February 27, 2023 • 19 mins
The Internet is abuzz about the term 'daddy', what it means, and why it has blown up. We explore some definitions, history and examples, and do our best not to make you cringe along the way.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Stefph.
I never told you production of iHeartRadio, and today we're
kind of we're We've decided we're going to kind of
swap back and forth on the Monday minis. Yeah, Samantha's
(00:25):
covering what I'm covering. Again. I think if you know us,
you'll probably be able to tell most of the time,
who did which one. Although I did talk more gaming
you did than you did, so it wasn't horror horror
based games, but you want gaming outside of just that.
But just saying I do I do, I do UM
And this this definitely is still going to remain one
(00:46):
of our newsier segments. And I actually think this is
pretty on topic. This is a we're weird, you know,
it's relevant. This is a whole thing. It's relevant right now.
It's a whole thing right now. I do want to
start by apologizing to the young folks. Apparently I shouldn't
even be saying this. Are talking about it? But here
where are we? Why shouldn't you be talking about it? Wait,
it's like a young internet sling right now and they
(01:08):
said a five over twenty. I shouldn't be saying it,
but here I am wait, I don't want you to
say it. If you're under twenty, that's creepy er. Well,
we're gonna talk about it. We are gonna talk about it. Okay,
So today we are talking about daddy specifically making me blush,
specifically the kind of internet daddy thing that's happened happening
(01:31):
right now. So I do want to say, like, no
kink shaming if you're consenting adults. Number One, we aren't
talking about daddy issues. You can see our past episode
on that. I think we're going to rerun that one
soon as a classic because it is related to this conversation.
We're not really talking about sugar daddies either. Also, it
does have a different meaning in the gay community and
(01:52):
in the kink community. We're going to talk about that
a little bit, but not too much. It can also
be a term of coercion. We're also not talking about
that too much. We're specifically talking about this internet phenomenon
that is really playing out right now. So we will
touch on those things, but that's not kind of the
topic at hand. But yeah, we are seeing it play
(02:14):
out right now, particularly with Page of uscal Yes, yes,
who's been called the Internet's Daddy. The Last of Us
is midway through at this point, I guess I should
say the date, Oh what is it? February twenty third,
twenty twenty three, and The Mandalorian season three is coming
out this Wednesday, so it's it's like, really, oh gosh,
(02:37):
it's really taken off. There's even an SNL skit with
Pascal and it about this whole thing, and we mentioned
some of the quotes he has around it. He said,
daddy is a state of mind. He said, I'm your cool,
slutty daddy. So he's very in on the joke, was
very very in on the joke. But we'll talk about
(02:57):
that more in a second. I do want to say
I got a slash date because I recently did that
whole Slash episode about why I read what I read
slash generally being two men together in fan fiction, Not always,
but generally. And I remember somebody said to me once
I would slash page off Pascal with anything, and then
I reached back out to her and I was like,
(03:17):
so why did you say that? Just curious. She's like,
because he's hot, So I didn't even say that. I mean,
sometimes maybe you just want to see ahead. Anyway, I'm
sure Oscar Isaac and he have been slashed plenty of
Oh yes, sound dirty the way I just said that.
I'm so sorry. Keep going, no, no, no, yeah, that's
about right. All right. So let's get into some definitions.
(03:41):
So from the Washington Post, the slang endearment, popular on
Twitter and Instagram, among other platforms, is usually meant to
communicate respect slash adoration to a male authority figure. This
isn't entirely family friendly, though the meme frequently has a
sexual tinge, and the article goes on the daddy has
precious little to do with dads. It's a commentary on
(04:03):
hero worship and power dynamics and sometimes a way of
reversing them. Here's Peyser writing in New York Magazine. So
this is a quote. Within the quote, a grown woman says, daddy,
with intention, self assurance and lots of cynicism, We claimed
daddy as our own, which allows us to gently mock
the patriarchal structures you're playing into. The daddy joke is
(04:23):
that we have control over the way we manifest Daddy,
that we could one day even become our own daddy.
WHOA And then so I found a whole article boxed
specifically about Pedro Pascal and this whole thing, and here's
a quote from that. Pedro Pascal didn't invent the concept
of daddy, nor will he be the last to embody it.
(04:46):
Daddies have always existed in our world. They're handsomely beautiful,
the type that comes with age, maybe to the point
of surprise their authority figures. They're effortlessly kind, but not
always nice, the antithesis of toxic masculinity, though their attractiveness
has often been tethered to an edible taboo, complexes and issues,
(05:07):
and daddies would never call typically themselves daddy first is
a title that is bestowed rather than self proclaimed, and
then continues on the fantasy of daddy now exists primarily
as a one way pursuit. Daddies are the object of affection,
and if a daddy is actively pursuing anyone, let alone
a recent high school graduate, they are no longer daddy.
(05:30):
So they were talking about that in terms of like
like Leonardo Dicapriody, you know who it was one of
the first daddies who Steve Carrell really yes, And I
tell you this is that whole like surprising thing. So
when he came out like not too long ago with
the beer the white hair, everybody was like, wait, what right?
(05:52):
And did the name daddy I mean, I mean daddy,
I mean daddy, that's a whole name. Duck video partially
was because of Steve Carrell rising, but like wait what right?
And he is he's the antithesis of that toxic masculinity,
so we know as of now, as of now, yeah,
I mean. And that's the interesting thing that they put
(06:12):
in there is like it's a one way street, like oh, yeah,
the daddy can't be attracted to the young girl calling
him daddy, then it's gross no longer daddy. Yeah. He's
been happily married to his wife for years and years.
We get to see her, you know, you know who
she is because she's been in all of his movies
and shows and they write together, and then that's one
of the appeals, like, oh my god, he's an amazing
(06:33):
person who stayed just because he stayed with Yeah, wife,
stay faithful as far as we know. That's part of it.
We're going to talk about that in a second. Yes, okay.
Another part of this is, as I said, Pascal is
in on the joke and represents a quote particular type
of hot and for him in particular, it also comes
with this portrayal of gruff, reluctant father figures. Recently, there's
(06:57):
been a lot of talk because after he was on
sn he made a joke about like his Mandalorian voice
being his bedroom voice, like a porno voice, and so
when he uses it, he feels really uncomfortable because so
he usually is a mask on, so like the helmet on,
so you don't see it. But now that he said that,
he's had to volease like this statement, like please stop
doing that. Stop asking me to do it, because now
(07:20):
everyone's like, do your porn voice. And that's when I
mentioned in our last Last of Buzz episode when I
said we need to talk about parasocial relationships. That's part
of because that's been a big conversation with him as well.
So I think we should revisit that, but for now.
This term in this context most likely emerged from teen
(07:45):
fan culture sometime around twenty fourteen. This was when Lord
I don't remember this at all, but brought a lot
of attention to it when she called Kim k Mom
that year, and then she explained what she meant by that.
And then in twenty seven teen, a game called Dream
Daddy came out, which I honestly like chuckled the whole
time I was reading the description. But basically, like you
(08:06):
can choose what kind of daddy you want to try
to date, Like there's a gop daddy. There's like do
we need to get this game where we have we
still have to do a game night with all of
those games that we talked about previously. Well, add that
to the time. Can you imagine I'm like blushing again
just thinking about it. Oh Man, New York Times named
(08:28):
twenty eighteen the Year of the Daddy. Okay, but I
mean there's a reason that I'm kind of blushing about it,
right because there is a sexualization around it and there
that has a longer history than what we're going to
cover in this podcast. But basically, researchers believe that that
(08:48):
stems from terms like daddy issues and from pop music
and kink communities. Um Alana Levinson dug into this whole
thing and wrote, it's easy to forget that term for all.
Tubiquity is also an actual sexual fetish. Using the term
daddy is like BDSM light and gives you the right
amount of semi role play without having to go the
(09:08):
leather root or engage in a full on immersive role play.
An anonymous twenty eight year old woman explains to me
in this context, daddy is a gateway to exploring the
dominant submissive dynamic, which doesn't always need to be overtly sexual.
It can be funny, playful, or just weird. And so
that whole thing can be traced back to at least
in the nineteen seventies. You can hear it in a
(09:29):
lot of porn and songs. I just recently rewatched X
It's in there, and throughout I keep getting that song
What's your Name? Who's Your Daddy? Stuck in my head?
Now it does usually it usually but not always implies
an age or maturity gap, or there's like the power
(09:50):
dynamic is very key throughout all of this. So this
history led to some claims that people using the term
is appropriating it. This was called daddy gate hashtag daddy gates.
I think it's twenty seventeen somewhere around there. But then
it was sort of agreed upon that a lot of
subcultures use daddy, I guess, but people were fighting about
it for a minute, and then from in Style, here's
(10:12):
a quote from my perspective as a homosexual male, use it.
The term daddy and gay culture where it's specifically popular,
boils down to your sexual preferences. Bottoms the label for
generally submissive types in bed if they're so inclined, call
their dominant partners labeled tops daddy. It outlines the power
dynamics of the sexual relationship and boils down to sex.
The article quoted Jack Halbert Stam, I hope I got
(10:35):
somewhere quotes on that, a professor of English and Gender
Studies at Columbia University and the author of several books
like In a Queer Time and Place, The Queer Art
of Failure, Female Masculinity and go Got Feminism, Sex, Gender,
and the End of Normal. And the quote is from
my perspective, it comes from black culture. I think that's
a pretty accurate origin story if you needed one. And
(10:56):
the article goes on to say Albert Stam explains that
terms mommy and daddy became sexualized in post slavery period
when black kinship was disoriented, and that is also forty
and so he said, unfortunately, we do still live in
this matrix of family relationships that are both taboo and eroticized,
and often eroticized precisely where a parent is absent rather
(11:18):
than where the parent is present. And that's really a
psychoanalytic way of thinking about it. It lingers from a
number of different sources. There is a lot more like
when I was doing this research, I was wow, I
guess I should have realized. But m Zaddy, on the
other hand, was coined in twenty sixteen after the Taie
Dollar Science song. And the difference is Zaddy is a
(11:40):
daddy with swag. I guess they're better dressed and just
loving you. He's talking about all these things with hip
hop lingo. Thank you, thank you. Sorry. I apologize that,
(12:04):
all right. So I do have my own theories that
I want to talk about, which is related to all
of this stuff. But and I am going to talk
specifically kind of about because I do love The Last
of Us. I do love Star Wars Mandalorian. I have
seen this in fan fiction so many times, so I'm
kind of like talking about that specifically, but I think
(12:25):
it can be relevant other categories as well. But I
think there's like the kind of dichotomy of you know that, Yeah,
like the antithesis of toxic masculinity, which I could debate
about that, but kind of the dichotomy of their gruff.
They're kind of closed off, and then you have somebody,
(12:47):
whether it is a young child or whether it is
a romantic person who kind of wears them down. I
guess like gets through their their shields are just through
pure stubbornness, is able to make a relationship or a
(13:08):
connection with this person. I think there's also a protection level,
like a feeling like oh, this person will protect you,
will protect this innocent person. I do think like if
you're going into the sexual realm, which again this is
about me talking about fan fiction, I think there's like
a giving up of control element and like this person
(13:30):
will protect you and I can be the submissive one
or whatever. It's usually because like I said, I feel
like I've said this on the podcast several times, but
I know I've said it to you too, Like usually
there's still even if it's two men, one of them
is more feminine, one of them is like the more
fem one's it's usually pretty physical too, like smaller, prettier.
(13:54):
I do think there's like conditioning going on of just
how we've all been raised in our society and what
we've been taught is like attractive, but it's also I
think sometimes it's just nice, like hell, here's the strong
dude who will protect me. I do think I've read
(14:14):
a lot of articles about the show The Last of Us,
specifically about like, oh, here we've got the dad jucks.
I love he's telling dad jucks. Oh he's got anxiety.
I can relate to the anxiety, like all of these things.
And yeah, there's certainly like they don't care about anybody,
but they care about you well, Like they're so tough,
(14:35):
but you're the one that they broke through and now
they can't styll do anything for you. You're the one
that made them like finally get in touch with their emotions.
I've made them cry. They're protective. Now they do anything,
but you kind of have to earn it. I read
that in a lot of places it's not unconditional, kind
(14:55):
of have to like really really earn it, and then
you can get them to stay, to stay see you.
So I would also say this is a bigger conversation
than I want to have right now. But often in
at least in the fan fiction space when this is
a romantic kind of thing that the daddy the other
(15:16):
person is kind of infantilizing a little a little are
like this more childlike are more like sense of wonder, curiosity, innocence.
So you've got this like world weary character who is
unwillingly drawn in as a protector for the more quote
like innocent, younger, smaller one. And that's kind of going
back to what we said, like it's like kind of
(15:40):
inherently a power dynamic thing. And also there usually is
some kind of like age or maturity gap something. It
is somebody who probably take care of you. They are
usually physically strong. They can usually like lift you up
and carret you know, it's super easy. I do think
there's some self esteem issues here, but that's also for
(16:01):
another time. I've talked about it before. I think we
talked about it in our Daddy issued episode, and it's
I think it's like going back to what a lot
of people said. I think it's like a safe way
to admit some attractions that we have are problematic, like
because it's that one way street right, like it's not
coming back at you, and there can be issues with
that as well as Padro Pascal. I said, like, please
(16:22):
stop asking me to do these things. But you know,
hopefully fingers cross. Ideally it's a one way street where
you can kind of express this attraction and nothing's going
to come of it, and it's a way to perhaps
address that. We know, oh, it's not great that I'm
attracted to this thing, but I do have something. I
(16:43):
the conditioning are what that has got me attracted to this.
And then I did want to touch on this very briefly,
and then I promise I'll stop for now. But I
saw another article that was like kind of jokingly about
how The Last of Us is a show about single
parenting and how people found that so attractive. And so
we've talked about before two like difference between how we
treat mothers and fathers entertainment but also real life, because
(17:07):
like if you think of like the dad Bob, that's
like a sexy thing. Whereas for women were like, why
didn't you lose the weight more quickly? We being the
whole society, not me. But they also talked about how
being a milf is something that happens in spite of
having kids, but being a dilf is because you have
(17:27):
kids and there's a lot of theories around that around
like is it where people who are attracted to delves
are looking for a man who will stay, you can
take care of kids, like all of those things from
Poorman Hub here's a statistic. Women are nineties six percent
more likely to search for dad and daddy compared to men.
They are perceived to emote more, whether they do or not,
(17:51):
and it's the kids that matter. One of the studies
I found, right, it's not the age because it was
kind of like bringing attractiveness and changing all these variables.
But they found it it was the kids, and they
postulated it was like a potential mating strategy like, oh,
he's fertile, you can take care of me, you can
take care of a kid. And it held true even
(18:12):
if the woman in question, the women in question didn't
want kids. I don't know. Um, it's a lot going on,
That's what I can say. Going on. There is, there is,
and I'm sure we'll have more to talk about with this.
Obviously there's a lot of pathways we could go. But
this like conversation is raging online right now, so well
(18:33):
you shall see what anything in with pimp Daddy, Yeah,
which is a whole school word, but I don't hear
as much anymore. Yeah, I briefly read about that, and
it sounds like that's kind of been because it gets
mixed up with sugar daddy, pimped addy, and like I
(18:55):
said at the top, some people use it as coercion
tactics in very very unhealthy relationships. So I think a
lot of people have kind of heard about that and
backed away, but I'm not sure. I didn't look into
it too much. M interesting, It is very interesting. Well, listeners,
if you've got any thoughts about this, I'm really sorry
(19:18):
that I probably made everybody cringe, but I was curious.
It was a fun moment. I'm sorry, but I would
love to hear from you about it. You can email
to stuff idio mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You
can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast, or
on Instagram and TikTok at Stuff I Ever Told You.
Thanks It's always too our super producer, Christina. Thank you, Christina,
(19:40):
and thanks to you for listening Stuff I Never Told
You protection I High Radio. For more podcast in my
Heart Radio, you can check out the High Radio Apple
podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Stefph.
I never told you production of iHeartRadio, and today we're
kind of we're We've decided we're going to kind of
swap back and forth on the Monday minis. Yeah, Samantha's
(00:25):
covering what I'm covering. Again. I think if you know us,
you'll probably be able to tell most of the time,
who did which one. Although I did talk more gaming
you did than you did, so it wasn't horror horror
based games, but you want gaming outside of just that.
But just saying I do I do, I do UM
And this this definitely is still going to remain one
(00:46):
of our newsier segments. And I actually think this is
pretty on topic. This is a we're weird, you know,
it's relevant. This is a whole thing. It's relevant right now.
It's a whole thing right now. I do want to
start by apologizing to the young folks. Apparently I shouldn't
even be saying this. Are talking about it? But here
where are we? Why shouldn't you be talking about it? Wait,
it's like a young internet sling right now and they
(01:08):
said a five over twenty. I shouldn't be saying it,
but here I am wait, I don't want you to
say it. If you're under twenty, that's creepy er. Well,
we're gonna talk about it. We are gonna talk about it. Okay,
So today we are talking about daddy specifically making me blush,
specifically the kind of internet daddy thing that's happened happening
(01:31):
right now. So I do want to say, like, no
kink shaming if you're consenting adults. Number One, we aren't
talking about daddy issues. You can see our past episode
on that. I think we're going to rerun that one
soon as a classic because it is related to this conversation.
We're not really talking about sugar daddies either. Also, it
does have a different meaning in the gay community and
(01:52):
in the kink community. We're going to talk about that
a little bit, but not too much. It can also
be a term of coercion. We're also not talking about
that too much. We're specifically talking about this internet phenomenon
that is really playing out right now. So we will
touch on those things, but that's not kind of the
topic at hand. But yeah, we are seeing it play
(02:14):
out right now, particularly with Page of uscal Yes, yes,
who's been called the Internet's Daddy. The Last of Us
is midway through at this point, I guess I should
say the date, Oh what is it? February twenty third,
twenty twenty three, and The Mandalorian season three is coming
out this Wednesday, so it's it's like, really, oh gosh,
(02:37):
it's really taken off. There's even an SNL skit with
Pascal and it about this whole thing, and we mentioned
some of the quotes he has around it. He said,
daddy is a state of mind. He said, I'm your cool,
slutty daddy. So he's very in on the joke, was
very very in on the joke. But we'll talk about
(02:57):
that more in a second. I do want to say
I got a slash date because I recently did that
whole Slash episode about why I read what I read
slash generally being two men together in fan fiction, Not always,
but generally. And I remember somebody said to me once
I would slash page off Pascal with anything, and then
I reached back out to her and I was like,
(03:17):
so why did you say that? Just curious. She's like,
because he's hot, So I didn't even say that. I mean,
sometimes maybe you just want to see ahead. Anyway, I'm
sure Oscar Isaac and he have been slashed plenty of
Oh yes, sound dirty the way I just said that.
I'm so sorry. Keep going, no, no, no, yeah, that's
about right. All right. So let's get into some definitions.
(03:41):
So from the Washington Post, the slang endearment, popular on
Twitter and Instagram, among other platforms, is usually meant to
communicate respect slash adoration to a male authority figure. This
isn't entirely family friendly, though the meme frequently has a
sexual tinge, and the article goes on the daddy has
precious little to do with dads. It's a commentary on
(04:03):
hero worship and power dynamics and sometimes a way of
reversing them. Here's Peyser writing in New York Magazine. So
this is a quote. Within the quote, a grown woman says, daddy,
with intention, self assurance and lots of cynicism, We claimed
daddy as our own, which allows us to gently mock
the patriarchal structures you're playing into. The daddy joke is
(04:23):
that we have control over the way we manifest Daddy,
that we could one day even become our own daddy.
WHOA And then so I found a whole article boxed
specifically about Pedro Pascal and this whole thing, and here's
a quote from that. Pedro Pascal didn't invent the concept
of daddy, nor will he be the last to embody it.
(04:46):
Daddies have always existed in our world. They're handsomely beautiful,
the type that comes with age, maybe to the point
of surprise their authority figures. They're effortlessly kind, but not
always nice, the antithesis of toxic masculinity, though their attractiveness
has often been tethered to an edible taboo, complexes and issues,
(05:07):
and daddies would never call typically themselves daddy first is
a title that is bestowed rather than self proclaimed, and
then continues on the fantasy of daddy now exists primarily
as a one way pursuit. Daddies are the object of affection,
and if a daddy is actively pursuing anyone, let alone
a recent high school graduate, they are no longer daddy.
(05:30):
So they were talking about that in terms of like
like Leonardo Dicapriody, you know who it was one of
the first daddies who Steve Carrell really yes, And I
tell you this is that whole like surprising thing. So
when he came out like not too long ago with
the beer the white hair, everybody was like, wait, what right?
(05:52):
And did the name daddy I mean, I mean daddy,
I mean daddy, that's a whole name. Duck video partially
was because of Steve Carrell rising, but like wait what right?
And he is he's the antithesis of that toxic masculinity,
so we know as of now, as of now, yeah,
I mean. And that's the interesting thing that they put
(06:12):
in there is like it's a one way street, like oh, yeah,
the daddy can't be attracted to the young girl calling
him daddy, then it's gross no longer daddy. Yeah. He's
been happily married to his wife for years and years.
We get to see her, you know, you know who
she is because she's been in all of his movies
and shows and they write together, and then that's one
of the appeals, like, oh my god, he's an amazing
(06:33):
person who stayed just because he stayed with Yeah, wife,
stay faithful as far as we know. That's part of it.
We're going to talk about that in a second. Yes, okay.
Another part of this is, as I said, Pascal is
in on the joke and represents a quote particular type
of hot and for him in particular, it also comes
with this portrayal of gruff, reluctant father figures. Recently, there's
(06:57):
been a lot of talk because after he was on
sn he made a joke about like his Mandalorian voice
being his bedroom voice, like a porno voice, and so
when he uses it, he feels really uncomfortable because so
he usually is a mask on, so like the helmet on,
so you don't see it. But now that he said that,
he's had to volease like this statement, like please stop
doing that. Stop asking me to do it, because now
(07:20):
everyone's like, do your porn voice. And that's when I
mentioned in our last Last of Buzz episode when I
said we need to talk about parasocial relationships. That's part
of because that's been a big conversation with him as well.
So I think we should revisit that, but for now.
This term in this context most likely emerged from teen
(07:45):
fan culture sometime around twenty fourteen. This was when Lord
I don't remember this at all, but brought a lot
of attention to it when she called Kim k Mom
that year, and then she explained what she meant by that.
And then in twenty seven teen, a game called Dream
Daddy came out, which I honestly like chuckled the whole
time I was reading the description. But basically, like you
(08:06):
can choose what kind of daddy you want to try
to date, Like there's a gop daddy. There's like do
we need to get this game where we have we
still have to do a game night with all of
those games that we talked about previously. Well, add that
to the time. Can you imagine I'm like blushing again
just thinking about it. Oh Man, New York Times named
(08:28):
twenty eighteen the Year of the Daddy. Okay, but I
mean there's a reason that I'm kind of blushing about it,
right because there is a sexualization around it and there
that has a longer history than what we're going to
cover in this podcast. But basically, researchers believe that that
(08:48):
stems from terms like daddy issues and from pop music
and kink communities. Um Alana Levinson dug into this whole
thing and wrote, it's easy to forget that term for all.
Tubiquity is also an actual sexual fetish. Using the term
daddy is like BDSM light and gives you the right
amount of semi role play without having to go the
(09:08):
leather root or engage in a full on immersive role play.
An anonymous twenty eight year old woman explains to me
in this context, daddy is a gateway to exploring the
dominant submissive dynamic, which doesn't always need to be overtly sexual.
It can be funny, playful, or just weird. And so
that whole thing can be traced back to at least
in the nineteen seventies. You can hear it in a
(09:29):
lot of porn and songs. I just recently rewatched X
It's in there, and throughout I keep getting that song
What's your Name? Who's Your Daddy? Stuck in my head?
Now it does usually it usually but not always implies
an age or maturity gap, or there's like the power
(09:50):
dynamic is very key throughout all of this. So this
history led to some claims that people using the term
is appropriating it. This was called daddy gate hashtag daddy gates.
I think it's twenty seventeen somewhere around there. But then
it was sort of agreed upon that a lot of
subcultures use daddy, I guess, but people were fighting about
it for a minute, and then from in Style, here's
(10:12):
a quote from my perspective as a homosexual male, use it.
The term daddy and gay culture where it's specifically popular,
boils down to your sexual preferences. Bottoms the label for
generally submissive types in bed if they're so inclined, call
their dominant partners labeled tops daddy. It outlines the power
dynamics of the sexual relationship and boils down to sex.
The article quoted Jack Halbert Stam, I hope I got
(10:35):
somewhere quotes on that, a professor of English and Gender
Studies at Columbia University and the author of several books
like In a Queer Time and Place, The Queer Art
of Failure, Female Masculinity and go Got Feminism, Sex, Gender,
and the End of Normal. And the quote is from
my perspective, it comes from black culture. I think that's
a pretty accurate origin story if you needed one. And
(10:56):
the article goes on to say Albert Stam explains that
terms mommy and daddy became sexualized in post slavery period
when black kinship was disoriented, and that is also forty
and so he said, unfortunately, we do still live in
this matrix of family relationships that are both taboo and eroticized,
and often eroticized precisely where a parent is absent rather
(11:18):
than where the parent is present. And that's really a
psychoanalytic way of thinking about it. It lingers from a
number of different sources. There is a lot more like
when I was doing this research, I was wow, I
guess I should have realized. But m Zaddy, on the
other hand, was coined in twenty sixteen after the Taie
Dollar Science song. And the difference is Zaddy is a
(11:40):
daddy with swag. I guess they're better dressed and just
loving you. He's talking about all these things with hip
hop lingo. Thank you, thank you. Sorry. I apologize that,
(12:04):
all right. So I do have my own theories that
I want to talk about, which is related to all
of this stuff. But and I am going to talk
specifically kind of about because I do love The Last
of Us. I do love Star Wars Mandalorian. I have
seen this in fan fiction so many times, so I'm
kind of like talking about that specifically, but I think
(12:25):
it can be relevant other categories as well. But I
think there's like the kind of dichotomy of you know that, Yeah,
like the antithesis of toxic masculinity, which I could debate
about that, but kind of the dichotomy of their gruff.
They're kind of closed off, and then you have somebody,
(12:47):
whether it is a young child or whether it is
a romantic person who kind of wears them down. I
guess like gets through their their shields are just through
pure stubbornness, is able to make a relationship or a
(13:08):
connection with this person. I think there's also a protection level,
like a feeling like oh, this person will protect you,
will protect this innocent person. I do think like if
you're going into the sexual realm, which again this is
about me talking about fan fiction, I think there's like
a giving up of control element and like this person
(13:30):
will protect you and I can be the submissive one
or whatever. It's usually because like I said, I feel
like I've said this on the podcast several times, but
I know I've said it to you too, Like usually
there's still even if it's two men, one of them
is more feminine, one of them is like the more
fem one's it's usually pretty physical too, like smaller, prettier.
(13:54):
I do think there's like conditioning going on of just
how we've all been raised in our society and what
we've been taught is like attractive, but it's also I
think sometimes it's just nice, like hell, here's the strong
dude who will protect me. I do think I've read
(14:14):
a lot of articles about the show The Last of Us,
specifically about like, oh, here we've got the dad jucks.
I love he's telling dad jucks. Oh he's got anxiety.
I can relate to the anxiety, like all of these things.
And yeah, there's certainly like they don't care about anybody,
but they care about you well, Like they're so tough,
(14:35):
but you're the one that they broke through and now
they can't styll do anything for you. You're the one
that made them like finally get in touch with their emotions.
I've made them cry. They're protective. Now they do anything,
but you kind of have to earn it. I read
that in a lot of places it's not unconditional, kind
(14:55):
of have to like really really earn it, and then
you can get them to stay, to stay see you.
So I would also say this is a bigger conversation
than I want to have right now. But often in
at least in the fan fiction space when this is
a romantic kind of thing that the daddy the other
(15:16):
person is kind of infantilizing a little a little are
like this more childlike are more like sense of wonder, curiosity, innocence.
So you've got this like world weary character who is
unwillingly drawn in as a protector for the more quote
like innocent, younger, smaller one. And that's kind of going
back to what we said, like it's like kind of
(15:40):
inherently a power dynamic thing. And also there usually is
some kind of like age or maturity gap something. It
is somebody who probably take care of you. They are
usually physically strong. They can usually like lift you up
and carret you know, it's super easy. I do think
there's some self esteem issues here, but that's also for
(16:01):
another time. I've talked about it before. I think we
talked about it in our Daddy issued episode, and it's
I think it's like going back to what a lot
of people said. I think it's like a safe way
to admit some attractions that we have are problematic, like
because it's that one way street right, like it's not
coming back at you, and there can be issues with
that as well as Padro Pascal. I said, like, please
(16:22):
stop asking me to do these things. But you know,
hopefully fingers cross. Ideally it's a one way street where
you can kind of express this attraction and nothing's going
to come of it, and it's a way to perhaps
address that. We know, oh, it's not great that I'm
attracted to this thing, but I do have something. I
(16:43):
the conditioning are what that has got me attracted to this.
And then I did want to touch on this very briefly,
and then I promise I'll stop for now. But I
saw another article that was like kind of jokingly about
how The Last of Us is a show about single
parenting and how people found that so attractive. And so
we've talked about before two like difference between how we
treat mothers and fathers entertainment but also real life, because
(17:07):
like if you think of like the dad Bob, that's
like a sexy thing. Whereas for women were like, why
didn't you lose the weight more quickly? We being the
whole society, not me. But they also talked about how
being a milf is something that happens in spite of
having kids, but being a dilf is because you have
(17:27):
kids and there's a lot of theories around that around
like is it where people who are attracted to delves
are looking for a man who will stay, you can
take care of kids, like all of those things from
Poorman Hub here's a statistic. Women are nineties six percent
more likely to search for dad and daddy compared to men.
They are perceived to emote more, whether they do or not,
(17:51):
and it's the kids that matter. One of the studies
I found, right, it's not the age because it was
kind of like bringing attractiveness and changing all these variables.
But they found it it was the kids, and they
postulated it was like a potential mating strategy like, oh,
he's fertile, you can take care of me, you can
take care of a kid. And it held true even
(18:12):
if the woman in question, the women in question didn't
want kids. I don't know. Um, it's a lot going on,
That's what I can say. Going on. There is, there is,
and I'm sure we'll have more to talk about with this.
Obviously there's a lot of pathways we could go. But
this like conversation is raging online right now, so well
(18:33):
you shall see what anything in with pimp Daddy, Yeah,
which is a whole school word, but I don't hear
as much anymore. Yeah, I briefly read about that, and
it sounds like that's kind of been because it gets
mixed up with sugar daddy, pimped addy, and like I
(18:55):
said at the top, some people use it as coercion
tactics in very very unhealthy relationships. So I think a
lot of people have kind of heard about that and
backed away, but I'm not sure. I didn't look into
it too much. M interesting, It is very interesting. Well, listeners,
if you've got any thoughts about this, I'm really sorry
(19:18):
that I probably made everybody cringe, but I was curious.
It was a fun moment. I'm sorry, but I would
love to hear from you about it. You can email
to stuff idio mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You
can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast, or
on Instagram and TikTok at Stuff I Ever Told You.
Thanks It's always too our super producer, Christina. Thank you, Christina,
(19:40):
and thanks to you for listening Stuff I Never Told
You protection I High Radio. For more podcast in my
Heart Radio, you can check out the High Radio Apple
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