If someone tries to tell me that Ryan Gosling isn’t a daddy they can straight up just walk out of my life. It’s the ultimate form of flattery and compliment. You would never call a second-rate guy with a Boris Johnson bod your ‘daddy’. You save that term for the cream of the crop. You save it for the hottest of the hot. Or maybe you’ll call any guy daddy. Who knows? I’m not here to judge. You do you, honey. But what I am here for is to see just why we use this term of endearment. What is it about calling the men we lust after by a word we associate with parents and patriarchy? Is it as problematic as some might suggest?

So where exactly does the term come from? Some believe it’s the product of a daddy-issue mentality. Some people may have had a lack of a father-figure in their life and, as such, they decided to fill the void by fucking some hot older man. But that doesn’t explain why, for example, I, a gay man who has a great relationship with his dad, still call hot men ‘daddy’. Reducing the phenomenon to simply searching for a replacement for our dads (or lack thereof) seems lazy. Calling your best friend your ‘bro’ isn’t due to a lack of a fraternal experience in your life, it’s due to your friendship being at such a depth of love that it’s almost like the love you feel for your family. Could this be similar with the men we call daddy? Do we subconsciously call them daddy, in a way, to recognise the strong love we feel for a man? If so, that’s probably a bit creepy. Others believe the term comes from gay sex. People who bottom tend to traditionally be submissive in the bedroom, and the people who top would take on the more ‘dominant’ role. In this case, the dominant top is seen as a strong character – almost patriarchal – so we would call him daddy, as he roots us from behind. And then, of course, you have the straight girls trailing behind, culturally appropriating everything we gays say and do, picking up the term to use it in their own sex lives. It’s hard to know exactly where the term originated from, but we all know Freud is having the time of his afterlife in Hell watching us live out his Oedipus complex realness. Maybe we do all want to fuck our dads, but since that’s illegal, we replace it by creating makeshift fathers? Honestly, I hope not, cause that’s hella messed up.

Regardless of where the term came from, the real question is whether it’s problematic or not? Well, on one hand, it can create a bit of an issue within the family unit. Picture this: it’s 2025, your family is having Thanksgiving dinner – you’re not even American – and you bring your new fella to dinner so he can meet your parents. You blurt out “Daddy, could you pass me the wine, please?” Your dad reaches for the wine bottle. Your boyfriend reaches for it, too. There are looks of fear across the dinner table. Your little sister screams out in terror. Your mother has rammed her head inside the turkey’s backside. You’ve climbed onto the table and downed the entire bottle of wine. The Christmas season has been ruined. But on the other hand, calling your boyfriend/boy-toy/fuckbuddy/etc. ‘daddy’ really isn’t that problematic at all. All in all, it’s just a word. Who cares if you also use it to refer to your father? No one has ever batted an eyelid at the fact that straight men from the early 2000s regularly referred to women as ‘hot mamas’ – cringe. Nor has society thought it was problematic that men have been encouraged to find women ‘like their mothers’ for centuries. Yet if anyone refers to their male partners as ‘daddy’ we consider it messed up and weird. At the end of the day, shouldn’t we all be entitled to call our loved ones by whatever name we want?

So the next time you find yourself embraced by your man, and he’s making you feel better than Taylor Swift every time someone breaks up with her and she can write another smash album, feel free to call him daddy. Relish in that dominant embrace. Love yourself and do what makes you happy. We support you, boo. Maybe just call your actual father ‘dad’ to save your family a world of shame.