Billy was already broken when he asked to work with me. What the highly respected psychiatrist did to him in the name of treatment caused nothing but harm. A misunderstood fetish was misdiagnosed. Billy underwent aversion therapy. He still has leftover PTSD from the treatment plan.
When Doctors Don’t Keep Up with Science
This wasn’t the first time a distraught adult came to me because they were extremely unhappy with a sexual diagnosis. There have been women diagnosed as alternately “nymphomaniac” or “frigid” by some conservative old men. In this case, it was a man diagnosed as a pedophile because, in his private life, he enjoyed wearing diapers. The most shocking and disgusting part of his story, however, was how a forensic psychiatrist (the kind who submits their diagnoses to courts and testifies) subjected him to aversion therapy.
Roughly 700,000 Lesbian and Gay people were coerced into the “pray away the gay” movement, a fraudulent treatment model, based on no science. Leaders of the largest group – Exodus, founded in 1976 and disbanded in 2013 – later apologized for destroying so many lives. But the harm was still done.
The DSM Got It Wrong
Although psychiatric opinion on fetishism was largely based on Freudian theory, their hypotheses were dead wrong. Nonetheless, unproven and judgmental theories about kinky sex were entrenched in the DSM until the 1990s. Clinicians in the 70s can be forgiven for following the DSM of their time. A clinician applying aversion therapy to a fetish in 2018 had no such excuse. They were not keeping up with the science. Some still profoundly believed in the unscientific theories they learned at school.
As the Body of Evidence Grows
In 1993, Different Loving documented fetishism and kink as alternative, non-conventional expressions, not criminal perversions. We didn’t have solid scientific data yet. Two sources made that book. First, stories from real people. We recorded the personal histories of people active in BDSM/D&S/Leather/Fetish/Kink. Second: literature, my first true love.
Of course, we had the books of de Sade and von Masoch. But whether it was James Joyce’s fascination with his wife’s soiled bloomers or Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s love of whipping, spanking, and exhibitionism, literary history is full of revered writers and philosophers who chronicled their kinks. Then there is Song of Solomon 5:4: “My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him.” Modern readers might recognize an adjacent activity.
Within a decade of Different Loving, the studies began flowing, and in 2026, we are brimming with robust data. Miraculous.
Fetishism is Not Abnormal
Billy had worked with a child psychologist for many years and continued to see them into young adulthood. One day, he innocently told them he enjoyed wearing diapers. The psychologist did not know much, if anything, about diaper fetishes. Rather than digging into current scholarship on the topic, the therapist instead claimed that wearing diapers could mean Billy would become a pedophile.
The therapist insisted that he needed to be diagnosed by a psychiatrist. They recommended a locally esteemed forensic psychiatrist who directed a clinic for sex offenders. When Billy’s parents found out, it gutted them. The degree of terror, grief, and tears this uninformed opinion caused to this kind and loving family was appalling.
Billy Got “Averted”
There is no “cure’ for fetishism. There never was, except in the theories of people with prejudices against them. This 2016 article from Psychology Today (“No, You Cannot Eradicate a Fetish“) is well worth reading. (Trigger: it describes slightly gruesome aversion therapy in detail.)
Nonetheless, the psychiatrist Billy saw was still working off an out-of-date model, which claimed to be able to cure sexual desires and impulses with aversion therapy. No one I know has ever known it to work, and the scholarship indicts aversion therapy. It doesn’t cure anyone: it traumatizes many.
Billy was in his 20s when he saw me. His parents were conservative. He led a sheltered life. It made him more wholesome and pure than most men his age. He always told the truth. I found it precious working with him because he was so honest and fresh.
One Checkbox, One Catastrophe
Billy’s family forwarded the entire case results for me to review.
They asked about fantasies (which did not include children). They asked whether he was interested in children, and he said no. They also asked, “Did you ever touch a child?”
Billy flashed to the previous Christmas when he hugged his 3-year-old niece. “Yes,” he wrote.
A Vomitous Diagnosis
Of course, the form meant “touch a child for your sexual pleasure?” When I asked Billy about it, he told me “I had to say yes, because I hugged my little cousin last Christmas. Was that wrong?”
They made him watch porn and drink nauseating liquid. He felt like a criminal, he felt horribly misunderstood, he was at his lowest point in life, and didn’t know how he would get back up.
He found me on the Internet.
Billy Thrives
All in all, Billy is doing very well. He has a good job, good friends, a close family, and a nice apartment to himself. He’s gone to AB/DL events and enjoys the freedom to wear.
Billy still has PTSD from the aversion therapy. He calls me whenever a gnarly issue arises. I remain his ally through dark times, and the only clinician who really heard and saw him.
The Science Grows, But Do Clinicians?
Aversion therapy for fetish is still being practiced. Conversion therapy has snuck into the scene as a “lite” version of aversion. It is still a path of negging you out of genuine sexual needs, berating you, and making you feel like a criminal for your authentic nature. Aversion and conversion therapies both demand that you hate the person you are. This is the antithesis of healing. To know yourself is divine; to love yourself is healthy.
If you haven’t found the fetish support you deserve, reach out to me.
Further Reading
“No, You Cannot Eradicate a Fetish” — Psychology Today, 2016 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/standard-deviations/201605/no-you-cannot-eradicate-a-fetish
“An Inclusive History of LGBTQ+ Aversion Therapy” — Sage Journals, 2025 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10892680241289904
“Aversion Therapy: Counterconditioning, Antabuse & Effectiveness” — Psychology Notes HQ, 2026 https://www.psychologynoteshq.com/aversiontherapy/
Photo credit: JoeyyLee @UnSplash
