disidentification

[turing_incomplete]

"What are the possibilities of politicizing disidentification, this experience of misrecognition, this uneasy sense of standing under a sign to which one does and does not belong?"

- Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter

I'll admit to being not 100% confident with the concept of disidentification -- we've only read parts of Muñoz's book, which is what really took the idea and ran with it, and talked about it for one day in an undergrad queer theory class. Plus, there's a racial element there -- at least to Muñoz's conceptualization of it -- that doesn't apply to us.

When we tell people we're multiple, we generally let them come to their own conclusions about what that means, and in a lot of cases, that means DID. Anyone who is actually close to us will of course soon hear that we don't prefer that, but for most cases -- coming out to fellow grad students in a seminar, for example -- it doesn't seem to relevant. Besides, there's that constant worry about coming off as saying, "We're not like those crazy ones," and why should it matter to acquaintances whether we're traumatized or not, how many difficulties we have with our multiplicity?

When we think about telling our family, we imagine first telling them through medical language first. That's what they understand -- we even came out to our mom by pointing to "gender identity disorder." It legitimizes, even if that legitimization is complicated, coming at the cost of "Well, that doesn't quite fit" and "we're people not parts."

And it's not like we can't stand under that sign. Interpellated constantly by trauma research -- alcoholic dad, mentally ill parents, our flippin ACE score is 4(±1) dang it. We're disabled by a society that makes us constantly hide our multiplicity, and all the stress that leads to -- I used to be a pretty stereotypical persecutor. "What if"s are always hard, but I can imagine ourselves, in the absence of any other models of multiplicity, settling (and it does feel like "settling") on OSDD-1. And would that have been misrecognition, misdiagnosis? I don't think so, no more than "schizophrenia" would have been a misdiagnosis if we were born a few decades earlier, when schizophrenia meant something different and it and autism were the same thing.

Putting it that way is pretty disidentifying. Recognizing these things as signs that may half-fit, under certain circumstances, but mostly don't. Tools that help you communicate "we're multiple; I exist" in a society where that is synonymous with saying "I have DID" (and treated the same) -- and what else can you do? Can't demolish all of psychiatry in a day. Recognizing that everything is a misrecognition to some extent; nobody fits the model -- any model, psychiatric, identity; every model is abstract; every model is flawed.

(Something we ask ourselves, sometimes, is whether we'd identify with a hypothetical diagnostic category of "multiple, but not necessarily relying on CPTSD to classify it" or even "autism; with multiple personality features". Answer: Probably yes, in order to flaunt it further, and with more conviction that nope, nope, this is not something that we are medicalizing in ourselves.)

And politicizing that -- saying, "as An ACoA™, this assumption that all ACoAs are traumatized is ableist" and "diagnostic categories are constructed, contextual things, so sure, we do-don't-do have a dissociative disorder, happy now?" and "our ACE score changes based on our mood, how's that for your categories?" Taking terminology that pathologizes and using it for our own ends, to communicate (we've even called ourselves "alters", when it was clear that the person we were talking to was getting a little lost every time I said "person") and furthermore connect with others (yes, we believe in shared multiplicity spaces, and in saying multiplicity is neurodiversity, and the solution to "treat us like real people" isn't "unlike those people.")

I don't really have a conclusion, or whatever. Just misc thoughts.

Comments

[sad_wings_of_destiny]

I wish this platform had a recognizable "like" feature because there's not really a way to say "I like this misc collection of thoughts and don't have anything coherent to say but I like ur words."

But, the ACE score thing was a new scoring tool Id not seen before (along with something post-structual-y I'll want to read) so. TIL?

[turing_incomplete]

Same -- I wanna like your latest post. :V...

Yeah the ACE stuff is. Interesting. Classic case of thing that was originally formed for broad, epidemiological work (originally connecting those things to obesity) and then reformulated into a personalized thing, "Find your ACE score!" Straightforward, yes/no -- and of course, the thing we'll whine constantly about, flattening; being abused is statistically equivalent to having a neurodivergent parent; it's all trauma.

And it's all so individualizing -- things your parents did or were. As if having a household member jailed isn't correlated with issues of race or poverty...

I could go on about it for a while, hahh. Sorta projecting my problems with trauma research in general, there.

[lb_lee]

Man you have clearly thought way more about this than we have. And I don't mean that in a bad way.

[turing_incomplete]

Hahah I mean, it's sorta our job :') (Well, okay, our job is applying this stuff to autism, but whateverrr.)

It'll be good to get this stuff out, after thinking about it for a while loool. Can you imagine us posting on tumblr "We think we might come out to our family by first saying we have DID"? It'd be a wreeeck.
(The other thought is to go with "voice-hearing". Pros and cons. Either way, family history of psychosis, sorta have to address the diagnostic stuff at some point.)

[lb_lee]

Pft. Autism, multi, big diff.

Also lol yeah you'd get like, mass spontaneous kitten birth with that.

--Mori