Episodes

  • S2 Ep17: Alex Bollen: Good Mother Myths and Scientific Sexism

    S2 Ep17: Alex Bollen: Good Mother Myths and Scientific Sexism
    Oct 15 2025
    This month, I’ve been inundated with messages from folks who love the new pace of podcasts—weekly instead of every other week. I love making the podcast and love giving you what you want, but the podcast is a ton of work, and it underperforms in the algorithm. My data show that people listen to the podcast, but they don’t otherwise engage after or before listening, which pushes it down in the all-powerful algorithm.

    So I’m asking for your help, and offering something in return: Please heart-react, leave a review, leave a substantive comment, like, share, etc. This is hugely beneficial. I believe with a bit more engagement we can get this podcast performing just as well as my written work. I will continue posting weekly episodes through the month of November. If, by the end of that period, the podcast can get to 50,000 monthly downloads (double the usual number), then I will continue weekly posting. Let’s do it.

    In a patriarchy, motherhood is impossibly hard. That’s by design. Because if every woman struggles with motherhood, then every mother feels inadequate. This causes us to feel guilty, and to blame our challenges on our individual failings rather than correctly identifying the political forces that make motherhood feel so impossible.

    Alex Bollen has worked with mothers, especially in the vulnerable postpartum period, for years. Her new book, Motherdom: Breaking Free from Bad Science and Good Mother Myths, explores the politics of motherhood and especially how myths about “good mothers” set all mothers up for failure.

    In this podcast episode, we discuss a wide range of issues, including:

    • The critical importance of motherhood as a focus of feminist activism.

    • How the myth of the good mother (and its bad mother opposite) is used to control all women and all mothers.

    • How patriarchy weaponizes “science” to control and shame mothers.

    • The weaponization of attachment parenting.

    • Why we pretend that mothers are stupid, and that nothing mothers do is challenging or intellectual.

    • How disadvantaged mothers typically must accumulate more skills and ingenuity than other mothers, but are treated like they know and deserve less.

    • The concept of unmothering, and how we rob Black and other less-privileged mothers of their status as mothers.

    • How systems of oppression isolate women from other women and destroy systems of community.

    • Why we devote so much energy to telling mothers to “tough it out,” while robbing them of all resources that would make it possible for them to manage the challenges of motherhood.

    About Alex Bollen

    Alex Bollen is the author of Motherdom: Breaking Free from Bad Science and Good Mother Myths. She was a director of the research agency Ipsos and is now a freelance researcher. Alex is also a Postnatal Practitioner with the NCT, the UK’s largest parenting charity, and has run groups for new mothers in London for over a decade. Motherdom is Alex’s first book. She was inspired to write it because she felt incensed about all the guilt-inducing garbage which is peddled about motherhood.

    You can find Alex’s book, as well as all other books recommended on the podcast, along with a detailed reading list, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop.
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    51 mins
  • S2 Ep18: Kate Manne: The Silencing of Women Who Speak Publicly About Anything

    S2 Ep18: Kate Manne: The Silencing of Women Who Speak Publicly About Anything
    Oct 11 2025
    I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a public intellectual who also happens to be a woman. The constant criticism feels like a crushing weight that no amount of therapy, resilience, or blocking can render manageable.

    Philosopher

    Kate Manne has long argued that the abuse patriarchy hurls at women is a policing mechanism designed to punish women who step out of line. It seems clear to me that the endless policing of women who have any public presence is designed to silence us. It is that knowledge that keeps me writing and talking, even when both are incredibly painful.
    I brought Kate onto the podcast to talk specifically about this attempt to silence public women and public feminists. Our conversation ended up being about so much more:

    • What it’s like to speak publicly about anything when you’re a woman.

    • Feminist moralism as a corrosive force in our movement.

    • Why women are canceled for everything and men are canceled for just about nothing, and how it leads to a public sphere in which low-value men have replaced women who could have otherwise made great contributions.

    • The role of shame in moral education and moral behavior, and how resistance to shame might influence feminist discussions.

    • How we can have better feminist conflict—and why conflicts in feminism are so difficult to manage.

    • Sex work as an example of one of feminism’s hardest-to-discuss conflicts.

    We really could have pulled any of the threads in this episode into their own episode; it’s that dense. I always love having Kate on the podcast, and I hope this episode offers lots of food for thought.

    I’m releasing this episode along with this post, in which I also discuss the policing of women who speak publicly about anything. I hope that, together, both posts will encourage us all to think more deeply and broadly, and to build solidarity rather than demanding immediate consensus.

    About Kate Manne

    Kate Manne is an associate professor at the Sage School of philosophy at Cornell University. She specializes in moral, social, and feminist philosophy, and has written three books: DOWN GIRL: The Logic of Misogyny (Oxford University Press, 2018), ENTITLED: How Male Privilege Hurts Women (Crown, 2020) and UNSHRINKING: How to Face Fatphobia (Crown, 2024), a National Book Award finalist in non-fiction. In addition to academic work, she regularly writes opinion pieces and essays for a wider audience, including in outlets such as The New York Times, The Cut, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Nation, and Time. She writes a substack newsletter, More to Hate, exploring misogyny, fatphobia, and their intersection.

    You can find all of Kate’s books, all the books I discuss on the podcast, and a long list of book recommendations, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop.

    If you like this podcast or find my work valuable, I hope you’ll consider supporting it! Your paid support ensures I never have to take advertiser dollars, and am beholden only to my readership. You’ll also get access to one more podcast episode each month, eight additional pieces of written work, and membership in the Liberating Motherhood Community.

    You can also support this podcast for free! Heart-reacting makes a huge difference, as does commenting and sharing on social media. If you listen to this podcast on a podcast platform, please leave a positive review; it makes a huge difference. Oh, and tell the people you love about this podcast too!
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    54 mins
  • S2 Ep16: Virginia Sole-Smith: Anti-Fatness as a Tool of Oppression

    S2 Ep16: Virginia Sole-Smith: Anti-Fatness as a Tool of Oppression
    Oct 8 2025
    The devaluation of fatness in patriarchy is no accident—and it’s not about health. Patriarchy convinces every woman she’s fat, or at risk of becoming fat, and forces us to spend our lives thinking about our bodies instead of the things that truly matter most to us. As we’ve seen over and over again, a woman who hates herself is more vulnerable to abuse and less likely to abandon shame, band together with other women, and demand better.

    But we can and must demand better. Virginia Sole-Smith is on a mission to end anti-fatness and diet culture for good. She came on the show to talk to me about fatphobia, diet culture, and strategies for raising kids who are not so preoccupied by their bodies and food.

    Some of the topics we discuss include:

    • What diet culture is, and how it extends well beyond diets.

    • Why diet talk isn’t really about health, and how best to respond to concern-trolling about weight.

    • Giving yourself permission to not forever live on a hamster wheel of weight loss.

    • Healthy strategies for talking to kids about bodies, beauty, and weight.

    • How to talk to kids about gendered beauty labor.

    • Managing negative food and body messages from friends, school, and daycare—plus, when to opt out of diet and body-related assignments.

    • Is perimenopause content diet content?

    • The problem with Dr. Becky, and with parenting advice generally.

    • How we can feel hopeful in a political climate that seeks to demoralize us.

    About Virginia Sole-Smith

    As a journalist, Virginia Sole-Smith has reported from kitchen tables, graduated from beauty school, and gone swimming in a mermaid’s tail. Virginia’s latest book, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture, is a New York Times bestseller that investigates how the “war on childhood obesity” has caused kids to absorb a daily onslaught of body shame from peers, school, diet culture, and families— and offers research-based strategies to help parents name and navigate the anti-fat bias that infiltrates our schools, doctor’s offices and dinner tables.

    Virginia began her career in women’s magazines, alternatively challenging beauty standards and gender norms, and upholding diet culture through her health, nutrition and fitness reporting. This work led to her first book, The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America, in which Virginia explored how we can reconnect to our bodies in a culture that’s constantly giving us so many mixed messages about both those things.

    Virginia’s work appears in the New York Times Magazine, Scientific American, and many other publications. She now writes the popular body liberation newsletter Burnt Toast and hosts the Burnt Toast Podcast. Virginia lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her two kids, two cats, a dog, two geckos, eight chickens, and way too many houseplants.

    You can find all of Virginia’s books, all books we talk about on the podcast, and a ton of book recommendations at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop.

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    1 hr and 1 min
  • S2 Ep15: Marlene Gerber Fried: Abortion rights and reproductive justice

    S2 Ep15: Marlene Gerber Fried: Abortion rights and reproductive justice
    Oct 1 2025
    “Hope is a muscle.” — Marlene Gerber Fried

    Marlene Gerber Fried has been a leading reproductive justice and choice activist for decades. She’s seen and survived times of both hopelessness and triumph. She partners often with women of color, especially Loretta Ross, and her expansive vision of what a better world might look like feels like exactly what we need right now. It was such a gift to talk to her. It left me feeling more hopeful, and much more energized. I hope our conversation has the same effect on you.

    In these episode, Marlene and I talk about a wide range of topics, including:

    • What a “good abortion” might look like in a healthier, safer world.

    • Reproductive justice and liberation as more expansive visions of reproductive choice.

    • Why we must sustain hope, and how we do that as everything burns around us.

    • How the Republican fascist overreach may destroy itself.

    • Why we must simultaneously take fascist threats seriously and avoid being daunted by them.

    • How we can parent children in a world that makes us terrified for their futures.

    • What it takes to sustain a lifetime of successful activism.

    About Marlene Gerber Fried

    Marlene Gerber Fried is a longtime reproductive rights activist and scholar. She was the founding president of the National Network of Abortion Funds and the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts. Currently she is Professor Emerita at Hampshire College, where she taught for 37 years. She is Senior Faculty Advisor to Collective Power for Reproductive Justice, serves on the board of Women Help Women, and co-chairs the Our Bodies Ourselves expert panel on Abortion and Contraception with Pamela Merritt and Candace Bond-Theriault. She edited, From Abortion to Reproductive Freedom: Transforming A Movement, and co-authored with Jael Silliman, Elena Gutierrez and Loretta Ross, Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice. Her most recent book, Abortion and Reproductive Justice; An Essential Guide to Resistance, co-authored with Loretta Ross has just been released.

    You can buy Abortion and Reproductive Justice, the latest book by Marlene Fried and Loretta Ross, here.

    When Roe fell, I interviewed a wide range of experts about how to survive in this new and frightening world. I talk about that piece in the podcast. You can find it here. You can also read my long-running Daily Kos abortion column, which painstakingly outlines the case for reproductive rights (why bans don’t stop abortion, why abortion is vital for health, how abortion laws affect an entire community, and so much more) here.

    A quick programming note: I am experimenting with publishing a podcast every week for the month of October. I want to see if this pace feels sustainable for me, and if it helps the podcast grow. If you like the more-frequent posting schedule, you can vote by sharing the podcast, leaving a positive review on your favorite podcast platform, heart-reacting it on Substack, or sharing on social media. These actions help the podcast reach a wider audience and can make it easier for me to continue making this podcast.

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    54 mins
  • S2 Ep14: Soraya Chemaly: Resilience, Women’s Anger, and Dismantling Male Supremacy for Good

    S2 Ep14: Soraya Chemaly: Resilience, Women’s Anger, and Dismantling Male Supremacy for Good
    Sep 10 2025
    Discovering Soraya Chemaly’s work on women’s anger was a revelation for me. I was finally able to claim my own anger, rather than dismiss it as juvenile and embarrassing. We must be able to claim our anger, because we have plenty to be angry about.

    I was so thrilled to get to interview Soraya, and I think you will love her if you’re not already familiar with her rich body of work.

    Some of the many topics we discuss in this podcast episode include:

    • The power of women’s anger—and why patriarchy wants to keep that anger under control.

    • The credibility gap, and how it undermines women’s authority.

    • Why we associate genius and intelligence with boys, and foolishness with women.

    • Constructing women as annoying.

    • Soraya’s arguments in favor of pettiness.

    • What resilience means and doesn’t mean, and how the wider culture constructs our assessment of risk in parenting.

    Soraya Chemaly is an award-winning feminist writer, speaker, and activist. Former Executive Director of The Representation Project and co-founder of the Women's Media Center Speech Project, she is committed to expanding women's civic and political participation.

    Soraya is the author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger, recognized as a Best Book of 2018 by the Washington Post, NPR, and others. Her work appears in TIME, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Ms. Magazine, and she has been featured on NPR, PBS NewsHour, BBC, and MSNBC.

    She serves on the Women's Media Center board and has been recognized by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and awarded a Wikipedia Distinguished Service Award. Her next book, All We Want is Everything: How We Dismantle Male Supremacy, will be released November 11, 2025.

    Read Soraya’s Substack here, or visit her website here.

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    59 mins
  • S2 Ep13: The Law as a Tool for Feminist Change, with Fatima Goss Graves

    S2 Ep13: The Law as a Tool for Feminist Change, with Fatima Goss Graves
    Aug 27 2025
    Lawyers have always been on the frontlines of the fight for social justice. Nearly every enshrined right women have is thanks to a lawsuit. Fatima Goss Graves is an attorney and expert in using the law for good. I’ve followed her work since the days of Time’s Up, and literally squealed when her team reached out to me about appearing on the podcast.

    Her wisdom is rich and deep, and I hope she’ll inspire some hope that we can still build a brighter tomorrow—even now. Hope is one of the most powerful tools we have.

    You’ll have to excuse my hoarse voice; I’ve had a never-ending cold for weeks, and am partially convinced that this is just how I sound now.

    In this interview, Fatima and I discuss a wide range of topics, including:

    • The history of The National Women’s Law Center, and how women can use the law as a tool of social justice.

    • Why we mustn’t comply in advance in the face of fascism.

    • The fact that we still have rights, even now, still have protection against discrimination, and the law can still work for activists, if we know how to use it.

    • Lawsuits as a tool for enforcing civil rights.

    • The fight for accessible and affordable childcare, and why it is so integral to women’s freedom.

    • Why women are leaving the workforce—and how we can bring them back.

    • How governments can enact truly family-friendly policies.

    • The policing of children in schools, the failure to accommodate children’s academic needs, and what a healthier school system might look like.

    About Fatima Goss Graves

    Fatima Goss Graves is a nationally recognized leader in the fight for gender justice and an expert in law, policy, and culture change. She is President and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, President of the National Women’s Law Center Action Fund, and a co-founder of the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund.

    You can get help from the National Women’s Law Center here. Learn more about volunteering/partnering with NWLC here.

    You can find more information about your employment rights under the Civil Rights Act here.

    Watch Fatima go hard against DOGE here.

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    38 mins
  • S2 Ep12: Does Zawn Hate Men? The Myth of Misandry

    S2 Ep12: Does Zawn Hate Men? The Myth of Misandry
    Aug 20 2025
    Do I have men? Should you? Yes. No. Maybe. Misogynist men love to weaponize false claims of misandry against women. In fact, one of the clearest signs that a man is a misogynist is that he thinks misandry is real, common, and a threat.

    Jeff and I have wanted to talk about bogus claims of misandry for a long time. Here’s the result.

    Some of the many topics we talk about in this podcast include:

    • Why we need to stop saying “sexual coercion” or “obligatory sex” and start calling it rape.

    • The history of the term “misandrist,” and why it’s always been a part of bad faith arguments against women’s rights.

    • Does Zawn hate men? (Jeff’s answers: “No. Yes. Not all men.”)

    • Why so many men see movements for women’s rights as a threat.

    • Why men who actually like women are unthreatened by feminism.

    • Men’s frustration at having to actually work for things.

    • Jeff on the most pathetic kind of sex anyone can have.

    • Why misandry can never be analogous to misogyny.

    • The disparity between Zawn and Jeff’s experiences complaining about poor medical care.

    • Why men are so committed to wasting so much of women’s time.

    We end with our new feature, the Liberating Motherhood Complaint Box. This is where we address the whining, bloviating nonsense your husbands tell you about my podcast specifically, or feminism more generally. It culminates in Zawn referring to a man as a “loser bitch.”

    Make your partner’s ignorance famous, and subject him to my judgment! You can submit your own complaint for next month’s complaint box here. Please only use this form to submit complaints from men specifically about feminism or my podcast—not general complaints, not general questions, not general messages for me.

    If you need to contact me for something else, you can find forms for just about everything on the Liberating Motherhood website.

    The full results of the survey I mention will be available to paid subscribers September 9, 2025.

    We have new kittens, and they currently live in my office, which they are destroying. They are aspiring misandrists, and were quite interested in the podcast. For this reason, you’ll hear some background noises.

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    55 mins
  • S2 Ep11: Dating in a Patriarchy, With Jennie Young

    S2 Ep11: Dating in a Patriarchy, With Jennie Young
    Aug 6 2025
    Statistically, dating men in a patriarchy remains the most dangerous thing a woman can do. Patriarchy is deeply committed to shepherding us into romantic relationships because of the control these relationships exert—and because patriarchy wants to give every man a woman-appliance.

    This does not change the reality that many women want relationships with men—and that healthy relationships are possible, if improbable, even in a patriarchy.

    Jennie Young understands this tension, and is on a mission to protect as many women from abusive relationships as she can. She acknowledges that men are dangerous, and uses this insight to help women filter potential date partners as quickly as possible. Some of the topics we talk about include:

    • The dating apocalypse, and why dating is such a nightmare

    • The rhetorical patterns that flag for misogyny

    • Empowering women to judge men harshly

    • The role of pornography in online misogyny

    • Jennie’s own experiences dating

    • The rhetorical trends sweeping the dating apps, and what they reveal about men

    About Jennie Young

    Jennie Young is a professor of writing and rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, specializing in applied rhetoric, humor, and feminism. She holds a Ph.D. in rhetoric and discourse studies from Case Western Reserve University and a satire writing certificate from Second City Chicago. Her work has been published in McSweeney’s, Ms. Magazine, HuffPost, and others and covered by major media outlets such as The New York Times, RollingStone, Washington Post, Newsweek, and Wall Street Journal.

    Visit Jennie at her website here, and be sure to check out her Substack. You can join her man-free support group on Facebook.

    You can preorder her book, Burn the Haystack, here.

    Find all books referenced on the podcast, as well as additional book recommendations, here.

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    1 hr