WHO I AM…

Cwis

Blogger at abysitter.blogspot.com since November 200X

Owners of WhyABDL.org

Captain of the ‘Luvs Boat’

Surveyor: ‘Origins of ABDL’, 2018

The Q&A Series - 100 ABDLs over 10 Years

Photo Contests - 4

The ‘Big Boy’ (aka ‘Big Kid’) Bucket

18+ Proponent

WHY I ASK…

I’ve been a member of the online ABDL community since the late 1990s. I’ve been blogging at Abysitter.com since November 2008.

For the first few years of the 14+ years my blog has existed it was one only a few online ‘resources’ for the ABDL community.

It was, back then, one of very few places where an ABDL with questions could write to the person running the blog/site and expect to receive a response.

And write, ABDLs did…

Between AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Instant Messenger, my email account, and - later - my various social media profiles (Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter) and chat apps (Telegram, Messenger, Signal) I’ve heard from many, many of members of the community. It easily numbers in the hundreds.

At a class or discussion group at CAPCON, every participant is someone who’s reached a level of socialization where they are attending ABDL conventions.

But our community is filled with members who aren’t at that level yet - and many who may never be.

And, for years, these less social folks have been among those who have reached out to me - often with very personal, and sometimes very pressing, questions about why this side of themselves even exists.

Many are absolutely troubled by their interest in diapers, or their ‘little side’.

Some are what I’d describe as tormented by it.

For years I’ve done what some might refer to as ‘research’, trying to determine the reasons why we are the way we are.

“Identity development is critically important for sexual minority mental health. Failure to overcome stigma, and especially internalizing that stigma, can lead to anxiety, depression, and suicidality. Studying the identity development of kinky people can help us to better understand how kinky people develop resilience in the face of a world that often thinks of them as, at best, a joke, and at worst, violent criminals or mentally deranged.”

- Samuel Hughes, Researcher: University of California, Santa Cruz

In my ‘Origins of ABDL’ Survey in 2018, I asked respondents to answer how they socialized with other ABDLs; 1,345 answered this question.

  • 36.65% - I have never met another ABDL

  • 1X.29% - Long Time Ago/Lost Track

That means that over a third of the respondents had yet to meet another ABDL - and, put together, that more than half of respondents to this question - 54.94% - had not met another ABDL in person in so long they’d lost track of when it had been.

I also asked respondents to answer how many ABDLs they’d met with, on average.

  • 33.33% - Zero

  • 3.26% - Zero and will never meet

Of course, there are a variety of reasons for this.

THE ORIGINS OF ABDL SURVEY

In the early part of 2018 I composed a survey intended to gather data from the ABDL community.

I should preface this by stating, right off the bat, that I am not a lot of things.

  • I am not a clinical psychologist.

  • I am not a trained sociologist.

  • I am not a licensed surveyologist.

What I am is a member of the ABDL community with a long-running, much-viewed blogsite.

Someone who has corresponded with hundreds of others like me over the years, through in-person meetups, online communication and correspondence, guest blog entries, the Q&A Series, and - now - this survey.

My own blogsite revolves mostly around my experiences growing up. I am a gay male sharing stories about my own experiences, so my blog had naturally grown an audience of hundreds of others much like me. My hope was that, using various online resources available to all of us, I’d be able to attract survey respondents from other corners of the community. In particular, I hoped to interest those in the following categories:

  • Members of the community identifying as heterosexual male

  • Members of the community identifying as female

  • Members of the community identifying as trans (M-F and F-M)

Knowing that there is some overlap between these various segments of the community on ABDL social media, I ran a contest for those who liked/shared by survey post on Tumblr. Sure enough, I saw engagement begin to incorporate members of the community I’d never noticed before. Random winners of prizes - in this case, bags of diapers I financed on my own - were mostly unknown to me. The plan seemed to be working.

I also reached out on forums I am largely unfamiliar with, including groups on Fetlife where members of these targeted communities tend to be prevalent. There I found a mixed response, including:

  • Moderators who urged their members not to take the survey - one even removed my link - for a variety of reasons.

  • Members who were angry that I was now trying to include members of the trans community when my own blog skewed heavily gay and male.

  • Members who were angry that I was not a professional in any of the categories above, or that my survey would not be ‘peer reviewed’, etc.

Between urging their members not to take the survey, and going so far as to remove the survey link, I have no doubt that engagement with others outside of my normal audience was diminished to some degree.

Still, the final results showed that the survey had attracted responses from a variety of respondents in the community.

Where gender was concerned:

  • Male - 86.49%

  • Female - 4.83%

  • Genderfluid - 3.59%

  • Trans M to F - 2.94%

  • Trans F to M - 1.31%

In an UnderstandingInfantilism.org survey with 1489 responses, the numbers were strikingly similar:

  • 84% Male

  • 8% Female

  • 7% Trans Category

In my survey, where sexual preference was concerned:

  • Homosexual - 39.4%

  • Heterosexual - 26.8%

  • Bisexual - 20.37%

  • Honestly Unsure - 7.51%

  • Pansexual - 6.94%

  • Asexual - 6.56%

  • Heterosexual - 5.6%

  • Homoflexible - 3.82%

(Note, here, that 17% of respondents chose more than one answer from those listed above.)

In an UnderstandingInfantilism.org survey with 1481 responses, the numbers were as follows:

  • 59% Heterosexual

  • 26% Bisexual

  • 12% Homosexual

  • 4% Solo

FIVE PHASES OF KINK IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT

As identified by Samuel Hughes, a psychological researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Presented at the 3rd Annual AltSex NYC Conference, held April 27, 2018. Excerpted from Psychology Today, May 30, 2018. Hughes’ research was based on a survey of 292 people recruited from Fetlife; respondents were asked to share the story of their earliest memory within which their kink was involved, and the following data was gleaned from those stories.

PHASE I: EARLY ENCOUNTERS

“Early inklings toward kink.”

“Where kinky people experience an attraction, draw, or fascination with a kink or fetish interest, often without the words or concepts to understand it, and often without sexual arousal.”

Typically not understood at the time, but identified later as having been a part of the development process.

Respondents to Hughes’ survey identified this as having taken place before the age of 10.

PHASE II: EXPLORATION WITH SELF

“Kinky people exploring their kink or fetish interest with themselves.”

Respondents to Hughes’ survey identified this as having taken place between ages 5 and 14.

  • Fantasizing

  • Seeking out relevant media

  • Exploring material sensations on their bodies

PHASE III: EVALUATION

“The process by which kinky people evaluate what their kink interests mean for their identities and lives.”

Respondents to Hughes’ survey identified this as having taken place between 11 and 14.

  • Feeling stigma over their kink interests

  • Feeling generally different

  • Realizing that not all of their peers share their interests

  • Worrying that there may be something wrong with them

  • Sometimes actively engaging in research in order to try to label/understand

PHASE IV: FINDING OTHERS

“Realizing that there are other kinky people out there.”

Respondents to Hughes’ survey identified this as having taken place after the age of 11.

  • Often occurs via the internet and magazines

  • Often accompanied by a feeling of kinship, such as finding their home, tribe, people, or family

  • Often includes a process of developing resilience against kink-related stigma

  • Often includes developing a positive sense of kink identity

  • Physically attending a kinky club, group, event, or conference often comes up, “thought typically not until they are at least 1X years old.”

PHASE V: EXPLORATION WITH OTHERS

“Actually engaging in kinky play and/or kinky sex with another person.”

Respondents to Hughes’ survey identified this as having taken place after 18 years of age.

MINORS IN KINK

The data from the survey above shows a part of the problem with kink communities in general: maintaining a barrier between minors developing their kink identities and adults fully participating in the kink community.

Our community has a long history with adults involving minors in their communications and activities. As recently as the early 2000s, this was commonplace, and community sentiment within our own community forums could often find more than half of those actively taking part in related conversations arguing points legitimizing all-ages inclusion.

Part of the dilemma is that young people are often discovering this side of themselves very early on.

With the expansion of kink communities from their own compartmentalized community forums and websites to social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) minors will find the ‘community’ - there’s just no avoiding it.

Barring social networking companies adopting more stringent standards for preventing minor/adult interaction - which they are unlikely to do - the onus is on the adults in the community to ensure that inappropriate interaction does not occur.

In my 2018 ‘Origins of ABDL’ Survey, I asked respondents how old they were when they realized that they had an interest in diapers. For possible answer choices, I chose a number of answer selections that I’d frequently heard as members of the community shared their own ‘origin stories’ with me. (It’s up to the respondent in these cases to choose the answer that most aligns with their view on the subject).

  • “As Long As I Can Remember” - 52.16%

  • Child/Adolescent - 13.62%

  • Teen - 15.01%

  • High School - 5.17%

When the 1,432 responses to this question are analyzed, the following results appear to take shape:

  • Two-thirds of us realized that we had this interest during childhood or adolescence.

  • One out of five of us found that we had this interest during our teen/high school years.

  • Just 11.52% of us identified discovering this part of ourselves in our college/adult years.

In an UnderstandingInfantilism.org survey with 1466 responses, respondents were asked to cite the age in which they discovered this side of themselves. The numbers were as follows:

  • Infancy (0 to 3 years) - 5%

  • Child - (4 to 12 years) - 65%

  • Teen (13 to 18 years) - 18%

  • College (19 to 22 years) - 2%

  • Adult (23 years and up) - 6%

In that survey, two-thirds of us said that we realized we had this interest before the age of 13. Only X% recalled coming into it in our college/adult years.

In my survey I also asked respondents to identify whether ABDL was something they came to on their own, or whether it was something they were introduced to by others.

  • I, Myself, Always - 67.95%

  • I, Myself, Later in Life - 19.8%

That means that a whopping 87.75% of survey respondents stated that their interest in diapers/ABDL/etc. was one that they came to without the involvement of others.

Only 1.19% answered that they were turned on to this by a partner, and 2.87% by a friend. The idea sometimes espoused on Twitter and other places - that diaper-wearing kinksters are out there recruiting others into crazy alternative lifestyles - is not belied at all by the numbers here - a mere 4.06% of respondents said that they came into this via another person.

That means that, for the most part, if someone has a diaper fetish or kink, it is likely something within them.

In an UnderstandingInfantilism.org survey with 1466 responses, the numbers were as follows:

  • 9% said that they were wearing diapers for bedwetting or incontinence and discovered they liked them

  • 2% said they decided to try adding diapers or regression to existing role-play scenes

  • 88% said the interest in diapers/regression was an interest they’d had since long ago

In my survey, I asked respondents how old they were when they began networking with other ABDLs online - 1,427 answered this question.

  • 12 to 13 - 11.49%

  • 14 to 15 - 19.41%

  • 16 to 17 - 19.20%

These numbers show that just over 50% of those responding - a total of 715 out of 1,427 respondents - remembered having been under the age of 1X when they first began networking with other community members online.

I also asked how old survey respondents were when they met up with another member of the community; 10.5X% admitted to being under the age of 1X. I’ll leave you to analyze what those numbers mean…