This may have been the proudest moment of my professional life: watching last night's episode of Broad City, which was built around a Savage Love neologism:

In 2001 Savage challenged readers of his column to coin a name for the sex act in which a woman uses a strap-on dildo to perform anal sex on her male partner. After multiple nominations and a reader vote, the verb "peg" was chosen (despite Savage's aunt bearing the name Peg) with a 43% plurality over runners-up "bob" and "punt."

A guy was shown getting fucked in the ass with a strap-on dildo on Comedy Central (!) last night—and a girl was shown getting to fuck a guy in the ass with a strap-on dildo (not having to, getting to)—and it wasn't played for laughs. No, wait: It was played for laughs. Broad City is fucking hilarious, and last's night episode may have been its most fucking hilarious episode yet. But the laughs didn't come at the expense of the perverts doing the butt sex. No one was humiliated, it wasn't about the guy being emasculated, no one was hurt or shamed. (Also: no santorum.) The show's take on sex and sexual experimentation and "switching it up" and a guy getting fucked in the ass was funny, smart, levelheaded, sex-positive, upbeat, and matter-of-fact. (This is a thing people do. People do it because they enjoy it. You might enjoy it, too. Try it.) As Amanda Hess put it at Slate this morning:

Pegging in pop culture is typically presented as emasculating and painful for the man (Entourage, Arliss, the 2006 thriller One Way), but Broad City reframes the sexual practice as empowering for the woman: When Abbi calls bestie Ilana for advice, Ilana performs a celebratory dance, announces it a “dream come true,” and celebrates the prospect of Abbi penetrating Jeremy’s “hairy, adorable little butthole” and “plowing it like a queen.” Emboldened, Abbi straps on the dildo and triumphs. In a blissful morning-after scene, Jeremy kisses Abbi goodbye before he departs for his volunteer gig teaching woodworking to underprivileged children. She swoons.... Later, when Ilana’s family finds out about the incident, the show gets servicey: Ilana’s parents wonder aloud whether pegging is a gay thing, and her brother replies: “No. How would I put a dildo on top of my dick? Both gay and straight men enjoy prostate stimulation.”

The show ends with Ilana’s parents calmly (and hilariously) negotiating their own pegging session. At first, Ilana's dad isn't so sure, but his wife wants to try it, and she persuades him to give it a chance—a good that example of the sexual communal strength stuff Amy Muise is talking about.

But this was my favorite moment: After Abbi retreats to the bathroom with the strap-on dildo—she tells him she's going to put it on but she's really just stalling for time—she calls her best friend Ilana for advice. Ilana, who I'm convinced is my spirit animal, encourages Abbi to do it. When Abbi says she doesn't know if she can, Ilana replies, "Bitch, you know. You wouldn't have called me if you didn't." That's exactly how I feel about most of the calls I get at the Savage Lovecast: People tell me they're calling because they're not sure they can do something. But they wouldn't be calling me if they didn't wanna do it. Like Abbi, they just need a little encouragement, some perspective, and for someone else to give them the permission they've essentially already given themselves when they made the decision to ask for advice. They know what I'm going to tell them. That's why they called.

"Bitch, you know. You wouldn't have called me if you didn't." I don't know how many times I've said approximately the same thing—or precisely the same thing—on the Lovecast. I know the Ilana of Broad City is a fictional character, but I'd like to think she's a listener.

UPDATE: Skuh-WEE!