As it turns out, defining “Daddy-ness” isn’t any easier than explaining “Bear-ness.” But we all know what our own Dad looks like, right? Older, mature, masculine. Facial hair, bald/ing or shaved head, maybe. Gray/ing hair. Paunchy or stout or muscular, hairy in all the right places. But WTF?! — isn’t that the description for Bear? Didn't Daddy magazine start around the same time as Bear mag anyways? These masculine identity/marketing shifts get confusing sometimes …
I was maybe 33 years old when I realized I was rapidly becoming a Daddy. My beard always made me look older, but I always went for older men. Once I was topping a man ten years older who started calling me Daddy. “Daddy-who? Me?” He responded so strongly when I called him “boy” that I knew he wanted me to teach him to be Daddy’s good boy. Being Daddy in bed was definitely a hot and safer experience, and I wanted more.
I did a self-assessment while contemplating the experience of being called Daddy during the rest of my thirties. True, I had grown some gray hairs in my medium-brown beard. Sure, my head hair was thinning and my chest hair was thickening. Hair sprouted on my ears, shoulders, upper back, and ass. It dawned on me that I was now old enough to be perceived as someone’s daddy, even though I was well aware that technically I was capable of fathering children.
Daddy also connoted sexual dominance or aggression, but I had affairs and quick liaisons with numerous married-with-kids Daddybears who were big old bottoms, so I’ve always wondered, why aren’t Daddies always tops? What do you call a hairy masculine dom with versatile and kinky streaks who fantasized about big men and petite women? Could I be a Daddy and a Bear or Wolf, or were these separate identities? Can you make something up and just call yourself, say, a Daddymoose?
When I was 40 or so, I desired to actually father a child, and negotiated with a lesbian couple to be their sperm donor. The designated birth mother was about my age, and we were both aware that our fertility clocks were running out. It didn’t work out, but still the experience increased my personal sense of Daddyness, especially in the sense I had never before even considered being responsible for a child or another person.
I experienced the Daddyness that comes from witnessing my father die. In the five years I was caregiving for my father who had metastatic prostate cancer, there was a subtle transfer of parental roles, events that made it clear that I was assuming the responsibilities and roles of fathering my father – that was our relationship, a gay/bi leatherdaddy taking care of his father. That psychic exchange between us was completed when he passed and I remember absorbing some of the light I saw arising from my dad’s body as his spirit released.
Now in the mirror, I see a man whose physical maturity is undeniable. I maintain playfulness and versatility in my relationship with my life partner. We’re both daddybears and occasionally call each other that. I can even tell when our dogs are barking for our attention, Daddy! Daddy!
If you consider yourself a daddybear like me, you’re one of hundreds of thousands of other proud gay guys, along with bi bears, butch lesbians, and FTM transbears, daddies all. In all its expressions of masculinity, Daddyness is a honored stage of manhood, one gradation in a lifetime of masculine development, forever to be cherished by Daddylovers everywhere.
Let your Daddytude shine!
I'm still trying to figure
I'm still trying to figure out what I am. According to your description of a "daddy" I'm not even close except the age part. I'm 5'10", 158 lbs, blond/blue, 55 years old, in very good shape, no grey hair to speak of. Over the years only 3 guys have ever said to me "fuck me daddy" so what am I?
Apart from the physical
Apart from the physical characterstics that you described above, daddyness is about affection, care and love. A sense that he is more mature than you and the assurance that he has got ur back and you can still act silly around him and not be judged.
I have been a daddy for about
I have been a daddy for about 35 years... now at 61 I have an 18 yo lover, he doesn't want a daddy, he just wants a bear/cub..dom/sub relationship, I find it hard after all these years not to call him son. I don't know how to break an ingrained habit...he has issues with his deceased real father and a rather unpleasant step father, I don't want my instinct to be a daddy to cloud our new found happiness, what should I do
I am still bemused by what
I am still bemused by what makes a daddy a daddy, a cub a cub etc.
Can a 32yo, 5'5" 138lbs be Daddy/? is it more about maturity and responsibilty , (though i read somewhere that a more spiritual aspect of supportive, and caring" seems important).
Can an older, heaver/brusque, bottem not be a daddy?/Dad?
jr
I am of two minds on this
I am of two minds on this topic. I believe that 'Daddy' is an attitude not a physical description. Being a daddy entails a 'paternalness', and I think, dominance. There is, in my opinion, also a component of mentorship. That said, like 'bear', there do tend to be 'norms' or 'sterotypes' when it comes to a physical description of a daddy.
On the other hand, when thinking of 'daddy' in a physical way, not an 'attitude' way, I am always struck by what I see as 'confusion' on the part of many guys that wish to be 'boys' but who do everything they can to look like a 'daddy'. Facial hair, for example, that, as stated in the article above, makes one look older. So to me, it is completely antithetical for a 'boy' to grow facial hair. I've often heard, 'but without my facial hair, I look like a 12 year old". Well, in a community where 'older' guys tend to prefer 'younger' guys, wouldn't it make sense for a younger guy, to actually look like a younger guy? To me the same issue applies to older guys, who try so hard to look like the younger guys they 'admire'. If a hot, 22 year old skater boy, wants to date someone who dresses like a hot, 22 year old skater boy, he'll date one. Not some older guy, who dyes his hair and wear clothes that are way to 'young' for him.
It is funny how 'stiff' we often become in our ideas or opinions about what words like 'daddy' or 'boy' or 'bear' or 'cub' mean. Yet, isn't that the glory of a community like this? The ability to define for ourselves what these words mean, and use it to find someone whose definitions are complimentary to our own? For example, To me, there is no such thing as a 'bottom' daddy. "Daddy" entails dominance. But, since we can each define what these words and what these roles mean to ourselves, who am I to say my opinion is 'right'? Well, I think I am, but you know what I mean.
Thank you. i believe i align
Thank you.
i believe i align more with this view/approach. :) danka shoen
jon
I think a bottom can be
I think a bottom can be "dominant" for sure.
Certainly with respect to attitude anyway..... I'm a bottom and consider myself to be quite dominant in many ways, even though i may not be muscular/hairy.
just my two cents....
Hey, R. Jackson! Is the
Hey, R. Jackson!
Is the picture yourself? You look like a real hot DADDY! hehehe....
I think there is a clear
I think there is a clear distinction between the 'Daddy' & 'Bear' sub genre. Daddy is definitely an attitude where as Bear is more a body type. Put them both together i.e. person with a Daddy attitude and the physique of a bear and thats a double whammy.....I'm floored everytime I meet a guy like that! :-P
hello there i will kike to
hello there i will kike to meet daddy who is loving,caring .honest faithful and more for loving relationship and more where to get me cisiso25@yahoo.com
Yes, you can make up whatever
Yes, you can make up whatever label you want for yourself. That's the joy and freedom that comes with a postmodern existence! I'm a koala. I'm a big boy with a scruffy beard, and people call me a bear. . . but just like a koala I'm not really a bear. Just a great big boy! Now, if only I had my MonkeyBearDaddy. . .
Great article!
Great article!
I think, "Daddy" is an
I think, "Daddy" is an emotional part of the person, and much more important than physical conditions. And "Bear" is a physical condition. And together are a Super Special Unity.
BEARS: I just sugest to be care with your healt, and for the rest......YOU ARE WONDERFUL!!!
When I saw the HOT picture, I
When I saw the HOT picture, I had to read the blog....which I enjoyed. I agree that the "daddy" thing takes on two formats. One is the daddy/son persona used on the S&M lifestyle,etc. But, on the other hand sometimes, the daddy persona is just an older acting, nurturing guy who has "father" characteristics in the relationship.
Holy Daddy-ness I think I am
Holy Daddy-ness I think I am in love with you Mr R Jackson, I mean dad, I mean Sir....LOL
U R one gorgeous hunk of bear/dad whatever you want to call yourself.
Everyone makes great points
Everyone makes great points and they are all right. As a student of human behavior this is interesting for me.
Whatever label you put onto something, in the end it is what you make of it. I've been with my partner over ten years and we decided long ago to make of it what we want and what works for us. He's my Daddy/Bear. As others have stated, he's a bear in physique and a Daddy in attitude. Not to be confused with Sir or Master. He makes requests of me, such as "I'd like you to suck my dick," but he doesn't make demands like "Suck my dick, boy!" I'm nobody's slave - but some guys are slaves and have Daddy/Bear/Masters - and that's ok, too. Labels are just a quick way for us to identify ourselves and each other and to identify with a group. We all want to belong somewhere.
Labels don't have to be negative or a way to confine someone to a stereo-type but it gives us a starting point. I have a label of "boy" simply for lack of a better term. I'm in my forties and I'm also a Graduate student, I'm hardly a boy. Boy is an attitude, a demeanor, a way of letting someone know of our intentions and desires. I desire a more masculine, bigger, well endowed, dominant, and hairy man who understands himself, is confident, knows what he wants and is not afraid to ask for it. A Daddy/Bear is all those things to me.
I don't dress like I'm 22 because I'm not. I'm a guy for jeans and boots (work, cowboy, leather, etc). Not all Daddy's are looking for a boy in his twenties, that's a misconceptinon. Not all boys are in their twenties, in fact; most are not. "Boy" has nothing to do with age in my point of view.
Labels are a shorthand way of communicating. I'm a submissive/boy/cocksucker/bottom/size queen. Sometimes I'm all those things dressed in leather.
Nice to meet you!
I am myself a bi/lesbian
I am myself a bi/lesbian woman, from Europe, and I've been thinking a lot 'bout what distinguishes different cultures (National, but also hetero, gay, lesbian) ways of using the concept of Daddy/boi, Daddy/girl (or for that matter, Mommy/girl, Mommy/boi..). Thank you for giving me one interresting gay perspective.
I do believe Daddy-ness is a state of mind, not about your looks. None the less, I was a bit baffled when I found this thread at the butch-femme.com -community. It's about femme Daddies, and I think the thread alone prooves that we can't put Daddy-energy in to a box..
http://www.butch-femme.com/portal/forums/showthread.php?t=5478&highlight
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