178. On "Babygirl" and Female Submission

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Be warned, beloveds: Lots of sex talk here; hide the kiddies and the squeamish. Also! Due to some ghost in the machine, our last episode, “Meghan Daum on What We've Lost in the Los Angeles Wildfires,” may have included a paywall that we did not put there. It is free for all, and it’s fixed now.

No worries if you haven’t seen “Babygirl,” the erotic drama wherein a tightly wound CEO with an Instagram-perfect life (Nicole Kidman) gets down and dirty with a much younger male intern (Harris Dickinson). Sarah and Nancy are discussing a lot more than just a movie: The nature of female desire, why domination fantasies are so taboo, and whether masochism is threaded into the female sexual experience. (Sweeping generalizations alert!)

Also discussed:

* Nancy’s name makes a comeback and she can’t take it

* Consent does not line up with desire

* The thing about negging is …

* Don Draper, feminist icon?

* All hail Showgirls, the best-worst movie ever

* Nancy likes to wrestle

* The orgasm gap

* Why does a man buy a woman a steak?

* Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden

* Define “hypergamy”

Plus, Nancy picks an “obscure book” for her hotbox only to find it has 105,000 reviews on Amazon, a male companion robot that looks like Harry Dean Stanton, “Freedom for Scotland!” and much more

Are there heretofore unexperienced pleasures when you become a paid subscriber? One way to find out

We might be paywalling this episode, but we’re not monsters…