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PODCAST

Liberating Motherhood

Liberating Motherhood

Mothers are tired of anti-mother misogyny, household labor inequality, and a culture that expects mothers to bear the burdens of its many shortcomings--all without complaint. Mothers are vital to feminism, and have been neglected in feminist discourse for far too long. Mothers are constantly told that political problems are personal--that if we communicate better, mother better, behave better, things will improve. The only path to change is through widespread political change. That"s what this

society & culture philosophy

All Episodes

57:42

S3 Ep10: TJ Raphael: Coercive Adoption, Liberty Lost,...

Liberating Motherhood ·

2026/04/08

“The adoption industry needs vulnerable pregnant women.” — TJ RaphaelWho gets to be a mother? And who gets to decide? This is the question at the heart of TJ Raphael’s incredible podcast series, Liberty Lost. Much of the adoption industry treats women as vessels for someone else’s child. Their trauma, their desires, their beliefs do not matter. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the right-wing adoption industry, where women and girls are often coerced or even forced into giving up their

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53:26

S3 Ep9: Jennie Young: Dating More Safely in a Patriarchy

Liberating Motherhood ·

2026/04/01

Patriarchy destroys relationships, and it has turned dating into a nightmare. Jennie Young is fighting back with her Burned Haystack method, and now the method is a book. Through her work, Jennie endeavors to teach women to detect red flags before they become obvious, and to thwart abuse before it happens. Dating is the most dangerous thing most of us do, and I have no doubt that Jennie is saving lives. In this podcast episode, Jennie and I discuss: Why dating is so awful, and why men seem like

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42:20

S3 Ep8: Soraya Chemaly: Male Supremacy

Liberating Motherhood ·

2026/03/11

Why is misogyny so widespread, even when men claim to love and care about women, even among those who believe they are feminists? Male supremacy helps explain this phenomenon. The Institute for Research on Male Supremacism defines male supremacy as follows: [A] cultural, political, economic, and social system, in which cisgender men disproportionately control status, power, and resources, and women, trans men, and non-binary people are subordinated. Such systems are underpinned by an ideology of

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65:56

S3 Ep7: Sarah Ruden: A Short History of Bad Ideas...

Liberating Motherhood ·

2026/03/04

I wrote recently about how men are using AI to prop up their belief in their own superiority. This propaganda is nothing new. Men have, for thousands of years, used every tool at their disposal to spread false ideas about women’s inferiority and demonic nature. Sarah Ruden is a translator, a classicist, and the author of Reproductive Wrongs: A Short History of Bad Ideas About Women. She came on the podcast to discuss her new book, which outlines how popular literature and culture have long

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79:40

S3 Ep6: Emma Katz: Why Abusive Men Are Not Good...

Liberating Motherhood ·

2026/02/18

I’m on vacation this month, so am re-releasing this excellent episode with Dr. Emma Katz. Content warning: This podcast extensively discusses all forms of intimate partner violence, some child abuse, and briefly discusses the death of a child, but not in graphic detail. Intimate partner violence is much more than physical violence. Every physically violent perpetrator was, for a time, not physically violent. The emotionally abusive, degrading, and controlling environment these perpetrators create

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55:01

S3 Ep5: Loretta Ross: Calling In, Building...

Liberating Motherhood ·

2026/02/11

Today we are going to be learning from the legendary reproductive justice activist Loretta Ross. Loretta is my feminist hero and role model, and I feel so lucky that she was willing to share some time with me. How is it that a human rights movement rooted in the shared value and worth of every human being so often devolves into a toxic stew of abuse and hurt feelings? Anyone who participates in leftist political movements has seen small disagreements spiral into mutual attacks, psychological

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30:35

S3 Ep4: Things Change Because We Change Them: A...

Liberating Motherhood ·

2026/02/04

This is the first podcast episode I’ve done by myself, because I wanted to speak directly to all of you. If you like it, I may do more. On a recent AMA, someone asked me how I sustain hope when I’m surrounded by horror and despair. Here’s what I told her: I know that the only thing that makes things actually hopeless is giving up hope. If my foremothers could fight through coverture, through legal rape, through legal violence, if other women could continue to fight through slavery, through a

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63:09

S3 Ep3: Kiki Bryant/The Uppity Negress: Labor Diggers

Liberating Motherhood ·

2026/01/21

“Black men have been held accountable for things they didn’t do for so long, that we have forgotten how to hold them accountable for the things they do.” — Kiki BryantMen are stealing women’s lives by stealing their time. So why is it that we have widespread notions of women as spoiled, entitled gold diggers? The words we use matter. They focus our attention and make it easier (or harder) to speak about a topic. This is a sweeping conversation that covers a lot of ground. Some of what we talk

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60:41

S3 Ep2: Abigail Leonard: Four Mothers, and How...

Liberating Motherhood ·

2026/01/14

If you like this episode or this podcast, please consider heart-reacting, sharing, commenting, or leaving a positive online review. It helps the podcast continue to attract great guests!Motherhood is a cultural, political experience. But in many places, especially the United States, we pretend culture doesn’t exist, and that everything about motherhood is both inevitable and an individual problem. Abigail Leonard is an American journalist who, inspired by her own experiences living abroad in Tokyo,

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66:48

S3 Ep1: Sabia Wade: Birthing Liberation

Liberating Motherhood ·

2026/01/07

“Everyone is impacted by racism.” — Sabia Wade We’re back! It’s now Season 3 of the Liberating Motherhood podcast. As promised, this season you’ll be getting an episode every single week. Please consider helping this podcast continue to grow by: heart-reacting on Substack, liking on your favorite platform, leaving a comment on social media, leaving a positive review on your favorite podcast platform, and sharing the podcast with friends. Your support can help the podcast continue to grow and bring

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71:24

S2 Ep23: Jane Ward: The Tragedy of Heterosexuality...

Liberating Motherhood ·

2025/12/03

I am so excited about this episode! Jane Ward is a brilliant queer feminist scholar who has written extensively about the harmful dynamics heterosexual relationships normalize. Her book, The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, has heavily influenced my own work, and I am so grateful to her. She’s working on a new book about parenting that we hit on a bit, but we mostly talk about what is going on in heterosexual relationships.Some of the topics we cover include: Why maybe it’s not being queer that is

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56:52

S2 Ep22: Desiree Stephens: Radicalizing White Women,...

Liberating Motherhood ·

2025/11/19

“White feminism is often about becoming equal to men, which makes you the leading oppressor across the globe. It leaves everyone else behind.”—Desiree Stephens I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we bring more women—especially white women—into the feminist fold. And then, once they’re there, how do we get them to embrace an intersectional approach that acknowledges and tackles the entirety of supremacy culture? I think the answer begins and ends with community—building community, working

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72:19

S2 Ep21: Cristen Pascucci: Fighting Back Against an...

Liberating Motherhood ·

2025/11/12

Childbirth is an incredibly powerful rite of passage. The literal creation of life could be a source of empowerment, no matter how any individual person chooses to do it. Instead, patriarchy weaponizes birth as a tool of trauma and oppression that steadily normalizes the dehumanization of motherhood. My transition to motherhood included a massive fight against the hospital where I intended to give birth, multiple threatened lawsuits, and ultimately, a terrified hospital board attempting to appease

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45:24

S2 Ep20: LC DeShay: The Male Loneliness Epidemic

Liberating Motherhood ·

2025/11/05

LC DeShay is a reproductive justice sociologist, as well as a doula and lactation consultant who has worked on the front lines of women and children’s health. I brought them on as a witness, as someone who has seen what we do to women at their most vulnerable moments. I wanted to talk specifically about the male loneliness epidemic, and how it is weaponized to extract even more labor from women at their most vulnerable moments. But LC never disappoints. They also moonlight as a

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53:34

S2 Ep19: Devon Kuntzman: Parenting for an Emotionally...

Liberating Motherhood ·

2025/10/22

Violence and abuse are normalized in every aspect of our culture, and particularly in parenting. No wonder so many women tell me they didn’t recognize abuse until it was too late. Authoritarian parents set their children up for abusive relationships, and they damage their kids’ self-esteem and emotional intelligence in the process. Whether you call it authoritative parenting, gentle parenting, compassionate parenting, or just not parenting like a jerk on a power trip, a more conscious approach to

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50:55

S2 Ep17: Alex Bollen: Good Mother Myths and...

Liberating Motherhood ·

2025/10/15

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,

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53:42

S2 Ep18: Kate Manne: The Silencing of Women Who Speak...

Liberating Motherhood ·

2025/10/11

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

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61:16

S2 Ep16: Virginia Sole-Smith: Anti-Fatness as a Tool...

Liberating Motherhood ·

2025/10/08

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

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53:49

S2 Ep15: Marlene Gerber Fried: Abortion rights and...

Liberating Motherhood ·

2025/10/01

“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

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58:51

S2 Ep14: Soraya Chemaly: Resilience, Women’s Anger,...

Liberating Motherhood ·

2025/09/10

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

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