I recently got a private message on Fetlife from a new guy-friend who, like me and so many others have, is struggling with the guilt and shame of having ABDL interests, particularly in light of his outward masculinity. I thought I would repost my advice here in case it can be of any help to our Tumblr friends… while we aren’t by any means experts on shame or self-care, I thought perhaps my thoughts could help others.
For me, there have been a couple of core concepts that have helped me release that shame and guilt. I’ll share them here in full knowledge that these aren’t the kinds of things that seep in overnight: it took me a couple of years to deeply internalize them, and even today I have to remind myself at times that I lose self-compassion or feel threatened. So, be kind to yourself… this kind of self-integration is a process, and by reaching out to others you have started it brilliantly. Kudos for your bravery!
Everyone is masculine and feminine.
Seriously, we all contain both of these energies and their requisite traits in spades. Our culture tells us a lot about how we should feel, how each gender should act, etc., but most of it is polarized nonsense for the sake of quick characterization. (One researcher refers to it as a “social role heuristic,” basically a shortcut to understand where we fit in the pecking order). For a couple hundred millennia, males have been depended upon to be bigger, physically stronger, hunt, etc., and females have been depended upon to bear and nurse children, gather provisions, nurture community support, etc., and our cultural standards have developed around these necessities. Unfortunately, we have also lumped a whole lot of psychological concepts into these functional realities as our societies have gotten more complex and our ability to abstract has improved. So big/strong/independent has turned into a role and bear/gather/nurture has turned into a role which eventually turned into a set of beliefs which eventually turned into our concept of gender.
All that to say, you are both. You are strong and independent and tough and assertive. You are also soft, open, in need of love, tender, small, and weak. Both are true, and neither requires the other to go away in order for itself to exist. As Walt Whitman famously wrote, “I am large. I contain multitudes.” I go to work, I make command decisions, sometimes I guide millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs with my choices… and when I come sometimes I want to get diapered and taken care of, and both are equally awesome. Neither requires the other one to go away in order to be true. You need to be taken care of, just like everybody else, and don’t let the business suit or power play trick you into thinking you need to polarize. You don’t. Go kick ass during the day, come home and Little-out at night. Or vice versa. You are contain multitudes.
Man, this is the crux of it. Sexuality is impossibly complex, and it exists at such a fundamental level in our brain development and evolution… it pre-dates conscious thought, and our conceptualizations of our sexuality are merely best-guesses at trying to characterize something wholly abstract and base-functioning.
To think of sexualities, regardless of how culturally deviant, as being character flaws or mistakes is to miss how sexuality works. If you don’t believe me, look at the NIH-funded studies that demonstrated how easy it is to create a lemon fetish in rats. Are these rats morally corrupt? Are they broken? Are they perverts? Are they broken? Nope… their sexual development happened to overlap with a sensory stimulus and they ended up with a fetish. Awesome. Anybody got any guesses on why men are attracted breasts? Yup. Because that’s how that works.
There is nothing wrong with you. There never was. Your sexuality may be different than most people you know, but it’s not broken. There is no normal sexuality, and I guarantee that you are surrounded by dozens of men and women at work who have sexual fetishes, bizarre interests, turn-ons and practices that they work hard to hide from the world.
You deserve to try to be happy.
The pursuit of happiness is, as the US Declaration of Independence so eloquently puts it, an inalienable right. I think it’s an inherent trait; a motivational force built into each of us in some degree that drives behavior. So goddamnit, if something makes you happy and you can do it without violating others’ right to their pursuit of happiness, go after it. Few things make me as happy as diapering my wife, and few things make me feel as loved as being diapered. So I’m going to do it a lot; it’s fantastic. If I’m not doing it enough, I’m going to create time, and if I find I’m doing it too much, I’ll back it off, as it isn’t actually making me happy. Your pursuit of something that makes you happy isn’t just nice, it’s essential to embracing your own beautiful humanity. So fucking run after it; find your thing, and do it a lot. If your partner isn’t game, that’s OK… he/she doesn’t have to be, and he/she has a right to pursue happiness too, and you guys can work out how that will work for you. Pursuing happiness is part of valuing your own humanity; if you would want it for a friend, you can want it for yourself.
Let shame teach you, then let it go.
Shame and fear researcher Brenè Brown says it better than I ever could in her TED talk on shame:
“In surviving this last year, I was reminded of a cardinal rule — not a research rule, but a moral imperative from my upbringing — “you’ve got to dance with the one who brung ya”. And I did not learn about vulnerability and courage and creativity and innovation from studying vulnerability. I learned about these things from studying shame. And so I want to walk you in to shame. Jungian analysts call shame the swampland of the soul. And we’re going to walk in. And the purpose is not to walk in and construct a home and live there. It is to put on some galoshes — and walk through and find our way around.”
It’s OK to feel it. It’s OK really dislike that feeling, too. But let it teach you; let it tell you about your beliefs and your contradictions without judging yourself for feeling those things. Then, when you’re ready, choose to begin to step out of it. Avoiding shame (like avoiding any feeling) just compresses it into a more potent version of itself, and it comes out in dark and unpredictable ways. Don’t try *not* to be shameful, but rather ask what it teaches you about yourself, then choose to replace shame with compassion as you walk out of the swamp.
I hope this is helpful, and I’m really glad you reached out; that moment of vulnerability is a moment of profound creative and renewing energy.
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