Daddy (slang)
Slang term
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Daddy is a slang term that refers to a sexually attractive man who is involved with a younger or shorter partner.[1][2][3][4]
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.[2][3] 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."[5] Its usage is similar in Lavinia Turner's 1922 song "How Can I Be Your 'Sweet Mama' When You're 'Daddy' to Someone Else?"[2][6] 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".[7][3]
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In gay culture
In gay culture and BDSM, a "Dad/Son or “Man/Boy” relationship can share similarities with a dynamic of dominance and submission.[8][9]
New York claimed in 2017 that the gay term evolved from leather subculture, which began in the 1940s.[10]
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.[11][10]
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.[12]
Gender
In 2000, Andrew Schopp[13] 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."[14]
In 2018, Braidon Schaufert[15] claimed that,
“By creating the term 'daddy',’Queer communities have separated the specific Gender Performance of fatherhood from the actual act of raising children.’”.[12]
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."[16][17]
Daddy is also a term used in lesbian communities, often to refer to butches and other masculine lesbians.[18]
See also
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- Sugar dating, a transactional relationship, which may involve use of the term "sugar daddy" and “sugar baby.”
- T4T (Trans Men seeking Trans Men) relationships, a Daddy/boy dynamic can be part of the Gender Affirmation process, thereby leading to Gender Euphoria.
