Be Versus Be With in AB/DL Media

Those unfamiliar with the pictures, stories, songs, and videos enjoyed by Adult Babies and/or Diaper Lovers (AB/DLs) might assume that they are all either pictures, etc., of the AB/DLs themselves or analogous to mainstream pornography. To evaluate these assumptions and get an overview of the favorite media items of AB/DLs, data from the third survey in the AB/DL Survey Series was used.

In particular, the survey explored identification with characters. Mainstream pornography typically focuses on characters the viewer wants to be with (e.g. in bed). Only 16% of AB/DLs reported a favorite media item with a female character that they wanted to be with. These items might include some AB/DL pornography that is fairly conventional, but also mommy characters whom the AB/DL wanted to be with in a caregiver-baby relationship, etc. In contrast, 32% reported a favorite media item with a male character, possibly crossdressed, that they wanted to be. They identified with this character, wanting to be him, in his position, etc.

The assumption that AB/DL media is representative of AB/DLs gives rise to the argument that there are a lot of women AB/DLs, because there are so many pictures of women acting as AB/DLs. The data suggests that this is incorrect. Enough of the many male AB/DLs reported preferring media with female characters that a media item with a female character was more likely to have been reported as favorite by a male AB/DL. Some, but not all, AB/DL media is analogous to conventional pornography.

Enough of the many heterosexual male AB/DLs reported preferring media with male characters that a media item with a male character was more likely to have been reported as favorite by a heterosexual AB/DL. A wife or girlfriend who concludes that her spouse is homosexual based only on having found an item of AB/DL media with male character in his collection would probably be incorrect.

Given the breadth and diversity of AB/DL media, very few generalizations can reliably be made about it. An important question to consider when contemplating AB/DL media, or possibly any media, is whether the viewer, reader, etc., identifies with the main character, or wishes to be in contact with the main character; that is be versus be with.

One ongoing issue faced by the AB/DL community are the presumptions about AB/DL media. Some might expect pictures of a nearly nude woman, with the obligatory addition of a diaper, and some implication of intercourse with her. While this nearly-mainstream content appeals to some AB/DLs, the community as a whole are much more diverse. The presumption that the pictures are of people the AB/DLs want to have sex with causes difficulty, since many of the pictures - even in the collections of heterosexual males - are of other men.

Others might presume that the pictures are of the AB/DLs themselves. This too raises a difficulty, giving the mistaken impression that there are a lot of AB/DL women.

In addition to not necessarily being about sex, characters shown in AB/DL media are not necessary who the AB/DL wants to have sex with. Instead, they might be characters whom the AB/DL identifies with. This distinction isn't novel: A typical teen boy's bedroom might have posters of girls or women that the boy finds attractive on one wall, and posters of race car drivers, professional wrestlers, etc., on the other. One set of posters would be people he wants to be with - on a date, in bed, etc. - and the other would be people he wants to be like: Be with versus be.

Except for the arbitrary categorization as AB/DL media, the potential breadth and diversity of the pictures, stories, songs, and videos enjoyed by AB/DLs might be unbounded. However, it should be possible to evaluate two presumptions: 1) That an abundance of AB/DL pictures, etc., of women indicates a large population of women AB/DLs, and 2) That men who collect AB/DL media of male characters are likely to be homosexual.

Method

To explore the pictures, stories, songs, and videos enjoyed by AB/DLs, a 51-question survey was composed and posted to the Internet at the author's website, understanding.infantilism.org. It was announced to a number of email and web-based AB/DL communities including ADISC.org, BBIF.org, dailydiapers.com, fetlife.com, and twitter.com. This survey touched on a range of practices as well as favorite media - pictures, stories, songs, videos, etc. Due to the author's background, the survey was implemented as a web form, which emailed raw responses to the author. Responses were collected from 2009 to 2011.

Inclusion as an AB/DL was by self-identification (in survey 3, question #3, or S3Q3). Responses with an incomplete birth year (S3Q6) and those that, based on the entered birth year, might have been from participants under 18, were deleted. Responses that were probably duplicates were also deleted. Given the implementation of the survey, it was possible for the participant to send exact duplicate responses simply by clicking on the button to submit the response multiple times.

If necessary, the entered birth year was reformatted manually. For example, a birth year entered as "62" would have been corrected to 1962. Omitted responses were completed if obvious from present response. Most sections were written so that the first question or two indicated relevance, and directed AB/DLs to skip to the next section if the current section was not relevant. For example, in S3Q7, participants could indicate that they did not have a favorite item of AB/DL media. They were instructed to skip the rest of the section, which asked them about their favorite item of AB/DL media. Afterwards, the submission was modified to reflect that these questions were not relevant, as opposed to incomplete. Some blank values in responses were replaced with the text "blank" if necessary. Multiple-multiple-choice questions were not considered incomplete if none of the options were chosen.

Essay answers were entered into larger text-entry windows, which might not have provided the participant with spell checking or other usability features. To compensate for this, papers quoting these text will correct spelling, punctuation, and other minor errors while preserving phrasing, terminology, etc. The end of the survey included a checkbox where the participant could opt-out from being quoted.

A total of 897 responses were received for this survey, excluding responses from minors and probable duplicates. Of these, 697 self-identified as AB/DLs and completed all the relevant questions, including details on a favorite media item. The questions relevant to this paper are self-identification on the AB-to-DL range (S3Q3), participant's sex (S3Q4), orientation(S3Q5), character's sex (S3Q9, and be/be with(S3Q12).

Chi-squared analysis was used to check questions or pairs of questions for statistical significance. Post hoc, the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure was used to test pairwise comparisons for significance within question pairs that had shown a significant contrast. A 95% confidence and 5% false discovery rate was used.

To coherently survey media items, each participant was asked to select a single, favorite item. To avoid bias in selecting a representative item, the participant was asked to answer based on the first item to come to mind when asked about his or her favorite. Collectively, this method was expected to quickly and easily give a reasonable approximation of most representative items. Similarly, participants were asked to pick the character in the media item who was an important to their enjoyment of it.

Since the participant was asked to select a favorite item of AB/DL media, the selection might have been biased towards items made for AB/DLs, made by AB/DLs, or that matched the AB/DL's expectation for the category of AB/DL media.

While these results only gave limited information about each media item, collectively the are expected to give a broad sampling of AB/DL media.

Results and Discussion

This set of questions proved difficult for some participants. The survey did not explain the rationale for using just one media item, the first to come to mind when asked about their favorite item of AB/DL media. One participant wrote "This was a hard question for me to answer because there are several AB/DL-themed stories I really like."

Overall, 23% of AB/DLs (163) reported wanting to be with the main character, and 51% (359) reported wanting to be the main character, with the remaining 25% (175) reporting that they sometimes wanted to be, and sometimes wanted to be with the character.

Figure 1 shows the results based on the sex of the main character in the media, broken down by whether the AB/DL reported wanting to be with the character, sometimes be with and sometimes be that character, or be like that character.

Of the items reported by AB/DLs, 46% (320) had female characters. The majority of AB/DLs, if viewing or reading about about a character they wanted to be with, were looking at a female character. However, only 16% of AB/DLs (110) reported a media item of a woman that they wanted to be with. Some media with this combination might closely resemble mainstream pornography, but some other items might involve a relationship other than sexual, such as mommy and baby.

Other AB/DLs reported wanting to be the female in the picture. In addition to sissies, transgendered males, and women, this may also have included AB/DLs focusing on the experience (being changed, receiving an enema) as opposed to the character. Still others reported sometimes wanting to be with, and sometimes wanting to be, the female. This might include diaper fetishists, who might alternately enjoy having sex with the diapered woman, wearing a diaper like the woman, or both.

In contrast, the majority of those looking at a male character, crossdressed or not, wanted to be like that character. This included 24% of AB/DLs (166), increasing to 32% (221) if crossdressed male characters are included.

The be/be-with distribution, as a function of the participant's reported sex, is shown in Figure 2. Be was the mode for AB/DLs each sexual identity. However, as shown in Figure 3, the majority of media with a female main character was reported by male AB/DLs. This is relevant to the first research question: This suggests that the distribution of the sexes of main characters in AB/DL media might be substantially different than the distribution of the sexes of AB/DLs.

Additionally, since a sexual, be-with relationship should not be assumed, the character's sex might not necessarily align with the AB/DLs orientation. As shown in Figure 4, an AB/DL media item is more likely to be in the collection of a heterosexual male AB/DL than a homosexual male AB/DL. (An ad hoc, Χ² test for goodness of fit was used to confirm that the distribution varies significantly across the orientations; neglecting solo and asexual, gives Χ²(4)=90.15, p<.001. The significance of the difference between heterosexual and homosexual values was shown by a post hoc Χ² tests for goodness of fit, Χ²(1)=18.67, p<.001. This potentially counter-intuitive result is due to the distribution of orientation among AB/DLs, shown as a dashed line in Figure 4. The more numerous heterosexual male AB/DLs collectively reported favoring 112 media items with male or transgendered male characters, and 205 media items with female characters. The less numerous homosexual male AB/DLs reported 54 and 2. Any particular media item with a male or transgendered male main character would then be more likely to be in the collection of a heterosexual AB/DL than in the collection of a homosexual AB/DL. This relates to the second research question: A male AB/DL's orientation can not be reliably inferred from only the sex of the main character in his preferred media.

Conclusions and Limitations

The pictures, stories, songs, and videos enjoyed by AB/DLs differ substantially, but not fundamentally, from those enjoyed by anyone else. They range from items of nearly mainstream pornography to items that aren't pornographic at all. As a diverse community with still more diverse tastes, the media enjoyed by AB/DLs has a remarkably wide span.

The main characters in these pictures, stories, songs, and videos were close to evenly divided, roughly half male and half female. Some were similar to typical, mainstream pornography, centering on a woman the viewer wants to have sex with, date, or more generally, be with. 16% of AB/DL media were of a woman the viewer, reader, etc., wanted to be with, although some of these were mommy-baby or other relationships not common to mainstream pornography. In media items with a male main character, he would often be someone the AB/DL would identify with, wanting to be him, in his situation, or more generally, be. 24% of AB/DL media were of a male character the viewer wanted to be, 32% if crossdressed male characters are included. Roughly half of the favorite AB/DL media items were outside of these two groups.

The characters might be less important than in mainstream pornography: 15% of AB/DL media were of a woman the viewer would sometimes want to be with, and sometimes want to be. This would include diaper fetishists looking at pictures of a women in diapers, sometimes wanting to be with her in bed, sometimes be in a diaper like her, and sometimes both.

Regarding the first research question, because some of the many male AB/DLs reported a favorite media item with a female main character, it is more likely that any given media item with a female character was the favorite of a male AB/DL, instead of the the favorite of a female AB/DL. This suggests that the sex ratio of AB/DL media does not accurately represent the sex ratio of the AB/DL population.

Regarding the second research question, because some of the many heterosexual AB/DLs reported a favorite media item with a male main character, it is more likely that any given media item with a male main character was the favorite of a heterosexual AB/DL, instead of the the favorite of a homosexual AB/DL. While homosexual AB/DLs tended to prefer male characters, the importance of a male character in AB/DL media favored by male AB/DLs did not necessarily indicate homosexuality.

The survey data illustrated the breadth and diversity of AB/DL media. While it showed some trends, the data suggests that no one media item can be considered representative of AB/DL media as a whole. A key question that must be understood to evaluate the item is whether the AB/DL favoring the item identifies with the main character, perhaps wishing to be or be like him or her, or would like to interact with the main character as lovers, parent and child, etc. More briefly put, does the AB/DL seek to be, or be with, the main character?