Tolerance, respect, compassion, and understanding
By BabyInDiapers
Written on 06/16/2003

Have you ever gotten tired of people labeling you as a freak just because you 
choose to run your life differently than society wants? Do you feel oppressed 
by people's half hearted, harshly spoken, and lack of trying to understand 
other people's positions? Close mindedness, lack of compassion for those of 
different lifestyles, and any other prejudice and bigotry, it stabs at the heart of 
those of us who are free thinkers, and liberal in the sense that we embrace 
other people's differences.


Tolerance is a great thing within boundaries. I think to much tolerance can 
lead to such a bla society, but to little will always make those of us who are 
different, feel ridiculed. There are places in our country, and our world that 
are friendly to different people's lifestyle choices, but yet other regions that 
seem to have almost a hatred, if not a blatant lack of concern for those who 
march to the beat of a different drummer.


I myself being a Christian, hold a certain amount of moral, and belief 
boundaries that I myself choose to stay within. But the guy next to me may 
not live his life that way. He has just as much right to live his way as I do. 
Now out of concern for this person, I may share my faith with him or her  with 
the intent to maybe help them out or to share what I may see as a better way. 
But if this person is not interested, or is comfortable in his or her lifestyle, 
then why should I bash this person and make them to feel bad? I shouldn't. 
And I don't.


There will always be disagreements among us. I don't think that we should all 
consolidate into one belief system and loose our uniqueness all in the name of 
tolerance. But here is what I do think. I think that it is great to exchange 
information and beliefs and values across all sorts of dividing lines. I am glad 
for divisions that make us each different as individuals, cultures, religions, and 
so on. But when these divisions get in the way of our cross-relations with 
other groups, this is counter productive. We need to accept one another as a 
person weather we buy into there beliefs or not.


It is a wonderful thing that we are all different. And it is good to have pride in 
your way of life. It is also good to understand those around us. To know there 
beliefs, weather we claim them as our own or not. To know there likes and 
dislikes, weather we agree on them or not. 


Some people rant and rave against AB's. We even have AB's that bash other 
AB's about the subset of differences among us. If any group wishes to gain 
respect, and to gain leeway in the society as a whole; it cannot divide amongst 
itself lines that prevent it to working towards a common goal. When a group 
of people have a similar goal they should overlook the differences and work 
towards opening a way for the bigger group to make headway. Then later once 
some of those bigger doorways into society are opened, then it is much easier 
for the subgroups to make thee mark as well.


Even greater than the internal division among us AB's is the outward 
prejudice we face from society itself. Weather fetish oriented, or emotionally 
driven to regress, wear diapers, etc; we all get labeled as nasty, sick, 
perverted, emotionally impaired, and any other negative label you can 
imagine. For example, do you like to record commercials and TV shows that 
feature diapers, babies, or other types of AB related things? If so, do you fear 
being labeled as a pedophile? I don't blame you, because in this society as it is 
now, there is such a witch hunt going on that most people throw us into the 
category of a pedophile. They do not want to understand that we are interested 
in babies, diapers, and other things along those lines because we wish to 
retrace our steps back to those days. We are fond of a certain childhood 
memory we have. We are always seeking to relive a part of our childhood, or 
even perhaps to live out a childhood that was stolen from us.


We as AB's have a strong stance against child abuse, and so on. We as a 
community have agreed across the board, that involvement of a minor and an 
adult in any type of sexual encounter is wrong. In fact, everyone I've talked to 
even agrees that pictures, and other media portraying babies, children, or 
minors in general, should not be used for the sexual gratification of an adult. 
On the flipside, looking at pictures of babies in there diapers and so on is ok in 
and of itself. It's just a matter of what you the viewer draws from it. For the 
AB community at large, we see the diaper that the person is wearing and think 
back to when we ourselves were in diapers. We wish again for those days of 
being in the role of the baby. We do not wish to involve an actual baby, or 
child in any of our activities, at all. 


Most people will never listen long enough to hear this explanation spelled out. 
They want to make the quick assumption that any adult looking at diaper 
commercials, or pictures, even in catalogs or magazines, is perverted and even 
if they are not practicing pedophiles, that the potential is there. Granted in 
some people it may be, but it is certainly not permitted by law, and also not 
permitted by AB Law, if there is such a structure. We need to ask ourselves 
"Why are we having to defend ourselves?" Some times it is hard to not feel 
guilty about enjoying the AB lifestyle, not because we are doing anything 
wrong. Even if a person is not standing before us throwing out accusations 
that we are sick people, society's structure itself continuously yells this at us 
over and over until we feel terrible.  This is wrong!


We are living in a day where we are being thrown in with people who are 
doing wrong things. What I mean by wrong things, is stuff like abusing 
children, abusing each other, any type of behavior that is causing pain to 
another human being. That is wrong in anyone's book, no matter the culture 
or religion. Again, we have to state clearly, pedophilia is wrong, sick, horrible, 
it destroys children's lives. It's a terrible thing. And people who do such 
things should be brought to trial, they should be monitored so that they do not 
do any such thing ever again!


But don't be so over zealous that when you hear of a person who likes diapers 
and regressing back to babyhood, that you just quickly out of anger and hatred 
for those who do wrong to children, that you label everything else even 
remotely close to it as bad, without first trying to understand the thought 
process, the beliefs, the boundaries, if you will, that those people have. 


And even if it's not pedophilia that you get labeled with, they still think you 
are a sick person and need to seek help. What is it that makes people the in 
general population not like us? Is it because they automatically assume that 
just because we wear diapers that we pee and poop in them and that we want 
them to change us? It seems like people always imagine the worst thing first.


Or is it because they think we are immature and need to just "grow up!"? Or is 
it that they are jealous of us because we are filling the void in our lives that 
regression can help fix, while they are being fake and denying that they have 
the same void inside. They are mad because we can enjoy our "second 
babyhood"?  Well I say, join us, don't fight it.  There are so many reasons 
why people can feel repelled by us. Sometimes we do it to ourselves by not 
presenting ourselves the right way. But where does most of this prejudice, and 
hatred, and fear of us come from?


There are people out there who say "Diaper industry wants you to keep your 
kids in diapers longer. Let's potty train them real early and save money and 
bla bla bla." Then there are those who say "I hate diaper commercials It's not 
right that they show babies and toddlers running around in just a diaper, bla 
bla bla."  Then there is the Jerry Springer element, which didn't help us with 
to much positive press. Then there is the "parental competition" to see who 
can get there kid's trained the fastest. It's like there is so much pressure on 
parents today. Kids grow up to fast today. If I were a child in today's fast 
paced, insecure world, I'd go crazy. I'd hate life. No doubt about it. 


Let's face it, this world is so hard on children. To much expected at to early of 
an age. Media forcing them to know so much, schools laying so much on 
them. So many parents that don't give enough nurturing and attention. To 
much ear from the media, the world is so unstable, yet we're pushing our 
children off a cliff with things to do. They have no time to think about things, 
to identify who they are. There's so much social noise in so many directions; 
It's no wonder that more and more kids are regressing. Also no wonder more 
of us adults are too!


I mean look around, it's crazy out there. What kid doesn't want mommy to 
baby them longer, what kid doesn't want to be held more. But these pressures 
of society are tearing away at kids today. God have mercy on us 20 years from 
now with what we're producing! It's a tragedy. And then people want to have 
a fit because some of us feel the need to regress, to find security and comfort 
in diapers and babyhood? What are they doing, becoming alcoholics, and 
developing stress related illnesses? Like there way of coping is any better???


So then, what do we do about this lack of tolerance for us. First off, we need 
to practice more on those around us. Even in our own community. We need to 
learn to not get mad when some of us choose to have a picture of a baby in a 
diaper on our banner ad! We need to not get mad when some of us have 
pampers commercials and other TV clips that have babies on them. We need 
to understand that we don't all derive sexuality from these things. Some are 
hardcore fetishists, while others are purely emotionally seeing the baby 
experience. We need to not accuse each other.  Once we reach harmony 
within our own group, then we will have a chance to make headway into our 
society around us.


Bottom line is, let's take time to evaluate things. If we have initial prejudices 
and anger towards a group or there practices, let us calm down first, then go in 
and talk to these people. Try to understand the mindset, the reasons and then 
maybe we will all see clearly instead of just going in with guns blaring and 
causing more harm to others. If we just take time to understand each other, we 
will get along much better. And it is not to say that we have to agree, but we 
need to at least, see where they are coming from. Disagreement does not mean 
that you need to be angry, or to prove that your point of view is better, it just 
means that you are two people with two different views. You both understand 
each other's view, but you both walk differently. But what is so wrong with 
respecting and showing compassion to the other person with the different 
view?  Let's try to work on that.  I myself even need to do that more.


I hope this has been insightful, and helpful to both AB's and non-AB's.