The Daddies

The Daddies is a love letter to masculinity, a kaleidoscope of its pleasures and horrors. The question "Who's your Daddy?" started showing up in mainstream cultural references during the 1990s. Those words can be spoken as a question, or a challenge, as a flirtation, a joke, or a threat. It's all about inflection, intention, and who's asking. Apparently, we have so much shared cultural meaning about "Daddy" the speakers and listeners can simply intuit meaning and proceed to laugh at the joke, or experience the shame, as appropriate. But who is Daddy in American culture? The Daddies aims to find out more than who - but how the process of knowing Daddy can prompt readers to know themselves and their society. This allegory about patriarchy unfolds as a kinky lesbian Daddy/girl love story. Daddy-ness is situated in all people, after all, and we each share responsibility for creating a fairer world. The Daddies can be used as a springboard for discussion in courses in sociology, gender and women's studies, cultural studies, sexuality studies and communication. As a work of fiction, The Daddies can also be enjoyed by general audiences.