When I first started publishing on Medium, it was mostly non-fiction, writing about writing and writing about erotica. Since they're behind the paywall, I'm going to update some of those essays and post them here from time to time.
I got together with my best bud last year at a
sidewalk table outside one of my favorite craft breweries in my little college
town. As we enjoyed a couple of good local IPAs (and, let’s be honest, the
scenery provided by the returning coeds walking by), he made a comment about
being at an age where we were invisible to young women.
I looked at my friend, who I love like the brother I never
had. He was wearing madras walking shorts, a faded college sports T-shirt and a
floppy Tilley hat to keep the sun off his exposed scalp and thought hey,
speak for yourself!
What I actually said was, “Dude, you dress like a Dad. Don’t
be a Dad — be a Daddy!”
Honestly, I’m not sure he really got me but if y’all are
reading this, I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about. Young women
with crushes on hot older men seems to be one of the flavors of the moment in
steamy storytelling (along with hot wives, which I’ll likely tackle in a later
essay).
I’ve written a few of these stories over the past year and I’ve
read a ton more. A quick check of Amazon’s erotica section, as well as perusing
the recommendations I get from Medium, indicates that it is indeed a hot
subject (yes, that pun was intentional).
I’m not a deep subject matter expert on hot Daddy erotica.
Let’s be honest, I’m probably not a deep subject matter expert on much of
anything beyond Lord of the Rings esoterica. But let’s break down what it looks
like from my perspective and maybe y’all can help me figure out why it’s
popular.
My overarching theory of written erotica is that sex is hot,
but taboos make it even hotter. Nothing ground-shattering there, but that forms
the basis of many of the sub-genres of sexy stuff. Age gap and exhibitionist
sex might be on the milder side while non-consensual sex or incest would be at
the extremes.
What I’m talking about here is a particular kind of age gap.
Younger women (I would guess generally from 18 to 24 years old) lusting after
(or being pursued) by men at least 15–20 years older. Does that sound about
right?
Sometimes the young woman is a vixen, chasing an older
crush. Sometimes she’s an innocent, being actively pursued by an older man, or
maybe he’s trying and failing to resist temptation. But there’s more here than
just the age gap.
The guys generally fall into two major categories, both of
them mythical Alpha Male tropes — the handsome billionaire and the rugged,
tattooed ex-military dude that smells like wood smoke. I suspect that a lot of
the billionaire alpha guy stories fall just as neatly into the light BDSM sub-genre
as Daddy porn (I honestly haven’t read much of it), so I’m going to focus
more on the tough guy stuff and why that might be popular.
But before I leave our Christian Grey wannabes, I’ve got to
point out that, according to Forbes, there were fewer than 750 billionaires in
the US in 2023. Some of them are women and I suspect that most of the rest look
more like Warren Buffet than Jamie Dornan. Just saying.
I’m going to insert my usual caveat here. I am not
kink-shaming anyone nor am I making light of any writer’s subject matter. I’m
trying to better understand what makes it interesting to people purely because
I enjoy writing. In particular, I enjoy taking established tropes and fucking
with them a little to produce something original. You have to understand the
rules in order to break them.
I’m going to tell on myself a little. When I was in college
back in the dark ages, my friends and I used to refer to sex as “the good
thing” — like, “hey, how was your date with Cathy? Did you do the good thing?”
Silly, but it went along with our view that there’s no such thing as bad pizza
or bad sex. They can be good, they can be great, they can be awe-inspiring, but
they’re never really bad.
In retrospect, I realize that it was my guy friends that
said that. Because, let’s be honest, while sex can in fact be bad for guys, for
the most part if we get off, we’re good. And a twenty-year-old guy can get off
on almost anything.
I’m going to go way out on a limb here and say that the
story is different for women. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m
pretty sure sex can be very bad for women (and that’s without getting into the
real physical dangers women face). I’ll also venture to guess that sex with
younger, inexperienced guys is often an occasion for disappointment and
frustration.
There is a vocal camp of young Alpha male wannabes on social
media that think they’ve got it all figured out. They’re sure they know “what
women want” and they know how basically to “program” them. Seriously gross. And
totally wrong. And likely dangerous.
Then there’s another group that has been told that they need
to listen to women, ask them what they want, ask them what feels good. But then
they proceed to play them like they would play a video game. So, If I
do a punch/jump/kick/punch combo here, she’ll cum and I’ll win! That, my
young Padawan, is not the way either.
I’ll assume that there are a huge number of young dudes that
don’t fit into either of these groups, but I'm guessing that there’s a lot
of frog-kissing needed to find those princes.
Given that, I can absolutely understand the appeal of an
older guy, one that is (hopefully) more mature emotionally and that has some
fucking experience (I mean that literally) that the boys closer to the woman’s
age likely don’t have. (There is of course the flip side of this — the
attraction that younger guys might have for a Mrs. Robinson that can teach them
without so much emotional risk but that’s an essay for another day.)
I think this gets to at least some of the appeal of younger
woman/older man age gap stories in general. But why the “Daddy” aspect?
Being a woman is a dangerous profession. It took me decades
to really understand that — to feel it in my bones. Even after some horrific
things happened to female acquaintances when I was younger, I didn’t get how
pervasive those dangers are and how much they affect the day to day lives of
every woman that is paying attention.
Way too often in real life, fathers are the perpetrators of
emotional and physical harm. But not Daddy. Daddy is safe. Daddy would never
hurt you, except when you want him to. Daddy might be calling you his “little
princess slut” while he’s pulling your hair back until your spine is a bow
while he rails you from behind, but that’s because that’s what you want him to
do.
Good Dads might punish their daughters for being bad, but
Daddy will punish you for being very, very good. And you’ll love every second
of it. Then they’ll hold you in their strong arms and call you their “good
girl” and you’ll feel all warm and gooey inside. Literally.
I think the Daddy fantasy gives the female character
permission to let go, and a safe environment in which to do it, which gets us
further into the light BDSM area which brings us back around to Christian Grey
types and now I’m questioning why I started down this rabbit hole. People are
complicated.
I’m not going to delve as deeply into the cishet male reader
interest in Daddy lit. I don’t think it’s particularly complicated. A lot of
guys start feeling old before their time, feel the weight of expectations (so
say we all), so the age gap thing is a way of feeling younger, and of chasing
something less complicated than the life of a typical 45-year-old.
In my limited reading, the Daddy stories told from the male
perspective are often dom fantasies and there’s also often a bit of noncon or
at least reluctance worked in. Or you get into the fauxcest/incest stuff, which
is definitely fodder for a whole ‘nother essay. But sometimes they're just good guys who meet the right woman and who the fuck should care if she's his daughter's age?
So here’s where y’all come in — it’s audience participation
time!! What did I get totally wrong? What did I miss? What turns you on
about Daddies (or about imagining that you are one)? Or what turns your stomach
and makes you avert your eyes?
If you want to check out an example of my own version of this, my "Bear and Cat" stories have been well-received. You can catch them on Medium and I've now posted them on Literotica (link below). Hope you enjoy!
Bear To The Rescue
