Daddy is a slang term that refers to a sexually attractive man who is involved with a younger or shorter partner.

Beginning in the 1920s, the term was often heard in blues music and African-American Vernacular English.

History

Predecessors

According to the Historical Dictionary of American Slang, the earliest use of "daddy" in a non-paternal context was in 1681, in reference to what sex workers called their procurers or older male customers. This term is also used across races, with its origins becoming most recognized in the 1920s.

Throughout the 1920s, the term was used in blues music and African-American Vernacular English to mean one's boyfriend, especially an older man or a sugar daddy. In 1920, the term is used in a romantic context in Aileen Stanley's blues song "I Wonder Where My Sweet, Sweet Daddy's Gone." Its usage is similar in Lavinia Turner's 1922 song "How Can I Be Your 'Sweet Mama' When You're 'Daddy' to Someone Else?" The same year, the term appears in Trixie Smith's "My Man Rocks Me" in the lyrics "My man rocks me, with one steady roll [...] I said now, Daddy, ain’t we got fun".

A shirt reading "I Love Daddy Bears", pictured at the Oslo pride parade, 2015

In gay culture

A “Leather Daddy” or group of them is pictured and together they show us a set of leather chaps, a leather apron, and other jackets, harnesses, cuffs, and gear alike. Outfits like these are seen at BDSM events worldwide like the Folsom Street Fair, where in 2012 this photo was captured. Their outfits resemble WW2 military gear, and include leather hats, gloves, and boots.

In gay culture and BDSM, a "Dad/Son or “Man/Boy” relationship can share similarities with a dynamic of dominance and submission.

New York claimed in 2017 that the gay term evolved from leather subculture, which began in the 1940s.

In the 1970s, the "Leather Daddy" archetype (which has sadomasochistic associations) was proliferated in such media as the Drummer magazine (launched in 1975); 1976 to 1979 gay pornographic films Working Man Trilogy; and BDSM novels by Larry Townsend.

Braidon Schaufert has claimed that the term was further normalized through to Game Grumps' 2017 visual novel game, Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator, which centered "queer fathers in a romance game" and gained a significant online fandom.

Gender

In 2000, Andrew Schopp claimed that the daddy archetype,

"Challenge[s] dominant ideologies of masculinity by appropriating the icons of masculinity and male authority, (IE. jocks, leather, motorcycles, uniforms) transporting them into the realm of gay male sexual experience."

In 2018, Braidon Schaufert claimed that,

“By creating the term 'daddy',’Queer communities have separated the specific Gender Performance of fatherhood from the actual act of raising children.’”.

In 2022, Transgender Studies Quarterly claimed that a Daddy/boy dynamic between trans people

"Can be read as gender labor; affective and intersubjective work that produces gender."

Daddy is also a term used in lesbian communities, often to refer to butches and other masculine lesbians.

See also

External links

  • The dictionary definition of daddy at Wiktionary