Abi

Hey ... nobody will be kicked out of this group if they still wear nappies rather than "proper" pants or knickers ... so relax!

Many words with a strict technical meaning are regularly and routinely used, by non-technical users, in a rather different meaning. "Shock" is a case in point. It is a medical term with a very well known and understood meaning ... yet we regularly read on the newspapers of people being "treated for shock" after a traumatic event when they were treated for no such thing. "Forensic" is another. Its technical meaning is "pertaining to the courtroom", hence "forensic science" ... the science which is used to assist enquiry into certain matters in the courtroom (e.g. the trajectory of a bullet or the reverse-engineering of the events leading up to a collision between two vehicles, based upon an examination of the damage they sustained and the positions in which they came to rest); and yet in popular usage, "forensic" is taken to mean "scientific" because of its association with the word science in the expression "forensic science" (which popular usage would therefore turn into a nonsensical tautology). I think "fetish" is just such a word. It is regularly used to mean something which is an intense, even obsessive interest; but not everyone who uses it in this way necessarily means to imply that it has a sexual component, far less that it is an essential part of that person's sexual response. I do not think it helps to argue that somebody MUST have meant something other than they did, on the basis of the strict technical meaning of the word(s) they deployed as opposed to the actual (and possibly inaccurate) meaning which they intended. You will be arguing from different premises, and no agreement or common understanding is likely to ensue. The bottom line is that this site IS a safe space - or at least, a safer space than any other I have found, for those of us with this interest. And when I say "this interest" I am not limiting myself to AB/DL - because, as I often have to point out, the strapline to the website says that it is ALSO an Age Play playground ... and this is important. Not everyone here is into AB/DL ... some of us Age Players are "older littles". I am one of them. Yes, I am "little" (age about 6), and yes, I am "into" wetting (is it a "fetish" or not? I don't know. Nor do I care, really. It certainly has a sexual element to it ... but I can also enjoy sexual activity which is not connected to wetting ... and labels are for groceries, not people!). But am I "into" diapers? No. So in many ways, I am the person on the margins here, The misfit in the eyes of many. Yet I fit better here than anywhere else; and I feel safer here than I do on any other mainstream kink or fetish site. Because while I may be "different" in some respects, what we have in common is much greater and more significant than our differences. So here I find understanding and acceptance from the majority, even though I am not the same as them. On other sites, even fetish and kink sites, this is not so.