Liberating Motherhood

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 togeth...

“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...

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 ma...

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 i...

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: ...

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 p...

“We are allowed to have a good life while giving our children good lives.” — Ruthie Ackerman In patriarchy, there’s no way to get motherhood right. No matter what you do, someone will always gleefully tell you it’s wrong—and then use this shame to attempt to shrink you. Patriarchy wants to convince women that the challenges of motherhood are personal, not political, that our failings are our own f...

“We need to figure out how to create political, social solidarity that is not reliant on some sort of fantasy that they have to see us, hear us, etc. That idea that we need to be in perfect harmony to work together is not going to happen. It’s a fool’s errand, a waste of time and energy. That doesn’t mean you can’t work with somebody…There’s so much energy wasted in the left on coming to consensus...

Misogyny isn’t really about hating women. After all, if pure hate explained everything, wouldn’t that mean that only mean men abuse women, and that misogynists never seek relationships with women? Men are able to mistreat women they claim to love because of the internal logic of misogyny. They’re not irrational or unhinged; they’re following a set of rules rooted in entitlement.  Kate Manne is a p...

Women are angry, and rightfully so. Yet everywhere we go, men tell us we are too angry, and that if we were just nicer about our oppression, they’d knock if off. Anger, though, is key to women’s liberation. Writer Gemma Hartley is here to tell us why.  About Gemma Hartley (and where to find her) Gemma Hartley is a freelance writer with a BA in writing from The University of Nevada, Reno. She is au...

“We depoliticize distress by locating it in the individual.” — Naomi Fisher  Naomi Fisher helped me become a better mother without ever even meeting me. I stumbled across her work when one of my children was dealing with school anxiety. Doing so empowered me to take my child’s distress seriously and trust my instincts as a mother.  In this podcast episode, Dr. Fisher and I discuss the myriad harms...

The silencing and targeting of mothers is a deliberate act of damaging the next generation and attacking women. When we rob mothers of their power, we slow the process of human liberation. Beth Berry is a coach, mentor, and seasoned mother and activist who works with mothers to access their power so they can be changemakers. In this podcast episode, we talked about maternal activism, making friend...

“I think about and write about this all the time, and yet I still think there’s something wrong with me that it’s so hard for me. It’s so hard to separate what we’ve been told…from the truth, which is that it’s not us.” — Mary Catherine Starr Patriarchy tells everyone motherhood is easy, and demands that mothers perform ease. The pressure to do this conceals the realities of motherhood, convincing...

The Patriarchal Playbook is my term for the set of canned responses, expectations, and norms men follow without thinking. This concept helps clarify why the behavior of sexist men is both predictable and often nonsensical. In this episode, Jeff and I discuss how that playbook damages heterosexual relationships and limits women’s options. We also go on a lot of sidequests, because we recorded this...

The Trump presidency presents parents with a host of challenges. How do we help our kids feel safe while educating them about oppression? How can white parents inspire their kids to be accomplices standing with the most vulnerable? How can we help kids assess the risk this presidency poses to them and act accordingly? And perhaps most importantly, how do we as parents manage our own emotions so we...

“What we see is that men do not view us as full humans, as people who can have and make choices.” —Kate Anthony Welcome back! This is the first episode of Season 2 of the Liberating Motherhood podcast. I hope you’ll follow and/or subscribe, because I have some truly amazing guests lined up for this season. Women initiate the overwhelming majority of divorces. The far right, incels, and other group...

Family court can be a brutal experience for women , especially those who have experienced abuse, neglect, and violence. While the standards in family courts seem neutral, gender bias has infiltrated every corner of our world, especially our highly conservative court system. Women face an uphill battle, a bias in favor of believing men, and a culture that prioritizes men’s access to their children...

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 perpet...

Zawn and Jeff discuss why being a “nice guy” is a red flag, not a green one, why men who abuse women commonly claim to have been victims of abuse, and whether men ever deserve the benefit of the doubt. See some of my previous work on nice guys here:  Signs your 'nice guy' isn't actually a nice guy The myth of the bumbling nice guy

Desiree Stephens is an incredible racial justice and decolonization activist. I originally wanted to discuss with her the role of rest and pleasure in activism, but as is so often the case in conversations with Desiree, we ended up covering so much more ground.  Desiree frames so many things in ways I’ve never heard them framed before. She can be quite confronting—leaving you with the choice of wa...

Sexual coercion in marriage is widespread and normalized. In roughly half of marriages, this coercion escalates to abuse.  Men dismiss women as less sexual, and insist that women should therefore cater to men’s needs. The data suggest otherwise . Women avoid sex with men because men do not offer them sex that is worth having—and because they create abusive environments that destroy sexual desire. ...

Bringing life into the world should be a source of immense power--and often, it is. But in a patriarchy, we endeavor to destroy women's power. This is why patriarchy has turned childbirth into a dangerous, traumatic nightmare. Learn about the state of childbirth, and what you can do to push back--and why it's a partner's obligation to protect and support the person giving birth. Zawn and Jeff have...

Why is it that we respond to proposals and weddings with joy rather than terror? We know that men are the biggest public health threat to women, and that most marriages are inequitable and unhappy. Yet patriarchy promotes this disconnect. Learn why in this episode. 

View some of Zawn's surveys on household labor inequity here: https://zawn.substack.com/t/surveys

Men are angry at their partners. But why, in a world where women are already doing a disproportionate share of relational, household, and parenting labor, do men feel so disenfranchised?  Follow Zawn at zawn.substack.com or https://www.facebook.com/zawnv/