How about, because flowers are girly (note that -y suffix!), and daddys and paddys are not?
These words become famous because they achieve exposure. It gets used in a popular book or play. A celebrity begins using it. Things like that. "Don't tas me, bro!"
Now I want a deep exegesis on the origin of the term "poofter."
--- On Sun, 3/1/09, Philip Pilkington <pilkingtonphil at gmail.com> wrote: I'm sorry, you're entitled to your opinion and everything, but that's simply not how language functions. That is an extremely primitive model of language which can only be applied to extremely primitive forms (like baby talk - in fact the structuralist Julia Kristeva put forward some interesting points on these primitive linguistic forms and their relationship to poetic language). And while I'm sure this dimunitive function may play a part in certain immediately chosen terms it cannot explain why this immediate term was chosen rather than that one - for example, why was "pansy" chosen rather than "daddy" or "paddy".