Desirdae List

This page lists our desirdaes and may become part of a larger part of the site that talks more in-depth about desirdae, what it is, our experience with it, and what we think its merits are as a general term.

This is the coining post for desirdae, which includes a definition, but when I explain it to people, I usually say that it's an identity that you don't bodily have but that you wish you had or want people to see you as.

However, it is also possible to claim something as a desirdae identity that you DO bodily have but you want to experience it differently than you currently do, or you do not feel as connected to it as you want to - e.g. a person who is diagnosed with autism but identifies as "desirautistic" because they mask heavily and are therefore not necessarily seen as autistic.

Desirdae is officially against "transitioning" to your desirdaes (the things you identify as) if it would cause harm to yourself and others, but the desirdae community allows for discussion of identities that would be considered potentially controversial (e.g. ones that involve experiencing or doing harm), as long as you take care not to treat those identities the same way you would treat something you can become or emulate with no moral or safety issues.

Desirdaes are usually coined by putting "desir" in front of the identity - e.g. "desirdivorced" for someone who wants to be seen as divorced - but for ease of reading, this list will have just the name of the identity.

✧ Addict: Bodily-speaking, we are already a polysubstance addict, but some members of the system wish our substance use looked different than it does. In particular, they wish we consumed more alcohol than we do and that we had more grounds to call ourselves an alcoholic. Some headmates also have cravings for drugs we've never bodily done, such as heroin and cocaine, and therefore wish they could be addicted to different things than we are.

✧ Aesthetic: There are a lot of aesthetics we admire but don't present with - our current aesthetic would be considered goth/post-punk - either because we don't have the money or space for the clothes or they don't fit in with aspects of the collective presentation. Some of these include nu goth, pastel goth, soft grunge, new romantic, peacock revolution, jirai kei, fairy kei, and various lolita styles.

✧ AMAB: While our system considers ourself partly to be a cis man, we were not assigned male at birth, due to our intersex condition. We prefer to be viewed as intersex over being cis or trans, but if we had to choose between being perceived as more one than the other, we would prefer to be viewed as cismasculine than transmasculine. Some of the reasons for this are explained on this page, but due to our intersex condition, we consider our system to be "biologically male" in the sense of having XY chromosomes and having anatomy that was forcibly altered to look more "feminine" than it naturally did, not unlike an AMAB person who is subject to corrective procedures either due to being intersex or due to circumstances like being raised as a girl following a botched circumcision.

✧ Country: We consider our system to be a country, because in-system, it is. Insofar as one person can be conceptualized as being a whole country - which, it is very possible to imagine a personified country - we want to be viewed as being the personification of the United Federation of Voidelia, because we are.

✧ Dating: This refers to more than one thing. Some headmates consider themselves to have this identity in that they wish they were romantically dating another person from the outerworld. However, we all have this identity to refer to how we want to perceived as the actual partners of our F/Os and headmates, and we want people to see it like we're dating them in real life.

✧ Divorced: We have experienced two breakups with long-term partners, one of whom was an IRL partner with whom I lived. Because of how seriously I take relationships, I regarded these the way one might regards a marriage, that is, that it's a relationship to which you are totally devoted and have a moral obligation not to end unless you absolutely have to. As a result, my breakups with those partners feel more like many divorces seem to sound than how a lot of my friends talk about the ends of their more casual relationships. We also have several headmates who were divorced in their timelines, including where this is a very important part of their story in the system.

✧ Era: While we don't necessarily wish we actually lived in the 1970s or 1980s due to knowing that many things are better nowadays, we admire the aesthetics, music, and subculture of that time, and we like being seen as "from" an older time. Because of how we dress offline and the songs we sing at karaoke, many people locally do see us as being more emblematic of the 80s than recent times.

✧ Kinky: Our system has a complicated relationship to kink in that most of what comes to most people's minds when they hear "kink", even if it isn't inherently sexual, also isn't really what we're into. In particular, we're collectively probably less into sadomasochism and ultraviolence than we used to think we were and mostly seem to enjoy soft D/s dynamics and the fetishization of a few "unusual" targets (food, clothes, substances, etc.) in the context of an otherwise "normal" relationship. However, we wish we were into more physical, violence-oriented kinks because it seems to be what most of the community is into, and we don't consider ourselves to be currently kinky in the same WAY that many members of the BDSM community are kinky.

✧ Older: For our whole life, we've had a very positive association with older generations and have gotten along with them very well. This was especially pronounced between 2018 and 2024, when I was active in a music scene where I used to live that had a lot of older musicians in it who were impressed by my favorite music being post-punk and new wave. In addition to identifying with older generations, I sometimes wish I were an older member of my own generation, partly because we have a lot of headmates who were young adults or teenagers when we were bodily a child and would therefore mostly be older Millennials.

✧ Pet: Many members of our system are therians whose species are kept as pets, such as dogs, rats, and hamsters. This is emblematic of a mindset we have due to our DPD in which we want to be taken care of by someone else. This will probably never happen, but being a pet animal is emblematic of how we wish we were treated or could live our life.

✧ Pet owner: In addition to wanting to be seen as a pet, we wished we owned an actual pet, but we don't have enough room in our living space to satisfactorily keep the kinds of animals we would want to keep (namely rats or a hamster). We used to own hamsters in the past, and we talk about this frequently. We also have a lot of therians in our system whose role involves being a pet animal that other headmates take care of.