"Number dysphoria"

A draft term for describing the feeling people in a plural system can experience when being described as or referred to as if we were only one person. Erasure.

"Number Euphoria"

Opposite. "We" "You all" Breathing bc all belong.

We think that singlets in theory experience mild number dysphoria when addressed as plural. But in a singlet normative society it's usually considered a brief mix up. As opposed to a constant exhausting reality of mis-number-ing.

First singlet: "Hey y'all"

Second Singlet: "*looks around* who's y'all? It's just me here!"

First: "oops! lol"

Accidental pluralizing is likely rare, but happens as course of language, or as a joke. But accidental singularizing/singletizing (?) happens to plurals all the time.

Sometimes it's forceful and intentional.

cw: intense plural shaming

"Stop saying WE" - a mandate plurals face from family members.

"Shut up, you're just one person." etc.

We're pretty certain that *mis-number-ing* was used by someone in one of our plural hangout calls, as they searched for language to describe this stuff. So that naturally leads to us saying "number dysphoria" - probably others have said it.

We thought about calling it "plural dysphoria" but there are really so many dysphorias etc. that plurals can experience
- age dysphoria (younger system members being uncomfortable in an older body, often re size)
- gender dysphoria x many people in the body
- various dysmorphias

calling it "number *dysphoria*" is interesting because as we described it above, that would be the social number dysphoria piece. (see trans social dysphoria v body dysphoria.) Would body dysphoria be not having your own body? does "dysphoria" imply some clinical intervention?

Body number dysphoria. That phrase tickles in some mischievous way. Some of us think because it implies that integration is the opposite of the solution. The solution, clinical community, is to give us more bodies to live through. Come on psychology, give us neuralink AI bodies.

But still, content for today with "number dysphoria" because we so often run into situations the more we normalize our own plurality internally and in our social circles where we get jarred back into OH they are treating us a singlet.

Redwoods "a trans plural activist"feels similarly close but unnervingly off as when people call trans women "female-identified"

Then there's more overt total number dysphoria fatigue from just living in Singletesque First Name Last Name life for hours, days, weeks...

We get number dysphoria a lot - like on twitter - how many people are we supposed to be seeming like on any given platform, form, social interaction. The sense we don't all fit leads to a form of depersonalization, except it's plural, so it's depeoplelization?

By depeoplelization we mean that folks start kind of drifting off from participating in life for that moment because it seems there not really space for us and we don't want to somehow 'mess things up' by existing too overtly.

^that's some of the burden singlet normativity puts on us, constantly telling us to moderate our cumulative presences, to always depopulate our fronts to the low-risk amount.

The dominant anti-plural culture says any singlet discomfort, attack, or rejection is OUR job to prevent or mitigate by contorting and repressing ourselves.

Singlet normativity is an unjust, discriminatory, and inaccessible paradigm.

For us Redwoods, the more we are ourselves, the more we heal. Yet singlet normativity asks us to put that in a little [costly] private therapy box and keep it there.

No.

So number dysphoria is also that long ache of oh right we are surrounded by so many invisible forces wrapping around us so as to render us invisible to each other.

And so number euphoric environments for plurals are those rare spaces where the invisible wrappings are removed faster than they are piled on. for us:
1. big gatherings of plurals
2. system:system relationships
3. deep convos w singlets who fend off singlet normativity for us