More Terminology: "Advanced Baby"

As you can probably guess from some of my recent terminology-based postings, I understand Kathi Stringer's desire to come up with a better terminology. The words we have to describe ourselves and our activities are woefully inadequate. We need better ones.

Kathi Stringer, who I seem to agree with on many points (but disagree with on others), has proposed the term "Advanced Baby" to replace "Adult Baby," and indeed, I've seen it used on some websites. But is it a good term?

The first question is whether there's anything wrong with the term "Adult Baby" in the first place. Stringer's argument is that at least for some, the use of the word "Adult" bothers them -- there's nothing adult in their baby play, especially considering the fact that "adult" has taken on the meaning of licentious or erotic in some contexts, such as adult films or adult bookstores. (This is probably because of laziness -- my guess is that these things started out as "adults-only" films and bookstores, and the name just got shortened with use.)

It's true that, for many ABs, when they're babies, they don't want to engage in adult sexual behavior. There are other times for such things, like when they're not expressing their AB side. Now, many ABs do combine adult sexual behavior with their AB side, so presumably they would not have a problem with the "Adult Baby" term. But we're talking about those who don't want any "Adult" in their AB.

Stringer's "Advanced Baby" article, like her "True Infantilism" article, which I have posted about recently, is a good introduction to ABs, conceptually speaking, but it doesn't really make a good case for why the term "Advanced Baby" is better than any other -- although it does explain why Stringer, and probably others, consider "Adult Baby" to be the wrong term for them. She shows us a panoply of other terms, such as "kidults," "rejuveniles," "adultolescents," and "peterpandemonium," but then ignores them all and attempts to coin her own term.

The article suffers from a few problems in its citations -- for one thing, even in the brief passages she quotes, it is obvious that the author uses the word "infantilism" in its original, dictionary sense, which I wrote about in the post before this one. They're not talking about regressive, possibly even therapeutic behavior -- they're talking about immaturity, and somewhat derisively and critically at that. What's more, she cites an article by Ian Shoales, who is not a real person -- he is a satirical character created by comedian and author Merle Kessler, who also portrays Rodney, the sidekick of Dr. Science, whose humorous skits put Duck's Breath Mystery Theater on the map for National Public Radio fans. At least she didn't cite Dr. Science. She does, however, cite herself, linking to her own article on "True Infantilism."

However, she does make many useful points that I agree with, most importantly (in my opinion) the fact that Internet resources for nonsexual ABs are nearly nonexistent, and they may be confused and even emotionally affected by the relatively large quantity of material available for sexual ABs. She's right. There does need to be more material for nonsexual ABs on the Internet. I feel strongly that nobody should feel as if the only way to express one's AB side is in a sexual way.

So Stringer makes some good points in her somewhat flawed essay, but she does not have a compelling argument for why "Advanced Baby" is a term that anyone should use. But is there any reason not to use it? I can think of one: the term "Adult Baby" distinguishes ABs from physical children in a way that "Advanced Baby" does not. Nearly every reputable AB website contains a disclaimer about how no real children are involved, and for a good reason; Western culture seems to see child molestors behind every door and under every bed. Anything that seems even conceptually similar falls under suspicion. And, not helping matters, there are some pedophiles who have masqueraded as ABs and gotten caught (and some that have not yet been caught as well, I'm certain). Most ABs therefore want to distance themselves as much as possible from giving any impression that they want to have anything to do with real children. Thus the term "Adult Baby" -- adult, meaning not physical children -- serves this purpose to some degree, where "Advanced Baby" does not.

Once again, we are left with no better terminology for Whatever It Is That We Do. Perhaps somebody will come up with something compelling that sweeps across the community and transforms how we think about ourselves in a positive and affirming way. But I don't think "Advanced Baby" is it.

Infantilism: For Want of a Better Term

I've stated my disagreement with Kathi Stringer's term "True Infantilism" (though not with the concept she uses it to refer to), but I'd like to say something about the term "infantilism" itself.

If you look "infantilism" up in a dictionary, you will see definitions that have to do with arrested development and extreme immaturity. Look at dictionary.com, for example. To paraphrase, the definitions are:

Immature physical or behavioral traits persisting past childhood.

The quality or state of being infantile (i.e. the noun form of the adjective "infantile").

I think those two statements pretty much sum up all the definitions. And neither one of them is a synonym for adult babies, is it? I mean, sure, maybe ABs exhibit infantile behaviors, but you might as well describe the sky by saying it's blue, ignoring everything else you could say about it. The sky contains a variety of wind and cloud patterns that produce different types of weather; it's made up of various gases; the atmosphere consists of different layers, each with its own distinct makeup and phenomena, etc. What's more, there are things that are blue other than the sky.

And there are things that are infantile other than ABs. The term as it has been used until relatively recently is really not very descriptive of ABs at all. ABs can behave in an immature way, but usually this is when they are roleplaying; that is, interacting in a prenegotiated common space. The amount of maturity required to be immature sometimes reaches the paradoxical. Most of the time, ABs act as mature as anybody else -- sometimes more so, depending on whom you compare them with. For example, would you say the language I'm using in this post is immature?

The dictionary definition of the word "infantilism" has to do with immaturity. Then along came somebody (Dr. Wilhelm Stekel, perhaps?) and started using the term for ABs, inventing a new definition for it. But if we're going to go inventing definitions, why not invent an entirely new word, rather than use an old one that has baggage? I think "infantilism" is a failure for describing Whatever It Is That We Do.

"True" Infantilism

As a second post in my series of terminology rants (this was unplanned, but it seems to be what I feel like ranting about), I'd like to talk about the recent appearance of the term "True Infantilism."

As far as I know (someone please correct me if I'm wrong), the term was coined by Kathi Stringer of www.toddlertime.com; she explains it in the essay "What Is True Infantilism?" The basic idea (not sure I agree with it, but I can summarize what she says) infantilism is a fetish, but True Infantilism is an emotional condition that starts in childhood. Whereas diapers, pacifiers, baby bottles, etc. are fetish objects for an infantilist, for a True Infantilist they are transitional objects, which means that in childhood they were linked to nurturing feelings, and those links persist.

Now, none of this is anything I outright disagree with, but I just have a tendency to feel immediately apprehensive when anybody calls something the "true" or "real" anything, because it feels like they're calling everybody else false or unreal. "Maybe you're an infantilist, but I'm a True Infantilist." I'd have a much easier time with this concept if its name didn't seem designed to cause arguments. So you know what? I'm going to rename it for the rest of this post. What Kathi Stringer calls "True Infantilism," I'm going to call Regressive Personality Syndrome (RPS). Please note: I'm not saying that it should be called this, or that anything should have this name. This is just an exercise to see whether I agree with Stringer now that I've moved past the name. I'll still use "infantilism" to mean what I'm used to seeing it mean.

I'm not going to take cheap shots at typos and strange syntax, but Stringer could have used a proofreader. Stringer says that a child with RPS feels isolated and alone in these feelings and hides them from friends and family members. Sounds like me so far. She says that diapers are a common theme but that RPS expands to include other items. I'm not sure I agree with that; it hardly seems impossible to start out with items other than diapers, or to emotionally invest in a number of important objects from the beginning.

She differentiates fetish objects from transitional objects -- "The energized transitional object offers relief from separation anxieties from the maternal figure and/or provides a sense of recreation of a period lost in grief." This sounds exactly like me.

Her next paragraph talks about how a child who has suffered abuse or neglect may well identify with "toddlers in neighboring families and yearn for the same infantile attention." She omits what seems to me to be another obvious cause other than abuse and neglect, but it may only be obvious to me because I'm the case she left out: the loss of a parent, especially the mother. My mother died of cancer when I had just turned 6 years old, and I now see that as the root cause for my wanting to return to toddlerhood. I was neglected in a sense, but it's hardly as if my mother neglected me by choice. Stringer should perhaps have thought of the loss of a parent, especially since death is not the only way to lose one -- separation, divorce, or even changing economic conditions forcing both parents to work outside the home can cause a parent to disappear from a child's life in a traumatic way.

Her statement about observing toddlers in neighboring families interests me. This possibility may explain why I feel like I want to be a baby girl rather than the baby boy I was. Right after my mother's death, or so I recall, my best friend's mother had a baby girl, and so did my aunt and uncle, who did not live nearby, but we saw them frequently at holidays. Especially right after my mother died, my father brought my brother and me to visit the rest of the family as often as he could. I remember seeing my beautiful new baby cousin in her pretty baby clothes, smelling the evocative scent of baby powder, and watching all the attention and care she got -- I don't recall wishing I was her at the time, but the seeds of that thought might have been planted.

I don't want to thoroughly analyze every sentence and paragraph of Stringer's essay; after all, this is a blog post, not an academic paper. What I would like to say is that with the terminology substitution in place, I sound like a perfect example of RPS, if you make the allowance for Stringer's omission of the loss of a parent as a possible cause. She does talk about the appearance of the libido in adolescence and the transitional objects becoming something similar to fetish objects, but it seems to me that at that point there is little difference between infantilism and RPS. I suppose RPS might not always develop into infantilism at adolescence, and infantilism might not always have its roots in childhood RPS, so I can see that there might need to be separate terms for the two.

Kathi Stringer has no credentials in the mental health profession as far as I know, but then, neither do I. She does seem to try to present herself as some sort of mental health expert, however, although I suppose we are all experts on our own personal psychological environments. I agree with much of what she says, but I still have to disagree with her choice of the term "True Infantilism," which is unfortunately starting to propagate to a few other websites and seems tailor-made to cause strife and division.

"Paraphilic" Infantilism

Just a bit of a terminology rant here.

Google "infantilism" and the first result you get is the Wikipedia article on "Paraphilic Infantilism." This article describes various aspects of what I've usually just seen called infantilism.

My problem is that, according to the DSM (the mental health profession's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), a paraphilia is a disorder, something that needs curing. The DSM calls a paraphilia a condition that is "characterized by recurrent, intense sexual urges, fantasies, or behaviors that involve unusual objects, activities, or situations and cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning." Never mind that they don't bother defining "unusual," but ...

I don't have a paraphilia. Whatever it is that I do doesn't cause me distress or impairment, and certainly not clinically significant distress or impairment. I don't need curing.

I'm sure there are those who disagree with me, but as long as the DSM defines a paraphilia as a negative thing, I refuse to call anything I do "paraphilic." Not that I can change what other people choose to call it, but I would think that most ABs wouldn't want what they do called a disorder either.