the wrong foot.
All of these essays are highly relevant to plurals today, twenty years later, and the Vickis are one of the few systems I see talking about the in-between spaces, which I feel is much-needed. I have no idea if they're around anymore, or how to contact them, so I can't get their permission, but I plan to have these linked on the healthymultiplicity.com home page, since I feel their utility can't be denied and mustn't be lost.
I found the Vickis' old site from ~1998. As far as I understand right now, they may have propagated the term "midcontinuum," before "median" was in use. (And it turns out that "median" was apparently associated with Pavilion Hall, a multi "activist" group that was a rolling trash fire and had their own bizarro quasi-metaphysical explanation for what being in-between multi and singlet was. It made no fucking sense.) The Vickis might also have helped start the idea of "plural" as an umbrella term, more expansive than "multiple," a term they were using by 1/15/1998. I'll probably have to dig through the alt.support.dissociation archives to test this for sure.
Their site has some really good stuff on it! I especially want to bring attention to the following three essays:
Does it work? -- An essay that tackles the question of "I am multiple?" and fears of faking better than anything else I've seen.
The Power of Naming -- Who gets to decide what a "real" multiple is, and why?
Building Safety and Trust -- a post by BigVicki (and a couple of other ASDers) on how to build safety, trust, and communication within your system/household, especially if you've gotten off on the wrong foot.
All of these essays are highly relevant to plurals today, twenty years later, and the Vickis are one of the few systems I see talking about the in-between spaces, which I feel is much-needed. I have no idea if they're around anymore, or how to contact them, so I can't get their permission, but I plan to have these linked on the healthymultiplicity.com home page, since I feel their utility can't be denied and mustn't be lost.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-01 08:50 pm (UTC)As added context to help narrow the dates down, I have some fragmented old multi BBS records from 1992 through January 1995, but there, they only use "plural" in reference to Stephen Braude's "First Person Plural." I haven't properly gone through the Many Voices newsletter archive yet, so that might be worth digging through, to see if they use "plural" before 1994! At some point, I'm considering textually transcribing the whole newsletter kit and kaboodle, but that'll take a lot of work.
I suspect that "plural" was an obvious synonym that may have cropped up in multiple places around the same time. However, I thought that about "singlet" too and I was totally wrong, so maybe I'm wrong about this too!
--Sneak
no subject
Date: 2022-03-01 10:29 pm (UTC)Hmm, we shall try to dig around. Completely foreign to google groups though! :D
Our little one loves data entry if you ever need a hand!
-Faye