Hello Nurse! Why Do Children's Shows Treat Nurses As Sexy?

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 our studies in women, they are the dominant [00:03:00] factor in human sexuality. The field of sexuality, we argue, had been invented by women.

Malcolm: Like if the early researchers had been women and not men. We may, instead of the primary access of sexuality being predominant attraction to male or females, the, the primary access of sexuality would be predominant attraction to submission or dominance. Because in women, that matters more. To the average woman, obviously this isn't true for all women, but to the average woman submission arousal.

Malcolm: than the gender of the person they're engaging with and specifically gendered features. So they might, like, psychologically care about the gender, but they would be more turned on by submission or dominance than they would be by seeing either the naked female or male form which is really fascinating.

Malcolm: So it's a very, very big part, but also for males it's a big part of sexuality. The

Simone: problem we have Yeah, I have this right, I remember it correctly. More men would prefer to be submissive than [00:04:00] dominant. And of course, like, men who are city dwellers are more likely to tend toward submissive, and men who are, who grew up in rural environments are more likely to tend toward dominance.

Simone: But still, even more men than women would prefer

Malcolm: to take a submissive role. No, not more men than women. Women prefer to

Simone: be submissive. No, no, I mean, sorry but more, more men... So basically, like, it's something like more than 50% of men. I think that might be

Malcolm: But I'd have to go to the book again. Yeah.

Malcolm: But the number of men who prefer to be submissive is large. Yeah, like, surprisingly,

Simone: like, we would expect most women to prefer dominance, but we wouldn't expect most men to prefer dominance. But I, I, I'm pretty sure, because I looked at this fairly recently, Yeah, well,

Malcolm: so we can talk about why that's the case, right?

Malcolm: Why did dominance evolve as a thing that mattered at all? It, it, it, it was because evolution is a cheap programmer and it borrows other things. So, when humans were evolving, if you look at other social mammals. They often use sexual displays where the more submissive gender display is used [00:05:00] to signal submission within intergroup conflicts or intergroup dominance things.

Malcolm: So this would be like a dog showing it's submissive to another dog by presenting it. Whether it's male or female, right? And the reason I made clear that it matters what gender is in control of that society is spotted hyenas where females are dominant but also have a pseudo penis. You get into that an erection is a sign of submission.

Malcolm: And, and this is because evolution when it's looking for, it's like, Oh, I need a system to signal to other people of my tribe, right? That I am submissive or dominant to them. It's just going to borrow pre existing code. It's basically going to Substack and looking for pre existing code. And one of the code types that makes the most natural sense to use is the sexuality system.

Malcolm: Because it's already there most things. Now, I've got to explain a little bit how evolution works for people to understand why it would do this. Evolution is going to pull on, you know, [00:06:00] slight mutations that might happen within an individual that can then sort of cause positive feedback loops. And a slight mutation is much more likely to happen within a pre existing system than with a entirely new system.

Malcolm: So almost every time. Communal mammals have developed intergroup dominance displays. It has been through utilizing the sexuality system. And males if you look at the social structure of early humans only one male was often in charge of the pack males. The majority of males needed to learn to be submissive to one male and.

Malcolm: dominant to other other males and, and females. But submissiveness needed to be part of male, this, this system that most males had from the beginning. Now there are some males that just will not. Engage with submissiveness at all. But these males would be closer to males in the stage of life was in like great apes that we would call the roaming bachelor [00:07:00] phase which are basically like teenage males who get kicked out of groups.

Malcolm: And they'll form like a group of other males. And they will go around looking for a new community or like a community to raid and take over as the new sort of male leaders of that community. It is ironically not a sign of success. And then you have the one alpha male in groups. But that alpha male is not the way that alpha males sort of depict themselves.

Malcolm: You know, first of all, alpha as a concept was first defined in wolves. Alphas don't really exist within wolves in the way that the initial studies show they did. However, it turns out that alphas... Like, there is a male at the top of most chimpanzee hierarchies not bonobos exactly. They have females at the top, but they're really horrifying, and we'll get into a bonobo.

Malcolm: Like, people are like, oh, if women were in charge a behavior that is seen in bonobos where, where women are at the top of the hierarchy is like a woman will take the infant of another woman and like, hold it [00:08:00] like, I will break its neck if you don't go down on me. And, and use the infant's life to, to force this other woman to sexually satisfy her.

Malcolm: They're horrifying. They're horrifying. If women were in charge, things would not be better. Anyway we know this from nature. But anyway, so, it, it, it, it, The point being is that the actual dominant male is often what we call like the Matt the the astronaut Mike Dexter Archetype and not the Chad archetype, which is to say they are the type of guy who's captain of the football team But also really nice and a bro and like helps you out because in human social groups and in Chimpanzee social groups.

Malcolm: The way you become dominant is by building an alliance of other mostly dominant males who are still okay with taking orders from one male. Anyway, but the way this expresses in sexuality is what this means is that for a lot of males, you're going to have this submissive aspect to their sexuality.

Malcolm: I mean, the vast majority of human males throughout history were in the bottom 50% of the local social status hierarchy. And if they acted like [00:09:00] they were in the top percent, Okay. when they obviously weren't, they'd be killed. So it makes sense that you get that. But anyway, what does this have to do with nurses?

Malcolm: What does this have to do with teachers? What does this have to do with, right?

Simone: Well, I think what, yeah, what's interesting about those characters in particular is, is these are some of the few areas, especially for men, because like, again, it's, it's not typically the sexy male teacher. That's like women are hot for, I mean, sometimes.

Simone: But usually it's more like a very high power, like rich, whatever, man, you know, like a Prince or a whatever. So why nurses and why teachers for men? And I think that's because it's one of those few areas where there's a societally condoned place where men. where all men are expected to surrender their agency to a certain extent.

Simone: Like when you're going under anesthesia, like you are losing control of every, like almost everything, you know, your mind included and yet it's necessary and okay. And no one's going to judge you negatively because of that. So it's one of the few places where you can even still [00:10:00] see yourself as like a kind of dominant male and, and a desirable male but still totally surrender in a way that's super satisfying.

Malcolm: So what? Yeah. And what's really interesting is we and our society do not have healthy understandings of what dominance actually looks like when we think about dominance in a broad sense outside of social roles. We often think of it as violence as putting someone down. As you know, we've mentioned Andrew Tate in a few videos, the way that Andrew Tate treats women, right?

Malcolm: That is not the way teachers treat their students. And that is not the way nurses treat their

Simone: patients. Yeah, no, it's, it's a caring, it's well, typically it's a caring, if maybe sometimes stern or

Malcolm: controlling. The type of dominance that most men and women now, now they're not mostly women, but there's actually a lot of women who like really violent dominance and we'll get to that.

Malcolm: That's a different thing. But people who want, like, caring dominance, like the type of dominance you would have in a natural status hierarchy is one that we have very few social [00:11:00] contexts for. Nurses and teachers for males are often the only social roles where they have been systemically and with social permission.

Malcolm: Submissive to a female and that's why they move towards that same as women and daddy daughter stuff Yeah, you really blew

Simone: my mind with this like I really admire you for pointing this out because I just didn't I didn't get it like From like I think you know incest For most people, like, really raises hackles, right?

Simone: So, like, this dynamic at first seems like it just doesn't make sense, because while incest does arouse, like, a lot of people, we think it's more of a, like, disgust reaction that's been inverted, right? Whereas, like, this is way more popular than that. But what I really admire about what you had explained to me on this is that this is one of the few...

Simone: Loving but dominant relationships that most women will be exposed to. So, most women will have had a father figure in [00:12:00] their lives who was very much the dominant character but who cared about them, who taught them things, who took care of them, and who really made them feel safe and supported. And, and so I can get why that has, has become sort of like a very popular de facto dynamic, or like, sexual, like role play interest.

Malcolm: Well, and, and, and the other place where you see in women this, this unusual like, like a weird role that you keep seeing recurring in fetish communities is like being a dog or being a pony, like puppy play or and what's going on there. That's another of the very few examples we have in our society of caring, protective dominance.

Malcolm: And so when they are trying to get in the mindset of, I am a thing that has this caring, protective, dominant entity out there, like, protecting me. What is that thing like there? There's just not that many social roles they can model. They've got like [00:13:00] pony puppy daughter, right? And this is to a large part of the fault of our society.

Malcolm: Like if we had a healthier society wouldn't be like, Oh, that's the way a husband treats her wife. I want to be a trad wife, right? Yet. You know, when we think about trad wives, I think a lot of people, their evoked set is often more around this kind of degrading submission. Closer to like the, the French maid archetype, which is again about a form of degrading submission, which a lot of people do like.

Malcolm: So, women who like, and this is another thing that we talked about, a lot of women also like really degrading submission, right? Which comes from a likely different sort of evolutionary pathway, which is. Women who fought back when their communities were being raided because remember I mentioned these roaming bachelor situations, it appears throughout history and in the Pragmatist Guide to Sexuality, we go into a lot of data for this that human tribes likely had outside groups of males [00:14:00] come into them, kill the males and take the females either to expand one existing tribal group or in this sort of roving male scenario, similar to what happened to chimp sometimes.

Malcolm: And when this happened, the women who fought back, who were not able to find any sort of like pre programmed biological reason. To not fight back died at disproportionate rates which led some women, but, but a lot more than most people would suspect there's this great book that shows violent porn searches are actually coming from women.

Malcolm: It's called Google, so I'll, I'll put up the name of the book on the screen and for YouTube. But yeah, it's, it's absolutely, I think, shocking to a lot of people, but it makes evolutionary sense that that would happen. And there was this great study that we mentioned in the pragmatist guide to sexuality, that showed a really interesting thing, which is when you are playing a competitive game and it looks like your team is losing males begin to feel more camaraderie with their teammates.

Malcolm: [00:15:00] Whereas women begin to feel more camaraderie with the opposing team. And that makes immediate sentence from like an evolutionary perspective. Of course, the males really have to double down in that moment and the women are going to survive at a higher rate if they switch sides, which is, I think, really, really just a fascinating phenomenon.

Malcolm: And some men online, like they use this to. Sort of degrade women to be like, you can't really trust.

Simone: Right. Because they'll bandy and bend in you as soon as you're like on your back foot. That's also

Malcolm: Wrong. Because you know, if I have like five or six kids with Simone and she's like 35, 40, she's not going to have more kids.

Malcolm: So even from an evolutionary perspective, the pressure would have been on supporting her community. And what does the mean? Submissive and breedable. This is like a meme these days where you're looking for submissive, breedable, I don't know wives or femboys or something like that. I'll find some quotes about this.

Malcolm: I don't know where it [00:16:00] comes from, but I thought it's a very interesting we might do a whole episode on that. That'd be a good episode.

Simone: Yeah, because I have not heard of this and I don't really know what it means. But I did want to ask you sort of in the context of sexy nurses and sexy teachers, right?

Simone: Like the, well, the DDLG. And like genre, essentially, these are all nurturing, caring relationships. And you, you just discussed the non caring relationships that women are sometimes interested in from like a sexual scenario standpoint, that they find it arousing. They don't necessarily, usually they don't endorse it.

Simone: And they certainly don't morally support it. And that's a really important distinction that we make. What turns you on is not what you think is morally good or Or what you want to happen to you. Exactly. So like A lot of people are turned on by non consensual intercourse. That does not mean that they want it to happen to them.

Simone: They support it, that they think it's okay. So just to make that really clear. But then, so you have dominatrices, I guess that's the plural for a dominatrix. These are not so [00:17:00] nurturing archetypes, right? What do you think is going on there with men who are, you know, supposedly into Ha, like to dominatrices.

Simone: I'm probably butchering

Malcolm: this.

Malcolm: Okay. So let's talk about dominatrices. So these fall outside of my model.

Malcolm: So I actually think. That every human different humans have different parts of their sexuality, has sort of two sexual representations within, inside them, and this isn't something we often talk about. One is a long term partner based sexuality, and the other is a rating tribal mechanic sexuality. By that, what I mean is the sexual optimization in males that would cause you to be successful with a long term partner, i.

Malcolm: e. have lots of offspring. It's possible for that to coexist with a separate sexuality, which is optimized around non consensually taking as many people as possible when you raid a village or conquer a city. Same with women, you know, they can have these two systems operating [00:18:00] within them. One, that's like, the way that their sexuality expresses when they're with.

Malcolm: Their long term partner and another when there was a guy that they don't really know or pornography or something like that, which might be much more brutal and hardcore because those are the environments where they were most likely to encounter individuals like that in a historic context. Now, dominatrixes, I think, are just for masturbating the emotional set in guys who really want.

Malcolm: Just sort of pure social domination and and to an extent sexuality can even be removed from these. And this thing comes back to the initial theory I had here, which is that the reason why these dominant submission systems were chosen was specifically for intergroup. Dominance displays, and so what you're getting with a dominatrix is sort of a kabuki theater of dominance displays happening over and over again.

Malcolm: Think of it like a gorilla signaling to another gorilla over and over and over again, [00:19:00] I'm stronger than you, but he's actually doing it to like himself in a mirror. Like, he doesn't, you know, he's totally outside of his evolutionary context. That's what's happening with that. One of the things that we were really interested in when we wrote our book, Is what causes males to sort into these different types of sexuality?

Malcolm: Is it something that happens to them before puberty? Is it like their family background? Like if they grow up thinking they're from a powerful family, they're more likely to be dominant. Is it like, we're going through all sorts of things trying to figure it out. , it turns out it's actually what would be most evolutionarily advantageous, which is as an adult, the amount of power you think you have typically correlates with.

Malcolm: What you want in the bedroom. So men who feel more powerful in their careers, in their lives are typically more turned on by being dominant themselves. Whereas men that feel more disempowered are more turned on by taking on submissive roles. And actually the same is true for women, women who [00:20:00] feel they have more control of their lives are more turned on by being dominant themselves.

Malcolm: But what's also interesting is these men who have more power and are more turned on by being dominant. Actually get more arousal for being dominant to somebody else who wants to be dominant.

Simone: And I think this, this is, we're not the only ones to say, and you found this in your research findings, which I think is helpful, but also there, there are many other people who've said, yeah, like this concept that like super high powered men want to surrender in the bedroom.

Simone: It's just not that common, right?

Malcolm: It's not, it's not backed by the data. Yeah, it is. It is. An interesting outlier that sometimes exists in our society, except what I find very interesting is that when people point to men who are actually doing this in the real world, they're usually like powerful, but government bureaucrats which actually means that they're submissive to somebody else in their daily life, even though they may be thought of as high status within society.

Malcolm: Which isn't, isn't the same. And then they wouldn't make sense why they're, they're interested in this sort of [00:21:00] thing, because they do feel very disempowered in their daily lives. It is not you know, as much something you see was like tech CEOs and stuff like that. And again, you and I know many tech CEOs that date, we've written books on sexuality.

Malcolm: We've talked to them. Most of them are, they're male, incredibly dominant. And if they're female, incredibly dominant. That's another interesting thing that as women become wealthier, they sort of, act more masculine. But wealthy men seem to prefer that. Yeah. So there you go. Which is interesting.

Malcolm: Well, well, it makes sense if, if their thing is dominating the dominant. If that seems to be like wealthy sexuality, now keep in mind, sexuality doesn't change that much as an adult, but it, but it seems to change a little, like here we're talking about maybe like a 20% change or 30% change depending on an individual's wealth, not and, and perceived power.

Malcolm: Now it's not actual wealth. That's just what we were using to measure as a proxy perceived power. But we also did perceive power. It was in the study and they both correlated really well. We couldn't find out which correlated better. So [00:22:00] it's, it doesn't matter, but interesting. Well, Simone, do you have any more thoughts on this?

Simone: I just find myself wondering, you know, as society shifts, what the new tropes are going to be, right? Like, as you were saying, it wasn't until, you say, the Regency era that the school teacher meme, and that's sort of like really the beginning of the industrial school system. So that makes sense. And then, you know, as nurses starting to say, I'm...

Simone: And of course, I think nuns for an even longer time, of course, fell into this trope. So like, what is the next version? And I don't know, like, I think our society is moving toward a sort of post gender world. So maybe it's just going to stay like in the medical profession and just, I think the bigger

Malcolm: change you're going to have is more and more people are going to want to be submissive.

Malcolm: More and more men are feeling disempowered and are going to take on this submissive role within their sexuality. Yeah. But an interesting differentiator we've had was that. Recently is if you're looking at what's being broadcasted like from the [00:23:00] rooftops is male, status is determined by how dominant you are sexually.

Malcolm: Mm-hmm. . So I think that , a lot of these men who are really disempowered and thus more likely to fall towards this submissive side of male sexuality where they're turned on by acting submissive they gain the perception from social media that male status is determined by how dominant they prefer being in sexual situations and therefore present it.

Malcolm: And act in terms of building their own self narratives more sexually dominant than they really are and that they can really maximize their personal gratification off of that may be useful in, in getting, you know, satisfying a female partner, but it is sad that we might be entering that world where.

Malcolm: Faking asexuality you don't have is an important sort of status symbol for, for, for some, you know, and I think especially, you know, men who would fall into this category, some really insecure men. And I mean, I, I think I see it when I [00:24:00] see these, these men online who are constantly talking about being dominant all the time.

Malcolm: That's not the type of thing that somebody who's naturally inclined towards dominance

Simone: does. Yeah. Yeah. It's more of a show. Don't tell kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's the funny thing about you is a lot of people like online will make fun of you for being a soy boy and you like, you don't try to front about being dominant, but like.

Simone: In person is just so obvious that you'd tell me so yeah and then I think probably the vast majority of the people who are attacking you for being a soy boy online are like, you know, if we were all in a room together, it probably wouldn't play out the same way, but,

Malcolm: Well, and I think that this is something people who more actively engage with the BDSM community, it's common knowledge in the community, is that men who, who day to day act, quote unquote, really dominant, like all the time.

Malcolm: They're usually really bad at being doms because they aren't naturally dominant as part of an act. Whereas men who are just much more comfortable with [00:25:00] themselves day to day and don't put on this big dominance act all the time are generally better or known as better doms within the

Simone: union.

Simone: And I think that that's why confidence is so attractive to women and to men is because confidence is a more high fidelity signal of genuine dominance. Then any sort of aggression display or dominance display, because anyone, regardless of their actual, like alpha status or, you know, like inherent dominance can, can a, a dominance display.

Simone: However, only those who genuinely feel dominant inside, you know, where that, that feeling of dominance comes from a very, very strong framing and self confidence, you know, they're just going to look comfortable in their own skin and not really give a s**t. Cause they just don't care what you think because they're dominant.

Simone: So there you go.

Malcolm: I love this conversation. I think you're right. And you know, hello nurse. You got to do that. Can you do the, the whole, I don't, [00:26:00]

Simone: I have, I just I don't even remember which care. Oh, and it was the brother, it was the brother of dot. It was, it was Dot's brother. Oh, so it was one of them.

Simone: Yeah. But yeah, he was the one who'd say hello nurse. But I don't remember. He would just say it to like, sexy women, I think. But again, like, it's so weird watching these cartoons as a kid. Like, you don't get this in joke. So, you just assume that like, Oh, I guess adults, like, Oh, I thought

Malcolm: a lot of cartoons were really like, there was the wolf, that like, it would see the woman in red, and like, its tongue would roll out and stuff.

Malcolm: And like, They're

Simone: really you just assume that like adults really respect nurses and, and really defer to them and that some, some male species have an allergic reaction around women.

Malcolm: It was supposed to be like a sexual thing. Like it was supposed to be an attraction thing, but it was like cartoon sexuality.

Malcolm: Like it didn't feel in any way perverse to me as a kid, partially because our society didn't code it as perverse. It was just like, this is a normal thing. Adults. [00:27:00] really care about this weird thing that doesn't matter

Simone: to you. Yes. Yes.

Malcolm: Anyway, I got that. But today the way we, we engage our kids with sexuality is like actually sexualized.

Malcolm: And I think ways that are pretty gross to me, but that's just me. Love you. Gotta go handle the kids soon.

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