hungryghosts | On the Intellectual Whateverness of Plurality

(Crossposted from Tumblr)

[Phosphor] There's two particular chestnuts of misinformation (among others) that come up from time to time in the plural community. The first is that plural people are intellectually disadvantaged in some way because we have too many "processes" "competing for" "resources." The second is that plural people are intellectually superior in some way because our higher number of "processes" mean we can do more with our brains thanks to more efficient use of "resources" or Neuroplasticity(tm) or whatever.

Both of these ideas are actual cowshit, and I try to slap them down whenever they show up. The fundamental reason is the same - as popular as it is to compare brains to computers, brains are not literally computers. In general, brains are not well-understood, certainly not enough to make unfounded claims about the innate superiority or inferiority of a particular group's brains.

As an example of why one shouldn't make claims like this, look no further than Paul Broca, a scientist who in the 1870s measured a bunch of brains and concluded that because (cis) women's brains were smaller than (cis) men's, they were intellectually inferior to men. We know his methodology was flawed and his conclusion bullshit on multiple levels today, but back then, his fellow men were all too eager to take him at his word, and they used it as grounds to oppose rights and education for women.

There are people who've found that becoming plural and/or embracing their plurality has improved their functioning. There are also people who've found that final fusion (a system merging together into a singlet) improved their functioning. I am not denying these individual experiences, nor am I opposed to people sharing their individual experiences. What I am opposed to is people making unfounded, untested, unscientific claims about the intellectual inferiority or superiority of plural folks as a whole, based upon their half-baked ideas of how brains work. (And quite frankly, even if an actual scientist were to publish a paper with claims like these, I would be INCREDIBLY suspicious about their process and biases, to say the least.) There is simply too much variation, in brains and in plurality itself, and too little known to make these claims, and there are very real consequences to making any kind of claim about the Biological Superiority or Inferiority of a group of people. Don't fuckin do that!!

(Also because it always bears repeating: intelligence, in general, is kind of a bullshit idea that is arbitrarily defined and poorly measured. Do not conflate ""low intelligence"" with capacity for cruelty or willful ignorance - likewise, remember that people with ""low intelligence"" deserve the same fucking rights and respect as anyone else.)