Episode Details

Malcolm and Simone have a thought-provoking discussion on the origins and psychology behind sexy nurse and teacher fetishes. They argue these tropes became popular because those were some of the only roles where men were expected to submit to women in a caring yet dominant context. This fulfilled an innate need for submission among many men that society doesn't provide outlets for. They trace how dominance displays evolved through sexuality due to evolution "borrowing code." The conversation covers daddy/daughter fetishes, male sexuality, confidence as the ultimate dominance signal, and more.

Simone: [00:00:00] Hey, Malcolm. Did you watch like Looney Tunes when you were a kid?

Malcolm: Yes, but you're not thinking of Looney Tunes.

Simone: No, I am. I think I'm thinking about like little scenes in which a Bugs Bunny dressed up like a sexy nurse.

Malcolm: Oh, you are. Oh, I was thinking of the sign. Hello nurse from Animaniacs.

Simone: Yeah, I mean, I think that it's interesting in like several generations of children's cartoons and we're talking about cartoons that probably like a huge segment of our viewers like have no exposure to, but like that in, in children's programming, there's this concept of a sexy nurse and it's like, wait a second, like you're putting up, you're putting a fetish In a kid's cartoon.

Simone: What is going on?

Malcolm: What is going on here? Where did this fetish? Well, I mean, the other one you have is like the disciplinarian teacher which is another or the nun,

Simone: the sexy nun, but there's this whole like, yeah, like Bugs Bunny is a sexy nurse. Other like this. This trope, I, it's interesting. Cause like when I saw this as a kid, I just assumed that like, [00:01:00] like nurses had special powers.

Simone: Like, I mean, cause I didn't like, how are you going to understand this as a kid? It's just the weirdest

Malcolm: thing. What's interesting is that this has been a part of human sexuality for a while. So in the Regency era, something developed that was called the English Vice. And it was a tendency, from the perspective of the French at least, that English people seem to disproportionately have a fetish around being spanked by people dressed as teachers and paddled with like these big paddle things.

Malcolm: And they believed that the reason for this was because that was the way kids were punished at the elite English schools, like, you know, Eaton or whatever. No, it turns out that's not really the way sexuality works. And we can get deeper into that. But what it shows is that this. Cluster of fetishes has existed for a long time.

Malcolm: And the question is why it seems very odd that fetishes would [00:02:00] cluster around specific professions. So what's happening here well, actually, sorry, before I get into why it is, I'm going to give another. Fetish that comes from the same region.

Malcolm: Why are daddy daughter little girl fetishes so common? AKA DDLG. DDLG, which is basically a fetish for girls where they like acting like the daughter of the guy that they are sleeping with and will Sort of infantilize themselves to an extent.

Simone: Again, something that shows up in popular media in for example, Gentleman Prefer Blondes with Marilyn Monroe, her character in that, in that movie with her primary love interest, she calls him daddy.

Simone: Like, yeah,

Malcolm: it's What's going on here? And it's all the same thing. And it all is unfortunately fairly simple.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm: It's that dominance and submission are a very important part of human sexuality. In fact, in