The Daddy Issue: A Real-Life 50 Shades

by Siouxsie Q March 12, 2014

“I want to believe that we are all a little more heroic than we are flawed, that the honorable role of ‘Daddy’ does exist. … Some people have prayer; they believe in God or a higher power. I believe in Daddy.” — Madison Young

One easy way to dismiss a woman’s experience is to say she has “daddy issues.” If that woman is in the sex industry or is sexually promiscuous, then she is assumed to be “looking for daddy.” Madison Young takes that cliché head-on and bravely deconstructs it in her new memoir, Daddy.

Young is a Bay Area-based porn star, director, and sex educator. We’ve worked together on and off over the years, and I’ve always been impressed by her hard work on both sides of the camera. Like me, she entered the sex industry for many reasons, but one of them was to fund her queer feminist art gallery, Femina Potens: a noble venture that she lovingly called “Anal for Art.”

“Four anal scenes paid the gallery rent, another four paid the deposit,” she writes. (Please note: These figures no longer apply in San Francisco. This was pre-Google Bus.)

The first film I did with Madison Young was a lesbian porn parody of 50 Shades of Grey in November 2012. I was an extra in the final scene in which the leading character is presented as a plaything to a group of masked women in lingerie. It was silly and meant to poke fun at the international bestseller that captivated the attention of mainstream readers, inspiring…