Gender, Society, And Science

[wettums]

Here is a link from Psychology Today. I started reading Psychology Today during my freshman year at university and still have a subscription. Here is a link I found on their site.

Psychology Today: Get Kinky With It

At the bottom of the article is labels the "Top 10 Weirdest Sexual Fantasies". Notice the word "Weird" as in "odd", not "wrong" or "disturbing". I found the paper both logical and insightful, and I have also seen the AB/DL community becoming vastly more mainstream. Case and point "The Girlfriend Experience" and National Geographic's hit show "Taboo". Even "The Tyra Bank Show" has a female AB/DL on her program not too long ago.

However, some certain aspects of the AB/DL community still seem odd to me. Such as why there is such a large gender gap. It has been said in many sexual psychology polls that women tend to lean towards the "submissive" side when it comes to sex or sexually related psychology. You could point to the theory that suggest that men have more of a monopoly on sexual fantasies as a whole because we tend to be more visually based when it comes to sexuality and these visual thoughts are more commonly manifested at an early stage in adolescence. (I had a professor who gave the class a case study on a man who could only be aroused by extremely long hair and for years this bothered him, until it was later figured out that his first erection was when he saw a girl brush her hair. At the time the two moments were not connected, the reaction was simply biological, but coincidently it ended up effecting him for a lifetime.)

Anyways, AB/DL seems, to me at least, to be inherently submissive. Now, these boards may not be best place for a psychological gender debate since the women here are already into the AB/DL scene and are aware of their own psychological makeup so an uninterested third party is unlikely to be heard. (By the way, high-fives to the women who do embrace their self on these boards, rather it be sexual or not, and high-fives to the guys for usually respecting that, if your reading this your probably one of the "good" guys, thought I have seen some spam, trolls...etc what-have-you on the boards, as a whole I think we are well behaved. Or even if we are not we keep the heavier stuff confined to stories, role play, and willing participants.)

The science behind sex is VERY fascinating, and truly not much is known in the long run, and fetishes are even more misunderstood and under-researched, but I am glad that a publication as respected as PT has contributors contemplating the field. The only thing I didn't like in the article was that we landed on NUMBER THREE! Come on. If I had a significant other display and interest in diapers without knowing what I know now I would, in all probability be slightly freaked out, supportive, but freaked out, but never-the-less; time, patiences, and understanding would conquer as it usually does when dealing with a complex or unfavored academic theory. Plus the AB/DL community is so delightfully malleable it takes from so many different aspects of other fetishes it almost seems destine to be compatible with so many others. I personally don't know how we beat out "Emetophilia" and "Formicophilia" (If you have this fetish I mean no disrespect at all it simply seems that AB/DL is far more mainstream than yours.)

Okay, I'm finished. Discuss if you like, I'll be bed.

[belinda_sue_fox]

Science and psychology should never be used in the same sentence, paragraph or book, unless it's to say psychology is not science.

[Diapered Jason]

hehe, tell me something I don't know wettums, but I like number three.

On gender though, the sooner society moves past gender roles, the better off we will all be as a whole. In my field of engineering, my graduating class was less than 10% female. It is disappointing, because the ideas only come from one group of people who all posses the same view and think very similarly.

Now I am not a women and will never be able to think like one, but I have read the reason women seem less interested in diapers than men is because they are already accustomed to the feeling of a diaper. Many women wear pads for menstruation and/or slight urinary incontinence and want nothing to do with diapers. I am sure some of our female members can shed light on this subject if they choose, but I do not blame them if they choose not to share as they normally do not want to talk about it. I think your idea of visually based sexuality with most men also plays a big role.

[sarah_ab]

I +1'd bel because as a psych major, and having grown up with a therapist for a mother, i see how unscientific many professionals in the field are....

although with technological advances certain aspects of psychology are becoming much more founded in science...

[Bettypooh]

....with technological advances certain aspects of psychology are becoming much more founded in science...

Is that why you wanted to stick those wires in my head?

Bettypooh

[belinda_sue_fox]

Dem der wires are in me muffff.

And to sarah..

Well i'm not +1'ing you, you will have done it yourself already.

And yea two of my ex's are shrinks so i know how they wo*k, they all raving fruitloops.

[happyindprs]

Well I am a firm believer that there ARE many more female abdl's out there that polls and statistics fail to record. Women seem to be much more private about such things as lifestyle. fetishes or sex in general. In addition if there are female adult babies or Mommies or babysitter and they come out on diaper sites, that is the last time they will enjoy their annonymety.

The number one fantasy ab boys and dl boys want in life is a female Mommy or baby sitter type to understand them and nurture them. Many of the good intentioned demales wanting to fill the maternal roles are driven of by all of the knuckle heads.

[Mommieslildaddy]

i think the gender gap could also come from the fact that parenting is imprinted in women much more then in men. not to say we're animals (although sometimes i wonder) but in nature a lot of the time the male doesn't take any role in raising the child, only the female. and even though we try to fight our instincts, we can't. so it might make sense that most women wouldn't find anything sexually appealing about either mothering or being babied because instinctually it's more like their job and not a pleasure. now of course im generalizing quite a lot, i mean obviously there are women on here who in fact do find it sexually appealing or appealing in some other sense, and i in no way thing "all women should make babies, raise them, then make me a sandwich.", i actually a huge supporter of all equal rights movements. but in still in a general sense this is something that men are more likely to be able to connect to then women. now that society is not only allowing but excepting men in more submissive roles, it's not surprising that some of us find giving control and trust on such a deep level as becoming someone's AB appealing. and once it becomes a more widely known and excepted fetish im sure more women will become part of the community, but currently we are barely known and mostly known as being odd, and a lot of women are as sexually explorative as men are. and now that the trend of women becoming more dominate and empowered in their sexuality, a fetish like this where there are normally clear roles, might start becoming more appealing to women.

if any of this offends someone or anything like that, im sorry i did not mean anything by it. keep in mind its late and my thoughts might not have been expressed as well and as clearly as i would like them to be.

[Zander]

Its a little old, and I would hope a lot more has been learnt in the 7 or 8 years since it was posted, but I did find this article a good read:

Clinical Case Conference - Adult Baby Syndrome by Jennifer E. Pate, M.D., and Glen O. Gabbard, M.D.

Am J Psychiatry 160:1932-1936, November 2003 (© 2003 American Psychiatric Association)

The two replies following the article are available in the two Letter to the Editor and Letter to the Editor posts.

The following might be worth a read too:

Adult Baby Syndrome and Gender Identity Disorder (Kristina Kise and Mathew Nguyen)

Achives of Sexual Behavior (DOI: 10.1007/s10508-011-9783-8) [This one is recent]

Relational aspects of maladaptive diaper-wearing and treatment with couples therapy (Jon G. Caldwella)

Sexual and Relationship Therapy (DOI: 10.1080/14681990801949982) (Volume 23, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 157 - 160)

[Yvhuce]

I personally don't know how we beat out "Emetophilia" and "Formicophilia" (If you have this fetish I mean no disrespect at all it simply seems that AB/DL is far more mainstream than yours.)

Not to mention that we got beat out by Furries... I'm not sure that this list is in proper order at all. I'd put the Furries at number 10, then us, then the rest in less weird organization. I'd probly put the serial killer one in at the top, because that's just plain wrong...