My point is simply, "people believing they have distinct individual personalities inside themselves isn't remotely new, isn't terribly unusual, and maybe isn't inherently bad at all?", and I tried to wrap it in a joke people would click with (many people are closer to it than they'd think, they're just used to it in different language/contexts)
Maybe it's ok if people are different -- even a little "weird" sometimes? Just because someone is different, doesn't mean they have a "mental illness".
I'm not plural, plurality is not my lived experience -- so I can't speak to it -- I'm just pointing out that it doesn't seem like any kind of "socially transmissible mental illness". Knowing about something, doesn't make you that thing. Under the logic being used here, you could frame 'friends having a party' as a form of "socially transmissible alcoholism".
And as someone who isn't plural but is LGBTQ+, I'm very used to seeing people pathologizing or criminalizing folks different from themselves, as a veneer of social cover for delivery of their hate. 50 years ago, someone would have called me "insane" or "crazy" or "having a mental disorder" just for existing too -- even the greatest folks can't always escape this hate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Conviction_for_ind...). So it sets off a lot of alarm bells, when folks label someone as having a "mental illness" without a lot of due diligence.
Maybe it's ok if people are different -- even a little "weird" sometimes? Just because someone is different, doesn't mean they have a "mental illness".
I'm not plural, plurality is not my lived experience -- so I can't speak to it -- I'm just pointing out that it doesn't seem like any kind of "socially transmissible mental illness". Knowing about something, doesn't make you that thing. Under the logic being used here, you could frame 'friends having a party' as a form of "socially transmissible alcoholism".
And as someone who isn't plural but is LGBTQ+, I'm very used to seeing people pathologizing or criminalizing folks different from themselves, as a veneer of social cover for delivery of their hate. 50 years ago, someone would have called me "insane" or "crazy" or "having a mental disorder" just for existing too -- even the greatest folks can't always escape this hate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Conviction_for_ind...). So it sets off a lot of alarm bells, when folks label someone as having a "mental illness" without a lot of due diligence.