Correlation, Causation, and assuming childhoood abuse in ABDLs

I don't think I blogged about this before but I might have reposted some youtube comments. Anyway, this is a subject that comes up frequently in youtube discussions of ABDLs. Someone will assume that a specific ABDL or even ABDLs in general developed our fetish because of childhood abuse. Many will also conclude from their assumption that this means that ABDL is a form of mental illness. There are several things wrong with this.

While there are many ABDLs that were abused as children there are also many ABDLs who were not abused and had relatively normal childhoods. There is no evidence that the population of ABDLs experienced abuse at a greater frequency than the general population. That which is claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Also, if being ABDL is caused by abuse then why are there ABDLs who did not experience abuse?

When you are talking about a specific ABDL who did experience abuse they will often attribute the abuse to their becoming an ABDL. Maybe it is true but the fact is that we don't really know. It is an assumption. There is know way to know how things would have turned out if they had not been abused. It is possible that they would be an ABDL even if they were not abused.

Some ABDLs have problems with mental illness but again there is no evidence that the frequency of mental illness is greater among ABDLs than the general population. When you are talking about a specific ABDL with mental illness this is a medical issue. They should consult with a medical professional. Medical professionals are human and capable of making mistakes so you have to find a doctor or a therapist who is good for you. It is important that people with issues get help from medical professionals with whom they meet in person rather than random unqualified idiots on youtube who diagnose people with mental illness based on nothing more than their own assumptions.

The fact is that when an ABDL with mental health issues gets help from medical professionals resolves their issues they nearly always retain their ABDL desires. The do gooders of youtube think that mental health means being normal, but normal is relative and subjective. I think it is important to look at mental health objectively. The first threshold for this is answering the question "Are you a threat to others or yourself." The second threshold is are you functional. That is to say are you functional in everyday life? This breaks down to: Are you able to maintain a job or income? Are you taking care of your physical health with a good diet and exercise? Do you have a secure, clean and well maintained home? Do you pay your bills on time? Are you social and able to relate to other people?



Youtube comment I wrote that inspired this blog post:

Some adult babies experienced abuse when they were children. Some did not. There is no evidence to suggest that adult babies experienced childhood abuse at a greater frequency than the general population.
Also, even if she was abused as a child you would be making the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. (correlation does not imply causation)

More on ABDL origins

Here is a comment I just posted. I'm a bit tired right now but I might want to expand on it later.

Fetishes are a complicated subject. While there is no conclusive evidence, circumstantial evidence suggests that fetishes develop in early childhood long before puberty. Therefore, like the majority of adult babies, Riley probably had an interest in diapers long before she tried wearing them at 13. It is more a matter of that was the first time she both had the opportunity and the courage to act on her desires. Some ABs experimented with diapers at a younger age, and some waited until adulthood.

STOP LIKING THINGS I DON'T LIKE!!!!!

One of the biggest problems that people who criticize ABDLs have with us is that this is something that does not appeal to them, and they figure if they don't like it then other people shouldn't like it either. If you are responding to critics, try to recognize when this is the case and point it out.


Amusing video explaining this. And then I notice another video that is also amusing in this same theme.

Here is a comment I wrote in response to a video like this:

There are many men and women who do adult baby roleplaying. They don't need to grow up. They are grown up. Most Adult Babies have jobs and responsibilities just like all other adults. This is just something that we do in our spare time for fun.
If you don't like the idea of people doing this that is fine, you don't have to like it. But if you expect people to not do something they enjoy simply because you would not enjoy doing it yourself then you are incredibly immature.

Don't put down other people when defending ABDLs

Someone wrote a comment saying that our fetish is "100% harmless" and then implies that BDSM is harmful. Here is how I replied:

Nothing in life is 100% harmless. That's why some people prefer the motto of Risk Aware Consensual Kink over Safe Sane and Consensual, although I often prefer to use SSC because RACK can be too complicated to explain to vanillas.

It is both unnecessary and a fallacy to put other people down when explaining that this is just a harmless fetish. The BDSM scene has become accepting of ABDLs in recent years, and there is crossover as well.

I wanted to write more but didn't have much room because of the limits of youtube comments. I'm pretty sure I've written about the fallacy of moral relativism in the past in this blog. I've certainly done a lot of it in youtube comments. It is a fallacy because just about anything a person might do you could think of something that is worse and say "at least I'm not doing this." Not only is it a bad argument logically, but emotionally it puts you on the defensive and it implies that there actually is something wrong with ABDL activities.

But this comment kind of pisses me off. It seems like backstabbing to me. Yes there is some risk in BDSM, but as I said there is risk in everything you do in life. If you wanted a life without risk you couldn't cross the street. Bathtubs kill 340 people each year, are you going to stop taking baths?

I've seen ABDLs do this before, both in public forums and ABDL forums. How do they not see the irony of putting down other kinks and fetishes when advocating for tolerance of their own? At the very least I think it is very rude.

edit 2

(Then I reread the comment I posted to youtube and realize I should have said "this is just a *mostly* harmless fetish.")

edit 3

On the exact same video a different person wrote a comment defaming people into BDSM, with my comment at the top. Here is how I responded:

I just addressed this less than a week ago. You don't have to put down other people or activities to show that ABDL stuff is mostly harmless. That is an appeal to moral relativism and a fallacy. The benign nature of ABDLs stand on their own regardless of what one might otherwise do.

Also, there are some ABDLs that are also into BDSM so in your failed attempt to defend ABDLs you are actually insulting many of them. Both ABDL and BDSM are mostly harmless activities.

Kinky people have better mental health than everyone else

I find this from an article posted on io9.com

(DSM5) does not list BDSM as a disorder, and instead refers to the practice as a paraphilia, or unusual sexual fixation.

Either way, studies have failed to link BDSM and other kinks with psychological problems, so some psychiatrists see the manual's inclusion of the practices as a bit stigmatizing, according to LiveScience.

 Which refers to an article on livescience.com

The new results reveal that on a basic level, BDSM practitioners don't appear to be more troubled than the general population. They were more extroverted, more open to new experiences and more conscientious than vanilla participants; they were also less neurotic, a personality trait marked by anxiety. BDSM aficionados also scored lower than the general public on rejection sensitivity, a measure of how paranoid people are about others disliking them.

 The original study was published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine and you can read the abstract for free online. You have to be a member to read the actual article, but if you live near a university you might be able to find the article in a science library.

Now this study isn't on ABDLs specifically, and I am skeptical of online questionnaires, but it does seem interesting. It's also important to point out that there are no studies supporting the idea that Adult Babies specifically, or kinky people in general, have a higher rate of mental illness, let alone that we are somehow all insane. Yet it is quite easy to find people that insist that we are all insane with nothing more to back that claim up then their say so.

Six Things You Should Never Do On Social Media

The context of running a business is much different from Adult Baby advocacy, but I think the advice given in this article is good advice for anyone on the internet. I recommend everyone read the whole article. It is actually very entertaining, but the advice is worth gold.

Here are the bullet points:

1. Don’t Reply To Everyone
2. Don’t Respond to Trolls
3. Don’t React Right Away
4. Reddit is Not for the Weak
5. Don’t Insult People
6. Learn When To Walk Away
7. Don’t lie     

Don't rush to judgement or attack people

(I think I had a better title for what I am going to write here, but it will due for now.)

Besides the comments from Haters, quite often comments from ABDLs themselves will bother me. The Tyra interview is a good example. Now, I don't know the woman who went on the Tyra show. Maybe she did actually have a bad experience, but that's not the way I see it. I think it was more or less an impartial interview. Some people even get upset that Tyra is asking her questions. It is an interview people, of course the host is going to ask her questions. To a certain extent I can understand how people can get a bad impression from Tyra. She has an imposing manner and body language. But anyone who has watched a significant amount of Tyra's shows would know that Tyra is like that all the time. Some people are also put off by the opening statement "How freaky are we" and complain that Tyra is calling Adult Babies freaks. But let us examine that phrase again. "How freaky are we." The phrase is being used inclusively not exclusively. "How freaky are we" includes everyone. She is saying everyone is freaky in their own way and that's not a bad thing.

My next example is from a woman who made a youtube reaction video after seeing Riley's My Strange Addiction episode. In this case she actually was making an anti-AB rant when she made this video. However, she had a change of heart. That's right, after making the video she had time to think about the situation and she realized that she had been wrong and was not only brave enough to admit it, but she was brave enough to leave the video up. This is a good thing. It shows that people can change their mind on this subject and I hold her in high praise for doing so.

If you read the description to the video she explains this, but she still gets many very negative comments from ABDLs and their supporters. I would advise people avoid being negative when posting comments to youtube in general. I can't tell you what to do but I have explained why in this blog before. You are not going to win anyone over to tolerance by being negative. Anyone who is impressed by negativity is a lost cause in the first place. If someone is going to be persuaded to live and let live they will be persuaded by logic and reason. That goes double if you are going to go in writing comments half-cocked without reading the video's description, to say nothing about actually watching the whole video and reading other comments first. If you cannot bother to understand the full context of the video, and at least the recent history of what people have already written, you should not be posting comments to that video.

Before I move on to my next example I would like to point out a very positive reaction video a woman made after watching The 15 Stone Babies. I don't have much to say about it. Just watch it. It is a great video and it shows that not everyone is going to have a bad first impression of ABDLs.

Speaking of The 15 Stone Babies, there was a fairly short video posted to youtube that has since been deleted that looked like it contained unused footage from that documentary. There was a comment that claimed to be one of the couple in the video that said they were not told that that particular video was going to be posted. There was a reaction video from a popular youtube channel I'm not going to bother linking to because neither the video itself, nor most of the comments it gets, has anything intelligent enough to make it worth responding to.

There was another reaction video that seemed to be plagiarizing the first reaction video, but there was also yet another reaction video that was more or less neutral. I can see a lot of Adult Babies jumping to the conclusion that he is being negative towards us. His first impression is WTF, but really, if someone has never heard of Adult Babies before, it is understandable for a person to be thrown off guard. I posted a comment addressing some of the questions he posed in his video and he replied back thanking me with a live and let live attitude towards ABDLs. I call that a win.

If, on the other hand, some ABDL had posted comments attacking him I could see that going the other way around. That's why I ask if you are going to interact with vanillas on youtube or elsewhere that you try to be positive about it and not attack people. Try to see the good in people and give them the benefit of the doubt that they might be persuaded by logic and reason.