"Daddy"

I think the more flamboyant gay men had intense emotional bonds with their mothers and were oftentimes dominated by them. But as we grow up and our perception of gay men develops, we see that there is no specific 'wiring'.

Sometimes I write letters to Daddy.

His address is Heaven above.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard I'm through.

As to OP's question: My daddy was an adulterous, violent alcoholic. What boy would take that as a role model?

Being gay has absolutely nothing to do with how your parents behaved.

Getting comfortable with your sexuality is easier to achieve when an asshole father is out of the picture.

Don't conflate these, OP. You sound like an 80's school psychologist.

R4 I'm not suggesting anyone becomes gay because of a parent.....that IS what they used to tell us in the 80s, though! Crazy as it sounds.

This was the actual dynamics of my parents. I had a vey dominating mother and a father who never said anything.

Me too r6. However I have two brothers raised by the same parents who definitely are not gay.

If that were true, then I and every other woman with an erratic and withdrawing and critical father wouldn't be avoidant and distrusting toward men....

I fit the stereotype, but many gay men had great relationships with their dads, so...

My mother did make me her special confidante in her endless tirades against my dad, which further drove a wedge between us. But it didn't matter because I never liked him.

The over-involved mother and the distant father are classic archetypes, though; practically every straight person came from a home with that dynamic.

Both of my parents were absent.

My father was literally absent. And my mother more figuratively. At the end of the day, I never knew either.

What do I win?

And yet our relationships with our father are dramatically different, R7. I admire that my brother genuinely loved our father and misses him every day.

I don't know about Daddies but back in the day I made a lot of cocktails for all my uncles...

I also fit in with this. Father was away at sea for weeks on end and then only home for a few days. My mother was dominant which I suppose she had to be raising three young kids.

Wow, R14, same here. Alcoholic adulterous Merchant marine father constantly absent from the home, but when he was home briefly, he was mostly distant violent drunk angry disruptive etc. I'm the last of six kids all born within the span of a decade, my dad died of a heart attack at age 41 when I was 7 in 1971. My mother was, for all intents and purposes, a single parent throughout the marriage, doing her best to keep it together, she also worked at a local grocery store when my father was sporadically in jail or failed to send home the paycheck, it was a tumultuous time. My mother treated us kids all the same, love affection family time, but I feel like I was already gay regardless, born that way, and my 5 older siblings are all str8, we were all raised in the same circumstances, so go figure. Also, my father had much personal trauma from his childhood, I guess that's why he was the way he was, but when he died, all the disruption and violence finally stopped too, so I guess things happen for a reason.

It's going to be hilarious when we all die and go to heaven and it turns out that moms DID make everyone gay.

Funny because all of my male cousins were raised by their mothers but none of them are gay.

I was asking from a genuine point of curiosity. I don't think any one event or thing can make us gay. (Though three boys on my street all born within the same year all came out as gay, and I wonder if our moms were all on the pill!)

I feel like I was always neither quite with the boys or with the girls. As a kid I never felt comfortable with either, though I was more often playing with the girls.

I never *had* that experience of solidarity, or fraternity, with other guys. I was terrible at sports and whatever encouraged "bro" community, I just didn't ever understand it. I didn't have that sort of "Good job, champ!" encouragement from any male figure. I don't know if it would have made a difference or not.

I don't think I was ever looking "for daddy" with my partners/lovers, but something about an older man was always exciting and yet, comfortable too. Maturity made it so I could be vulnerable with a guy in a way I never felt I could do with someone my own age.

R17 same. Actually, most of my male cousins are annoying hipster pornsick status/self-obsessed Hetero douchebros, with dominating or controlling or disordered female partners just like their Moms.

The only cousin I have who isn’t like this has a chill granola Mom who does her own thing and a hypercritical Aspergic CEO-asshole father. He’s a relaxed jockish construction type who’s also kind of an off-grid hippie drifter, very cool nice personable kid (the only Gen Z I’ve met who’s like this).

Homosexuality is linked to genetic and environmental factors and usually is determined before the baby is born. Most children are raised by single mothers out-of-wedlock nowadays and even then, many still know their fathers to an extent. Most men are still heterosexual regardless.

Gay men like older men for the same reason many straight women do. It's not about "daddy issues" it's that older man are more attentive, intelligent, experienced, mature, patient and have more money and resources to take care of you. For a younger gay guy, it's not necessarily easy to find a boyfriend your own age or lose your gay virginity. The gay dating pool is very narrow. Many older gay men are also more receptive to younger men on dating apps ad are appreciative of them. Usually when an older guy says he'll be there, he will be there. Younger gays on apps are more fickle, shallow, immature, flakey and mean-spirited. Just my two cents.

r20 I'm not attracted to older men.

No one is saying every man with a dominant mother will grow up gay, but the majority of gay men I ve know had a dominant mother and absent father.

There has to be a link of some sort

It's not fashionable now, for whatever reason, to give any support to the mom explanation for being gay.

R20 is making a crap load of blanket statements.

[Quote] Most children are raised by single mothers out-of-wedlock nowadays

Source?

[Quote] Gay men like older men for the same reason many straight women do. It's not about "daddy issues" it's that older man are more attentive, intelligent, experienced, mature, patient and have more money and resources to take care of you.

First, not all gay men are attracted to older men.

I happen to be. And it's not at all because they have money or they are more patient or whatever BS this saying. I simply find it hot to be dominated by an older guy.

The whole thread reeks of low-level Freudian explanations.

As if genetic explanations are backed up by any evidence...

The word "Daddy" gives me a sexual tingle.

Three of my best friends are daddy chasers. All had a normal upbringing (as normal as one can have as a gay kid), and their fathers were present and even supportive. I don't really understand their taste. I do find some older guys hot sometimes, but I just don't get their obsession with the nursing home crowd.

Sexual attraction is affected by parents’ relationships for both straight and gay people.

Link below is for R24

Also never said all gay men liked older men. I was just explaining why some do and I find the reasoning has little to do with father or mother relationships and more to do with wanting an experienced and stable partner. Young guys are usually selfish and immature and not everyone wants that even other young guys.

Well moy Dad had moar toime for mey groaowin oop than moy Mom.

It wuz im who towld mey to gow to anootha football cloob sow the famlee cud av bettah seats at Wemblay Staydium. And moar munnay.

Oi down’t care whair oi play, thowgh. As longh as there’s a fyew good hord cocks in the dressing room, then oim happay. Ya get mey?

Dad doesn't look all that bad!

Mothers are generally dominant because of the traditional family roles that existed while you were growing up. People are born gay. Mothers would be dominant no matter what group you asked.

R30 give me the dad in that pic over the young guy every time.

I'm so tired of this "people are born gay" stuff. It's a slogan. There's no proof. More likely that we are all capable of responding sexually to men AND women, and society causes the rest. But the gay gene has not been found!!!!

R34 So are you in support of every child is bisexual and environmental factors influence heterosexuality or homosexuality?

Also genes turn on and off and are also influenced by environment. That's why hair color and eye color change. It's called epigenetics

R33 no argument here, one certainly must have issues turning down prime Miss Jacky Grealish for his pudgy midgety gremlin Da...

I think the Kinsey scale should get more use.

My dad was not inattentive... if anything, he actually spoiled us.

And yet I have a daddy kink.

There was a study that theorized that the more fertile a woman was the more likely she was to have gay sons especially if she had previous sons. So the hormones in the womb that fetuses are exposed to could play a role.

I preferred the company of women as a child, my father being a strong but detached person who didn't have a father around. He tried, but he was needful cold himself. I wasn't comfortable with him as a gay boy.

I also had a girl as a twin, and that confused things for me. I had some heterosexual/bisexual sexuality popping up at puberty, but invariably I processed all girls and women around my age as sisters.

I didn't want to have anything sexual or erotic to do with "sisters," and my proximity to them also told me I didn't want to be a target of all those games.

R30 seems to be under the mistaken impression that her posts are clever, or that someone wants to see them.

When Dataloungers try to phonetically do accents, it more often than not completely misses the mark.

See also: all the attempts to try and speak like Melania. Exactly *one* DLer was funny doing it - the one who had "her" talking about her 'poosey' and 'titys'.

Is R40 Aaron Carter? Because that’s essentially a descriptor of his family dynamic.

why can't people just be without playing the victim?

"...the majority of gay men I ve know had a dominant mother and absent father."

I think the majority of Americans who grew up in the 20th century had a dominant mother and absent father! That was just how family life worked, the dad went out and worked and was under no obligation to be involved with the kids, so the mother did the vast majority of child-rearing and the kids thought of her as dominating their lives, while the dad felt comparatively absent.

If you've ever managed to horn in on a straight men's discussion of their emotional issues, they'll all whine about absent fathers, lack of male role models, and how that impacted their self-esteem and feelings of manhood. Well, fathers were expected to be absent!

Oh Daddy