“How To Affirm the People in Your Life Who Use Multiple Sets of Pronouns” by Wren Sanders is a must-read for supporting these folks, but is also very useful for supporting any multiples in your life in two important ways:

1 Multiples (those who have a dissociative disorder and are more than one person inside, also known as systems) tend to use a range of pronouns depending on factors like how comfortable they are overtly expressing their multiplicity, whether an alter is speaking for just themselves or the entire system, and individual alter preference. If you are close enough to a multiple to know which alters are fronting, alters generally prefer you use their individual pronouns just like you’d address them using their name. For example, one of our alters is named Seamus. He is very masculine and really appreciates it when friends use he/him pronouns.

But we realize this can be very confusing. You may not know who is fronting and what their preferred pronouns are. You may not know in which contexts we feel comfortable being out about our multiplicity. We may not want to get into all that. So we tell people in general to use they/them, since it covers everyone in here, and don’t get too fussed about good faith screwups.

Like the article says, “Gently asking if someone uses one set in particular contexts versus another is usually better than assuming. But don’t press folks if you don’t get a clear answer — the reasons one uses one set versus another in certain situations can be personal, and sometimes we just don’t feel like getting into all that.” It’s a courtesy if your multiple-pronoun-using friend gives you a general guideline, but they are not required to simplify for you. They will certainly appreciate your flexibility.

2 No one–and we mean no one–is really just one self. Think about it. You have a work self, which is probably radically different from your night on the town self. You probably have a self that only comes out around certain people. The language of multiplicity is part of everyday speech. For example, “Part of me wants to eat a carton of ice cream, but part of me wants cookies instead.” The movie Inside Out beautifully demonstrates that everyone is somewhere on the spectrum of multiplicity.

Sanders’ article illustrates this point, too. She quotes Chala Tyson Tshitundu as saying, “Using multiple sets of pronouns interchangeably is how I affirm and honor the multitudes that my spirit and personality contain.” Summer Bedard adds, “ I love hearing myself referred to as both she and he because they convey the divine femininity and masculinity that I feel every day. I am a girl and a boy, and I want that to be known.” Just as Sanders’ interviewees are “failed by the [gender] binary”, they are failed by a selfhood binary that pretends there are only singlets on one side—the “normal” one—and multiples on the other. Sander and their interviewees found peace with themselves by stepping outside of binary thinking and embracing the gender and multiplicity spectrums. Using their preferred pronouns affirms this decision and makes the world a more supportive place for everyone.

If you’d like to learn more about how to be an ally, we recommend this lecture by Twitch streamer BabblingGoat. A lot of what you’ll learn is useful for supporting both trans folx and multiples.