Infantilists: Then and now

General
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I don’t know how to word this since it’s not much of a question, just a statement of sorts but does anyone who first found diapers/infantilism back in mid-2000s that there wasn’t much of a representation and it always comprised of two sorts, the first and the one that made me fear having this fetish past 18 were the men in their 40s who always posted lots of pictures of themselves in diapers and other baby items and sort of reveled in the fact that they were these adult babies and they were always fat, hairy and incredibly unappealing in any sense and yet these were the ones who were always out there. The other side which worked better for me since I was a young teen at this point were the kids, usually around 12-15 who wore diapers and had pictures of them either having fun with friends or just messing about. The funny thing about the latter is, the kids were from these sets from the 70s and 80s with the kids in really old diapers and baby clothes.

Nowadays it’s much better with more normal looking people having the fetish and putting it out there so it balances out but back in the early days, do you feel like the only reason you had people like Deeker and finding it hard to get into the fetish was because that was really all their tended to be and it was mostly adults in their 40s-50s who actually felt like putting it out there and it gave the community a bad early image.

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Re: Infantilists: Then and now

Wow…dude, you really, really could have worded this a lot better.

LOOOOTS of bigotry steeped in this post…

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Re: Infantilists: Then and now

Yes, maybe I could have worded it a bit better but this is mostly coming from my initial views of it all back when I was 13 and just getting into it.

I don’t see where the bigotry is, yes I guess I do have some less than flattering views on the older members but I guess it’s like when you see something for the first time and your mind sort of creates that as the benchmark for anything in the future so this was generally the stuff I came across first. Obviously now I’m much older and understand better but that will always be my first memory of it all and I’m sorry if I came across as offensive, that really wasn’t my intention.

Maybe you all had different experiences and they weren’t as “out there” as mine. It’s like I was thrown head first into it all instead of going at a slower pace.

Again, I’m sorry if I came across as rude or offensive.

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Re: Infantilists: Then and now

Apology accepted on behalf of all the 40-somethings out there. I’m over 40, but I’m a Daddy, and while I have a beer belly, I don’t show it off in pictures, and it’s really not that bad (I’m 6’1" and 210-ish) so the above doesn’t apply to me anyway.

I get that there are a lot of people in this fetish who behave in a very, very creepy fashion online, without regard to how they appear to others, but that is true no matter what age they are. Crotch shots, scat/watersports videos, lack of social graces, the list goes on and on. It’s even worse at Fetlife - every time you turn around there’s some HNG posting a personal ad in a forum that explicitly prohibits personal ads, and the ad is usually some desperado thing about what he expects his yet-to-be-met “Mommy” to do for him (change dirty/wet diapers, etc) without the slightest indication of what she is supposed to get out of the deal that she couldn’t get by just getting knocked up…

The internet itself was a very dark place in the beginning. I remember working for an ad agency back in the early 90’s, and I talked to my boss about getting a website up for the business. He told me, “Right now, the only people making money on the internet are selling porn.” Come to find out, he was pretty much right. The internet at that point in history was pretty much all about porn. No surprise it was rife with HNG’s anywhere there wasn’t actually porn to be had.

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Re: Infantilists: Then and now

Yeah, maybe I should have clarified better that when I was talking about the 40 year old guys, it was the guys who really went all the way with the fetish and had absolutely no shame in showing the world that and in the beginning, that’s what I thought the fetish as a whole was like, that and boys from the 70s and 80s who enjoyed it. Nowadays, the “no shame” types are still around from various ages but there are also the other people who enjoy all the same stuff but don’t reveal it to the world for whatever reason that may be. I’d always prefer to keep my sexual interests to myself and those close to me who also enjoy it.

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Re: Infantilists: Then and now

For the record, exhibitionism is a fetish too, and I have reason to believe that it’s over-represented in the ABDL population.

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Re: Infantilists: Then and now

The thing that you have to understand is that weirdness and creepiness are all subjective and that the reality is, it really doesn’t matter what a person does so long as he’s/she’s consenting and happy doing it.

A lot of people might find me bizarre for wanting to be tied to a St. Andrew’s cross and flogged with a flogger soaked in absinthe and lit on fire or have someone take a knife to my skin as we feast on my blood. This is an extreme example of course but, it’s my choice. I’m consenting.

Now, there are older men who will harass people about it, and that’s totally not cool, but if they enjoy living in their own little bubble of an ABDL world regardless of who stares, really I think that’s actually kind of admirable. That’s a level of courage I could not hope to have.

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Re: Infantilists: Then and now

So my 2¢ is that a big influence in the change is screwy sampling and changing self-selection, and that there’s some feedback going on here that’s driving the process along quickly.

Screwy sampling:
Your early sample is only online people. Too small a sample, and biased because it’s only Internet users.

When I went to my first party in 1998, most of the people were really nice and friendly and normal. (There was, however, one person that set of my creepy detector in a big way.)

And if you look at the DPF roster from back then (which of course you can’t, because it’s lost to time) people were very lonely but striving to find people to click with. They were exhibiting a desire for socialness.

I went to the Toronto munch a few times in early 2000s (Yorkdale Pickel Barrel days), and again most attendees were “normal”.

Self-selection:
The men in their 40s you were encountering were anonymous online individuals. Drawing on my time as a pro-domme (2003-2005), and undergrad psych classes, these guys are desperately looking to fulfill their fetish, but feel guilty about it; they’re in a dilemma that an unfulfilled sexual desire becomes critically important (and keeps getting moreso because it’s unfulfilled), but their guilt about it limits their social options. They regress more into the fetish, solo because that’s the only option, because it offers safety even if it’s unfulfilled. Posting crap online anonymously becomes their only means to share this important aspect of their life with others, yet they seem really creepy because they’re all hung up on their guilt and probably hate themselves. That would make anyone creepy. (I believe these match the “I want a mommy!!!” guys closely.)

Feedback:
Then, consider that the creepiness those guys probably drove off some of the more normal people.

And the only pattern for those that persisted, was to explore the AB thing and then start posting pictures online. (We don’t like to admit it, but most of our behavior is just imitating each other.)

What’s different now:
Younger people don’t suffer the same guilt. Online communities, FAQs, and Porn ubiquity make them open-minded about their own kinks and others. The “If you aren’t vanilla, you’re a goddamn pervert and if your neighbors find out you’ll lose your job and have to move away” bullshit is no longer hanging over everyone’s heads. Miss Mouse mentions some BDSM interests; back in the 1970s we’d say she needed psychotherapy for that. Now there are mainstream books on it. And all of that’s probably riding a wave of imitating the acceptance of GLBT people—since they weren’t so bad, maybe these other sexual minorities are unjustly marginalized. Society’s disapproval is diminishing, enabling more personal acceptance, and enabling us to all be more social, so we’re communicating instead of guilt tripping and living in fear.

Ages and ages of societal repression are being undone now. Reduced guilt and self-lothing, plus tools like this forum and events like NELICon or CAPCon let us meet others and not feel so isolated, and accept ourselves. As those reduce quantities of broken supremely-guilty people over time, the more normal people aren’t being driven off; meanwhile, the there’s a new model of being an AB/DL/Ageplayer/Little: a fetish as just one part of life, with families and jobs that are also important to us, and we can chat online and occasionally gather.

And to the degree these changes among younger people are effecting older generations—thanks guys, it really is better for me, and I don’t think it’s my generation what did it.

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