Part Three in a series of five. See also: Part One, Introduction and Part Two, Yin & Yang.
Kristen has been calling me “Daddy” in bed lately.
Since earlier this summer, really; I just haven’t written about it yet, because it feels so damn personal. Those who know me will probably laugh – I have had an aversion to this word for years, I’ve never liked it, I’ve often gotten into snippy arguments with friends because I didn’t understand it and kept pressing the point. “But how is it separated from incest play?” I would ask. For some, it’s not – which I can understand conceptually, hey, YKIOK, but incest is not one of my kinks. Not my thing – in fact, kind of turns me off.
But for some, “Daddy” is very different than incest play, and I think that is what I’ve been trying to sort out. (Perhaps my aversion to it was just covering up the heat, that has been there all along. Perhaps I had to just make sense of it, in order to figure out how it interplayed with me.)
I’ve known for a while that it’s something I wanted to play with. My personal fantasy life is filled with Daddy/girl scenarios, but until Kristen I haven’t had a lover to explore it with. I’m not sure exactly when it shifted for me, maybe a year or so ago. I remember talking to a girl on a first date, once, about how sometimes it feels like I’ve already exhausted my sexual possibilities and kinks, and would I ever find any more? She laughed. “Of course.” She was so certain, and in that moment I thought, Nobody has called me Daddy yet. Right. It terrified me, but I wanted to find out where it would take me. There is always more to explore.
I’ve brought up the concept to Kristen a few times in our near-eight month relationship, but she wasn’t so into it. The first time she had some very strong feelings about the term: “No. Absolutely not. I can’t imagine ever wanting to do that.”
“Alright,” I answered gently, “it’s not something I would pressure you into, of course. We have more than enough to play with, more than enough to keep our sex life rich and complicated and turned on and oh my god have I mentioned how hot you get me. I guess I just want you to know that it’s something I think about, something I would like to explore, someday.”
It came up again, we talked about it a little more, but it felt like a slightly sore point. I knew I wanted to play with it, and it was coming up in my mind more and more. She and I already had many, many of the elements in place. I often call her “my girl” or “little girl” or “pretty girl” or variations thereof while we fuck, which we both like. I sometimes order her around, command her, restrict her, reward her. We have done some age-related role play. She gets this little girl voice sometimes, which just slays me. I’m not sure I can explain it exactly; I really did feel like the dynamic was already there, that we were already playing with it, but the word for my role in this game was the only thing we hadn’t explored yet.
I think it was about then that I put up that post on What Do You Call Your Butch?, and got an overwhelming amount of responses revealing Daddy to be very common. This was, in part, to continue to open up the topic with Kristen, to explore it, to slowly get comfortable with it, if that was possible. I wasn’t particularly comfortable with it, either – I knew I was interested, but I wasn’t sure how it would really play out.
Well. Ahem. Turns out it plays quite well.
I wish I had notes on the night I brought it up again. “Sorry, I don’t mean to bring up a sticky subject again,” I said, and she said, “I think my thoughts have changed about this. I think I might like to try it. I might just say it, sometime.”
Oh reeeeally; well that is an interesting development. So I waited for it, unsure if she’d follow through but excited to see what happened. If it didn’t “just come up,” I figured I would mention it again, see if we could create a more intentional way to play with it. But it came up. Quickly, within a week or two. And it has stayed a part of our dirty talk ever since.
For a minute, she said she wanted to save it for special times. I pressed that a little: “It’s like fucking with a strap-on. It’s super hot and it’s what we both want, but the potency doesn’t get diminished by using it every time.”
And so it’s been coming out of us, in bed, a lot. Sometimes she says it, sometimes I prompt her when she doesn’t. Just thinking about how she says it, how she whispers it in my ear, how she begs, how she mutters it, makes me hard and wanting. It makes my eyes roll back, my knees weak. The first time she said it, I was inside her, thrusting, fucking, and came nearly immediately.
That it gets me going, gets me hot, is undeniable – but there’s something else, too, something new: it has put me squarely face to face with a new version of my own masculinity. Because it feels different, when she’s speaking of me that way, when she’s speaking to me in her little girl voice, when she’s calling me daddy and saying please and thank you and letting me inside her so deep and sweet, I feel different. My masculinity feels different. I feel protective, bigger, thicker, stronger, more solid, more calm, more capable, caretaking.
I have always hated the word “paternal” – too close to “patronizing” and “patriarchy,” both of which, as a life-long feminist, are both gendered and possibly The Root Of All Evil. But there is great strength and protection in masculinity sometimes, and if I can get beyond my internalized misandry in instances like this, it starts shining in beautiful ways. “Paternal” is perhaps the best way to describe the way this makes me feel.
There is a slight amount of discomfort being in a new, previously unoccupied space, but I love it here. I feel like I just sat back in something comfortable, just relaxed a little, just unclenched. Between us, it doesn’t seem related to incest play at all – it just feels like a word to call me, like “baby” is a word to call her. I don’t literally mean baby, like my child, my young infant, of course not. It’s a cute endearment, a quick, loving word that holds some power and gender dynamics – like “little girl,” too. And she doesn’t mean literally “Daddy,” she means a masculine, caretaking, chivalrous, sometimes stern, sometimes sadistic top, in-charge lover: me.
Part Four of My Evolving Masculinity series is coming soon, exploring the topic of Personal Crises.
Fantastic post! I love reading perspectives from the Daddy side of the dynamic, and I especially love the way you’ve described it as an evolution rather than something you arrived at somehow fully-formed. I have sometimes thought that there is a funny performance pressure in kink, that to be ‘into’ something is to assume that you already know all about it & all about what it does for you- I really like having narratives out there that acknowledge the learning & exploring part, especially from the top perspective. Feminist perspectives on Daddy/girl play: are like the cherry on top of delicious ice cream. Awesome, thank you.
I love hearing other queermos write about Daddy/girl or Daddy/boy dynamics. so fun, so important, and so misunderstood.
i have a sneaking feeling that it’s going to be a somewhat common theme @ my leather storytelling class in Boston this December :)
For my part, I just want to say WHEEEE! I love this series. It’s so exciting, and it hits on all these super-interesting things for which answers(more, really, opinions than answers) aren’t so easily found.
The idea of “Daddy” in bed is an idea that is fairly new and, at the moment, for me at least, silly. I think I got immediately that it wasn’t an incest-thing in this context, but I didn’t really understand how it would fit into a queer sex life. And on top of that it just struck me as, well, silly. I guess it’s a name that doesn’t really have a while lot of ‘energy’ around it for me.
And it was fascinating to see on a, I suppose, theoretical level, the power of a word in a sexual context.
Awesome, Mr. Sinclair.
Sinclair, I am so glad that you took the leap and put this out there. I’ve eagerly been waiting to read it b/c this is a very loaded subject for so many of us. Thank you for your thoughtful treatment of it and for giving me something to help personally take the sting out of that word. I just love reading your perspective and it makes me appreciate my paradigm as a femme bottom that much more when I get to see the inner workings of you in all your butch top-ness. Thank you.
again, you’ve succinctly put into words what we all go through in the whole “daddy” conundrum. well said!
I love the comparison to the word “baby” — so spot on.
Sinclair, awesome, awesome, awesome. I have also had some trouble with the use of Daddy, but now find it an amazing turn on. However, I haven’t yet mentioned it to my partner because I’m unsure what reaction I will get. Now I just may and use the baby comparison.
AWESOME! I’m in a domme/sub relationship with my bi fiance (who is kind of trans in that he feels female on the inside but may never be comfortable enough with being himself to express more than through crossdressing and in the safety of our relationship) and we call each other Daddy/baby.
It’s a title I both love and feel awkward with, but, of course, it’s a fairly new one. I definitely can feel the title and the role changing and shaping my behaviors and thoughts in dealing with my partner outside and in the bedroom. Generally, I think it’s a perfect expression of the concern and protection those seeking a “Daddy” are desiring as well as the firm but gentle mode of command I want to embody. So exciting to know that other women are also embracing the “Daddy” title! It’s always such a relief to find out that there really are other people similar to me somewhere in the world :)
Bra-fucking-vo. I said that I was looking forward to this piece, and it came through. Excellent work.
Hey Sinclair
This is not in any way meant as a judgemental comment, just an openhearted suggestion (that takes a lot of courage to write). I really enjoy your site. I’m also just beginning the process of recovering from memories of my father sexually abusing me as a child. I know this has nothing to do with your daddy/girl play, but it’s triggering nonetheless. Would you please consider putting a trigger warning on entries like this? It would really help me, and I know I’m not alone.
Thanks for your consideration. This has been a horrible time and struggle, but I don’t want to give up all the POSITIVE sexual things I enjoy, your blog being one.
Alli – I tried to email you directly, but it got returned. No judgment taken whatsoever, I appreciate the suggestion. It’s something I’ve discussed and thought a lot about in the past. I know the Daddy/girl stuff is complicated, and it’s a factor in trying to broach the subject, and I might be writing more about it in the future, so it’s good for me to consider responsible ways to write about it. I’ll keep thinking and possibly make some changes to the way I structure this work in the future. Thanks.
Beautiful. Insightful. Stunning. Thank you for writing this post. This story is so familiar and you put words to the complexity and struggle around the both the draw (umm HOT!) and the fear/discomfort so many of us feminists feel when embarking on this path. ahh but the rewards…
Also I wanted to say that when I read the first line of your post I actually thought (before reading the previous comment) that you were subtly tagging it. It seems you do that a lot.
Sinclair,
I identify so much with this post. In fact, I think pretty much everything that you’ve said here is exactly how this role developed for me in my relationship. Thanks for writing this.
-Jessie
I’ve struggled with this one word for so long. Why Daddy? Why not Master or Lord or any of the other dominant names? The best I could ever explain it is that Master and Lord, etc., have certain archetypes attached to them. So does Daddy. I love the Daddy archetype, I crave it. For me its because it stands for the Daddy I didn’t have (not the one I did have). That’s why Daddy/little girl is different than incest play for me. Incest play is about real daddiess and their real daughters. Daddy/little girl is about archetypal Daddies and archetypal little girls. I’m not sure that’s lucid, but there’s my attempt.
I’m so happy to be reading here!