Plurality

For general info on plurality, see More Than One.

Basically, there are multiple people (and non-people) in here. We take turns controlling the body, and we need to be recognized as separate beings.

While we only properly realized this in 2022, it's probably been true for many years before. We've gotten along pretty well since discovering we exist ♪

Please be considerate as we navigate coming out to more people. A lot of our system is rather personal, and we're still deciding what we want to share and how best to present it.

What functions does this serve?

• We can think of ourselves as separate beings. Compartmentalizing our sense of self, and distancing our self-images from the body, has been really fruitful. It's helped us better understand our feelings and behavior, discover and accept more about ourself, and switch into different personas to handle certain tasks or cope with stress. Plus, apparently it just comes naturally.

  Okay, so it's a useful mental tool, but that alone doesn't explain why we long to be open about it instead of keeping it inside our head…

• We can present ourselves as separate beings. It lets us express our varying self-image, gender, mood, and boundaries. Some of us are partly a signifier for how we want others to treat and label us at the moment. That's why taking on a singletsona feels stifling to everyone's self-expression.

How to refer to you?

If something concerns a specific headmate, we prefer that you use their individual name if it's safe to do so.

When considering the entire system—which, keep in mind, is inevitably way larger and more eclectic than we publicly let on—we tend to call it The Menagerie. If you really need a more personlike name (including to avoid outing us), we're collectively trying on Zooey, pronounced either ᴢᴏᴡ‧iy or ᴢᴜᴡ‧iy.

Not to evoke a trope, but don't drop the "The". We don't identify with just "Menagerie".

Height chart

To be added…