Sorry if this seems like an insensitive thing to talk about or inflammatory title, but I’m interested to know how people who genuinely live with this condition would navigate romantic/sexual/intimate relationships & interactions.
If someone with DID has multiple personas/identities and one of them has an intimate sexual experience with someone else without the consent of the other identities, is it a violation of those identities’ bodily autonomy since they share the same body (& mind)?
Also, I guess this might be slightly more straightforward, but if someone had a sexual interaction with someone with DID and believed it to be a particular persona they had a relationship with/consented to the interaction with, but then it turned out to be a different identity that was “present”/in control of their body at the time, would that identity have committed a violation (whether they deliberately deceived/tricked them knowingly, or even if they were unaware the person didn’t know it was them but hadn’t made it clear which personality they were)?
I guess slightly related, I’ve always wondered how conjoined twins manage these sorts of compromises. I’m sure it’s possible for one conjoined twin to violate the other’s bodily autonomy by engaging in sexual relationships with other people without their consent (like maybe while they were asleep or weren’t able to control their body) right?
Well, for one thing, it’s not clear that DID actually exists.
But, for the sake of arguments, say it does. I think the most reasonable-sounding approach is to say the identity in control at the time has something like usufruct ownership of the body - they can use it, but not damage it, so they better be having safe sex.
The second situation is pretty straightforwardly rape by deception, depending on how exactly it unfolds.
I guess slightly related, I’ve always wondered how conjoined twins manage these sorts of compromises. I’m sure it’s possible for one conjoined twin to violate the other’s bodily autonomy by engaging in sexual relationships with other people without their consent (like maybe while they were asleep or weren’t able to control their body) right?
I have no idea how sex specifically works, but I know of one pair that at least dates. They say they’re really good at ignoring the other and just reading a book. In a lot of ways, it’s not too different from more mundane situations where people are forced into uncomfortably close quarters - like in a shared prison cell.
Why isn’t it clear that DID exists? I thought it was accepted as a scientific consensus that “enacted” identities were genuinely perceived by the individuals experiencing & reporting them, which is why DID is still included in the DSM to this day.🤔
Yes, I know systems who have had alters sexually abuse other alters in the same body. It’s a sadly quite common thing actually, most likely because of how persecutors form.