"Who's Your Daddy" and "Come to Papa" Origin from Prison?

Question

I heard that "Who's your daddy" and "come to papa" are prison rape relationship terms. Is this true?If so, should straight males be using it in public to tease females?

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]I heard that "Who's your daddy" and "come to papa" are prison rape relationship terms. Is this true?[/nq]
A regular AUE poster, experienced with prison life, should be along shortly. *** is the other area in which he claims expertise, so he'll surely want to contribute his two cents worth.
[nq:1]If so, should straight males be using it in public to tease females?[/nq]
Teasing of all sorts will always be around. You mustn't let it bother you. Return it with a joke if you don't feel like playing around that day.

Charles Riggs
Email address: chriggs¦at¦eircom¦dot¦net

Usenet · Answer

shena (Email Removed) wrote on 15 Dec 2003:
[nq:1]I heard that "Who's your daddy" and "come to papa" are prison rape relationship terms. Is this true? If so, should straight males be using it in public to tease females?[/nq]
If it is, it isn't common knowledge. If it is, these two expressions probably were taken from the everyday language of native anglophones not involved with prison rape. Just because an undesirable class of people (prison rapists) use language in a certain way doesn't mean that the rest of us are supposed to stop using it.
You ought to check out your source to verify that these are prison rape relationship terms. And not all the homosexual *** in prison is rape. That serial murderer in Chicago who murdered all those nurses (8, wasn't it?) in the mid 20th century was a happy cornhole, and there are pictures that demonstrate it.

Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I heard that "Who's your daddy" and "come to papa" are prison rape relationship terms. Is this true?[/nq]
I don't know. By the way, I'm not sure what you mean by "prison rape relationship terms", unless it's the same as "prison rape terms".
[nq:1]If so, should straight males be using it in public to tease females?[/nq]
If so, it depends on what you mean by "should". It certainly leaves the teaser open to comebacks like "Did you learn that from your cellmate?" Whether that's good or not depends on whether he prefers embarrassing women or bantering with them.
Since you say "straight males" (rather than "law-abiding males" or some such), you seem to be emphasizing sexual orientation. Here I don't see a problem. I imagine gays will always borrow terms from the straight majority. "Love", for example. I don't think you'd want straights to give up using every such word. In this case, "come to papa" has a long heterosexual history, dating back to at least 1928 in the Gershwins' "Embraceable You". (Thanks to
for the date.)
As for its being criminal slang (if it is), whether men should use that or not depends on what's natural to them and what kind of image they want to project. Other people will react accordingly.

As for the allusion to rape (if there is one), see above. You might say men shouldn't, in the moral sense, tease women with allusions to rape. I might go along if the situation includes some real possibility of a threat.

Jerry Friedman

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]In this case, "come to papa" has a long heterosexual history, dating back to at least 1928 in the Gershwins' "Embraceable You". (Thanks to for the date.)[/nq]
Not to mention the non-sexual use when said when raking in the pot in a poker game.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]... Just because an undesirable class of people (prison rapists) use language in a certain way doesn't mean that the rest of us are supposed to stop using it.[/nq]
Why not? That's exactly what happened to many other words, such as "gay", "queen" and "***". Even the humble "******" has been replaced with "meat loaf in gravy", just because the US have changed the commonly accepted meaning of the word "******". And just how many girls have been named "*****" in the last 50 years? The Brits have killed that nice name, well-and-truly!
BR MOTU

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and I have permission from my wife to be so\ filted:
[nq:1]Why not? That's exactly what happened to many other words, such as "gay", "queen" and "***". Even the humble "******" ... how many girls have been named "*****" in the last 50 years? The Brits have killed that nice name, well-and-truly![/nq]
Wonder how long it'll take before the Otis Spunkmeyer baking company is forced to change its name..r

"Who's Your Daddy" and "Come to Papa" Origin from Prison?

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