Daddy training
OK so here we are going to share some blog posts on queer pertinent topics and issues from contributors of interest and guests - and we’ll publish some stuff ourselves - as we have a collective knowledge of 95 years - we may know what we are talking about - Anyway here’s a blog about training to be a DADDY!!
It’s a term used with more frequency today than ever before. What is a gay “daddy”, what makes someone a “daddy”, and what are the issues of being a “daddy” — physical, mental, and otherwise — in the gay community?
That’s the topic psychotherapist Matthew Dempsey, tackled in his latest video.
Wrote Dempsey in an intro to the clip: “Growing up gay, most of us didn’t have parents who shared that identity and could guide us through that experience as we stepped into adulthood. Enter the gay daddy. Whether for friendship or romance, we can easily find ourselves drawn to older gay men for answers we never got and always needed.”
In the new video (below), Dempsey is joined by a man he considers a “daddy,” his friend Eric Rutherford, who makes his living as a model with IMG.
“You’re kind of like ‘Daddy Goals’ for me,” said Dempsey, who added that people have started to call him a “daddy” because, he believes, of his gray hair and the fact he’s a therapist..
Rutherford, 51, said that when he was young he considered a daddy someone who was more built, had bigger stature, had presence, gray hair, and was a serious adults. And age had something to do with it as well. Today, Rutherford believes life experience and a level of maturity are bigger factors.
Dempsey said that young people seem to have specific ideas of what a daddy is: “When I think of daddy it’s like kind of looking up to somebody, somebody who has a little bit more life experience.”
Rutherford argued that the 36-year-old Dempsey is a “little young” to be considered a daddy, and said that he sometimes feels stereotyped as an older person: “Gray hair signifies old, unable to do certain things – so in my 40s it started to happen, and then now at 51, every now and then I’ll get a comment like, ‘hey grandpa.'”
Replied Dempsey: “What you’re saying about the ageist society we live in is true – that is a social reality, it is a youth-obsessed culture. And so anything that signifies aging, though there might be some perks or benefits in how people perceive that – overwhelmingly, it’s seen as a bad thing,” said Dempsey, praising Rutherford for “owning his age” and not tried to cover it up with Botox or hair color.
Rutherford came clean and admitted using Botox. “Absolutely. It’s not that I’m against it. I’m a proponent of doing things if you want to feel better about yourself. I think there’s a balance. You can’t hide behind it, because no matter what, you could have all this done, fixed. At the end of the day it’s still you.”
Added Dempsey: “If at the core you’re really wrestling with deeper seated things about not feeling good about who you are, if you just look to the exterior to be the thing that’s gonna fix that, it’s not gonna work.”
Dempsey then confessed to his insecurities about aging: “As I’ve gotten older I still maintain a positive perspective but I can feel some very human fears – is this the decline? I see it in my skin – my complexion doesn’t feel as taut as it used to.”