Category Archives: Human Personality

Human Personality: Gender Identity

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Well this month is Pride Month 2019. Is there any subject more fraught in America than sexuality and gender identity in our culture war? The rhetoric from both sides has become so heated that it worries me that the rhetoric may morph into something much, much worse. The red states seem to be entrenching with more traditional stances after 8 years of President Obama. Meanwhile the blue states are rushing toward a progressive utopia that the president kick started when he pushed for the legalization of gay marriage. The acrimony between the two sides seems likely to continue.

Having grown up on the Right during the 70’s, sexuality and gender were always pretty simple concepts determined by one’s biological sex. It was a binary choice, and those who didn’t adhere to those two options were unfortunately ridiculed by the entire culture. But the cultural revolution that was started in the 1960’s with the demands for ‘free love’ have continued to spill throughout the culture, and now, it seems, everything must be re-examined.

But for me, what forced me to re-examine the things I believed was the crisis brought upon our marriage by my wife’s d.i.d. Hell broke loose in our family and marriage as I suddenly had 5 other girls (alters) join our lives. It was absolutely overwhelming, and my nice and comfortable beliefs that I had adopted by osmosis from my parents were put to the test. I simply had no room for things that didn’t line up with reality, things that didn’t work, or things that caused me more stress. You can read about my re-evaluation process, and especially how I answered the “Who Am I?” question during this complete reboot of myself, here if you have interest.

Now, maybe if I was younger, I might have gotten caught up in the gender-identity-question euphoria that has captured those on the Left. But ,I’m old enough, and also don’t give a damn enough what others think, so that as I answered the question ‘who am I?’ it didn’t matter to me that many of my answers fell outside the culturally-defined boundaries of what men are expected to be. I’ve got a butterfly and flower tattoo on my hip: don’t care if it’s not ‘masculine’ enough for others because my wife and I love it. My ideal man cave would be full of fairies, butterflies, and other magical and whimsical creatures: again, I don’t care if that’s ‘sissified’. I say, “Says who?” I love ‘pretty’ things, ‘thank you very much.’ Even my wife will quip that often I am more ‘feminine’ in my emotional expression. Naw, I’m just in touch with my feelings.

I went online to gain a better understanding concerning the gender-identity issue from the Left’s perspective. But when I read through one of the first sites to pop up via Google, I was a little surprised: the website completely skipped any semblance of an argument against biological gender assignment. Instead it seemed to focus on feelings, experiences, and other internal-perspective issues. The website said all gender issues are on a spectrum, and so the number of gender identities possible are truly only limited by one’s imagination. I scanned a couple of other sites and was impressed by the disconnect between the two sides: the Left focuses on internal factors while the Right focuses on the external plumbing. Hmmm…

And so I got to thinking. What can dissociative identity disorder teach us about this subject? And what other things from our healing journey might shed some understanding on this flashpoint that brings fear, invective, misunderstanding, and a host of other feelings out in both sides of the debate?

Well, the obvious application of dissociative identity disorder to this debate concerns ‘gender fluidity.’ See, I believe that we humans are foundationally multiples as I explained in my first post, but the problem is both sides want to act like singletons. The Right can only see externally and binarily, and it can only accept narrow gender roles. The Left, however, is embracing its inner multiplicity. And yet, the Left doesn’t really seem to grasp personal fluidity even though it definitely recognizes its presence in our personal experiences. “One day I feel like this. The next I feel like that. A third day, I’m totally different again, and so on…” And so the Left has chosen to use the term “fluid” to describe the continual switching many people experience between various parts of their personality. And to that part of the debate, I say, “Right on!” But, sadly, the Left also acts like a singleton in its inability to see anything but its inner experience. It has a myopic view of gender every bit as restrictive as the Right, only at different points.

But there’s much more to the debate than our fluid personalities. I think the main part of the problem comes because the Left and Right are truly talking about apples and oranges. The Right has staked its argument on the traditional definition of external gender: check under the hood, see what the plumbing is, and voila! You’re either a male or a female. Nice and simple. Then it unthinkingly accepts the culturally-defined roles for men and women which have no basis for validity other than a majority-rules kind of acceptance. Men are strong. Men are independent. Men don’t cry. Men drink beer, scratch their crotches, and maybe even live for sports. Women on the other hand are the caretakers, emotionally in touch, the child rearers as well as child bearers, and on and on with the stereotypes. The only problem with these two nice and neat, culturally-defined roles for men and women is that they left too many people out who didn’t fit those clean and tidy straitjackets.

I believe the part of the problem arose when the Left focused on culturally-defined gender roles while confusing it with biologically assigned gender. The Left chose an experientially-backed perspective for gender identity: not everyone fits in the traditional roles, therefore, biologically-based, binary gender assignments are wrong. The problem is, imo, the Left questioned the wrong part of the equation. Instead of questioning the culturally-defined gender roles, it questioned biological gender assignment. And then armed with the new assumptions about gender identity, it began to battle the Right. And voila, a cultural flashpoint where the two sides are arguing about different things that happen to include the word ‘gender.’

The healing journey with my wife confirmed to me that I simply don’t conform to culturally-expected stereotypes for men: and that’s not my problem. As I’ve become more and more ‘multiple’ in the expression of who I am, I’m more and more comfortable with living outside the boundaries America tries to define for me. I’m the breadwinner for my family, but I’m also the nurturer and caregiver for all the littles (alters who front as little children) who joined my life. I take care of the house maintenance, and I love rom-coms and a good tear jerker which my wife refuses to watch with me(!). I’m the one who held our marriage together when her ptsd symptoms nearly drowned all of us. I’m the one who tells her ‘life was meant to be shared’ and then insists on doing as many things as possible together so that the d.i.d. doesn’t tear us apart. The walls of my factory office at work are filled with butterflies and Josephine Wall’s whimsically, magical art work. I could go on and on detailing the many, many ways that, culturally, I simply don’t fit the mold for males: who cares. I’m my own man!

But there are other things which I choose not to do because I live in a small town in the Midwest where those things would be culturally frowned upon. So I guess the Left would tell me I’m not being true to my ‘authentic self’. But I would counter than when you understand multiplicity correctly, just because I ‘want’ to do something doesn’t mean I ‘must’ do something. Despite the slogans, none of us can really have it all. We always pick and choose between priorities. I’ve got more important things to do then express myself in every way that I can imagine, even if it might be fun at times!

The Right is fighting over external, biological gender assignment, but the Left is fighting over culturally-driven gender roles that truly reflect one’s inner, personal experience the best I can tell. Just because these two issues share a common word does not make them synonymous, and yet both sides are locked in mortal combat as if that were the case.

So, where does this leave us?

1) To both sides I would say, “Hey, you are fighting over apples and oranges! Wake up!” My personal suggestion would be for the Left to realize they are no longer using the primary definition of gender and also realize that their true beef is with culturally-defined gender roles more than external gender itself. I’m all for fluidity and diversity within the two biologically defined genders. Let men and women be as diverse as they want, but let’s still call them male or female. I’m completely comfortable being a non-conforming male to cultural expectations, but why must I change my gender identity just because parts of me feel quite feminine when viewed through a cultural lens?

2) Beyond the public schools’ bathroom/locker room issue, to the Right, I say why can’t we live and let live? Does it really matter what someone else calls him or herself? A rose by any other name is still a rose. When the other 7 girls (alters) joined my life, I had a choice. I could try to force my reality upon them. Many spouses and family members in my place try to do so. I see all the girls as part of my wife. And yet only one of the 8 girls sees herself as my wife. The rest see me as a friend, daddy or caretaker. And so I decided to walk in their reality, since they couldn’t see outside of their own, and little by little we’ve built a new reality based on love and respect. Two of the girls have matured to the point, that they began to date me. One went on to become engaged to me. But each girl was desperate to have my love and affection for her on her terms. It cost me a lot more to do that for those in my wife’s group: I can certainly do it for friends or strangers where it literally costs me nothing other than the respect that they desire.

3) To everyone my wish is for us to live as ‘multiples’, to learn to see more than one perspective, to learn to see outside of ourselves and truly understand where another person is coming from. Only then will our culture have a chance to rise above the anger, fear and acrimony that threatens to tear us apart.

Sam

Human Personality: Non-dissociated Multiples

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In the dissociative identity disorder world, all people are divided into 2 categories: singletons and multiples. A singleton is said to be anyone who doesn’t have d.i.d. The thought is that person has a single, monolithic-acting personality. Of course, a ‘multiple’ is a person who is thought to have incongruous, and disparate-acting personalities typically called alters. But as I walked with my wife these last 11 years, I learned a lot from her, and one thing was that I function best when I recognize that I have various, non-homogenous ‘parts’ to my personality. In fact, on my other blog, I began to refer to myself as a ‘non-dissociated multiple.

 

As I lived and walked with the 8, somewhat-separate, girls who comprise my wife, I began to realize there were many aspects of my personality that mirrored the ‘personality territory’ that each girl controlled within my wife. Moreover, I began to watch myself do ‘soft personality switches’ that looked very similar to the harder switches between ‘alters’ that d.i.d. is known for. And I began to wonder if what we call mental compartmentalization is just a milder form of dissociation.

 

And so I began to live on the premise that I had multiple parts to myself that simply weren’t fully dissociated like the girls in my wife. If that was true, then in the same way that I was teaching the 8 girls in my wife’s system to respect each other and get along with each other, I had to learn to do the same with my various parts. See, I was raised an evangelical Christian, and if one tries to live a ‘holy life’ there’s a minefield of terrible things in the world. There are all kinds of temptations to sin and do wrong. After 40+ years of trying to be a good Christian and trying to suppress so many parts of myself that didn’t want to ‘be holy’, I changed my approach to mimic what I’d been teaching the girls in my wife’s system.

 

I began to embrace my warring and ‘bad’ parts. Now that doesn’t mean I let them do anything that popped into my head, but it meant that I began to recognize I was a conglomeration of disparate feelings and motivations and needs. Furthermore, I embraced the idea, because of my Christian upbringing, that all of me was made by our Creator. If that was true, then none of them were necessarily ‘bad’ or ‘evil’ but they might be misdirected or wanting things that overall were out of line with my long-term goals. And sometimes parts of me wanted things that weren’t healthy for me or were downright destructive because I had ignored their legitimate needs for so long.

 

Once I took this approach to life, embracing all the various parts of myself, the warring stopped, and I tried to find ways to meet the various needs without doing something harmful to others or to any of my long-term goals. It also meant I had to develop long-term goals that embraced all of me, and not just the ‘good’ parts of me. It meant I had to teach certain parts of myself about ‘delayed gratification’. And it meant I had to help my angry part accept the fact that we were choosing to live in a relationship that was very stressful and painful because we wanted a ‘win/win’ solution for the girls we still love. I loved the perspective that Tom Cruise’s Mummy and King Kong: Skull Island revealed in the ‘good monster’, and I realized there was a place for that same kind of part within me.

 

And so little by little I began to approach life as a ‘non-dissociated multiple.’ It didn’t happen overnight as it was a huge adjustment. But as I made the changes, I began to realize how much our language accepts the multiplicity of our personalities when we talk about ‘a part of me’ wanting this or that. The concept of going on ‘autopilot’ understands we aren’t ‘fully engaged’ by an activity that much of our personality finds boring. If you accept the multiplicity of your personality, you will find the examples infinite throughout literature and current media of this reality that, for some reason, we assign to only ‘crazy people’ and in doing so, we add so much stress and disharmony to our own lives.

 

In fact, as I began to implement this change of perspective in my life, I realized that the d.i.d. world has it exactly backward. In reality most people, including those with d.i.d., live as if they are a ‘singleton.’ I have observed most people only be able to accept one position on any given issue at a time. We default to black and white thinking because it’s easy and because it gains us entrance into whatever tribe appeals to us most.

 

But I believe, healthy, mature adults should strive to become ‘multiples’, people who are able to grasp the complexity of life and who can become comfortable holding views that seem to conflict and pull in different directions. That is what I’ve been teaching the 8 girls in my wife’s group, and that’s what I’ve been trying to learn for myself. I’ve come to embrace perspectives from both the Right and the Left politically, socially and religiously. I’ve come to realize that often good and honest people can have completely different perspectives and these complement and enhance our understanding of things. And yet, I refuse to embrace the anything-goes mentality on the Left nor the narrow-mindedness of tradition-only on the Right: I try to test things to see what works better, what is helpful, what is harmful, etc.

 

Now, the reason I wanted this topic to be my very first post is because understanding this concept is fundamental to so many things I hope to share. And I think the lack of understanding this concept is what has brought our culture and country to the brink of cultural civil war as neither side can see any other perspective than the narrow one it has adopted. When we embrace all the disparate parts of our personality, it allows us to embrace the true diversity of life, not the stridently narrow diversity of the Left, nor the straight jacket of conformity on the Right. Life is not in black or white as the 2 sides would have us believe. It is a huge array of diverse colors, and yet it’s still follows basic guidelines. It’s not an anything-goes situation that many would have us believe.

 

Wishing you well,

Sam

 

(Note: sorry for the confusion of mixing single and plural references to myself, but I hope you were able to follow. It’s a little messy, but I’m ok with that. It’s better, imo, than the simplistic idea that we are a monolithic, personality ‘singleton’.)