Hi Im Assuming The Us Vs Them Post Is About A Specific Term, Which One Would That Be?

hi im assuming the us vs them post is about a specific term, which one would that be?

so the sysmed out-group term being referenced in the joke post was (as the reblogs guessed) "endogenic", and I'll lay our thoughts out straight just once to avoid being potentially taken the wrong way

I've got two angles here, existential theological linguistic bullshit, and harm-reduction. stay with me here because even if you're not on board with the first thing you'll want to see the second.

so "traumagenic vs endogenic" is a false dichotomy, and I don't just mean "there's a secret third thing", I mean both classifications are fundamentally not real.

personally? we haven't the foggiest idea why we're a system. but the thing is, I don't think anybody else does either - I think it's genuinely impossible to know why your own consciousness is behind your own eyes and controlling your own body, why you *experience* existing in first-person at all. Like shit, lots of singlets believe it's because a soul has been created or introduced to their flesh, and a bunch of others think that's a load of crap and the chemicals just *do this* on their own. Singlets get this unalienable right to believe whatever the hell they want about why they're experiencing being themselves all the damn time, and I refuse to believe that systems are uniquely special in a way that singlets are not such that anyone can fucking flawlessly divine the cause of our consciousness all of a sudden. These are existential-tier questions and to deny their impossible complexity and the right to self-belief over them is, in my eyes, to deny systems something many singlets feel is part of what makes them human.

You can believe all sorts of stuff about the nature of your own systemhood just like how you can believe all sorts of stuff about the nature of your own existence - that doesn't make you definitively right, it's just a meaningful mechanism through which you understand your own experiences that other people should respect - it's like any faith, go figure.

Frustratingly, these words - traumagenic, endogenic - they're not talking about belief, they're objective buckets actively being used for exclusion. So every time we use the term "traumagenic systems", in saying "systems that objectively exist because of trauma" we are saying, loudly, "it is possible to know why a system exists". and frankly? no the fuck it isn't.

Anyway that's airy bullshit and reflects very idealised interactions so - practical, realist opinions, and harm reduction:

Saying "I'm pro-endo" is a net good, though I think "I support all systems" is probably marginally better because it doesn't perpetuate categories pushed by sysmeds for exclusionary reasons as being essential to defining systemhood - as we joked about.

Contrastingly, self-declaring "traumagenic" or "endogenic" in a bio is a net bad. Saying "I'm a traumagenic system" also says "Hello sysmeds, I believe in your dichotomy and I'm one of the good ones" (great way to get sysmed followers), and that factor doesn't go away if you go on to say that you support all systems - you've already thrown away your opportunity to shield more vulnerable systems from harassment through making who sysmeds need to target more obscure.

In fact, regardless of whether your bio says to sysmeds "I am a target" or "I'm not a target", by saying it explicitly, you're pressuring other, more vulnerable systems to similarly self-declare. It's like cis people putting pronouns in their bio to shield trans people from harassment through obscurity and embarrassment, but in reverse - if you shut up about it, and *just* call yourself a plural system, even if you do believe in their categorisations, you stop the propogation of the self-labelling and exclusionists are forced to make themselves look like idiots because most of their harassment would have to be done at random. It's basically herd immunity - nobody talks, everybody walks.

anyway yeah there's context for future, though honestly the section in plural respect is a lot more succinct lmao