Liberating Motherhood

Sex in Marriage and Long-Term Relationships Survey Take this survey powered by surveymonkey.com. Create your own surveys for free.

We don't ask women enough about their experiences, so I'm releasing a number of new surveys in the coming weeks. The first is on medical misogyny and racism, and is for women and woman-identified folks. Take it here: www.surveymonkey.com/r/JW3DWP6

Prior surveys here: zawn.substack.com/t/surveys

Survey of Women's Experiences in Relationships With Men Take this survey powered by surveymonkey.com. Create your own surveys for free.

I'm surveying women about their experiences in relationships with men. I hope you'll continue taking the survey. I will share the results in about a month: www.surveymonkey.com/r/N6J2N68

You can read the results of some of my past surveys here: zawn.substack.com/t/surveys

Pretty as oppression: The scam of beauty culture Why telling your daughter she's pretty will never improve her self-esteem.

zawn.substack.com/p/pretty-as-...

Feminist Advice collaboration with Kate Manne: How do I dismantle fatphobia if I don't want to be fat? A reader has internalized fatphobia, and wants to purge it from their consciousness. The challenge? A desire to lose weight.

zawn.substack.com/p/how-do-i-d...

Understanding the Logic of Misogyny With Philosopher Kate Manne Kate Manne explains the internal logic of misogyny, and why the notion of hating women oversimplifies things.

zawn.substack.com/p/understand...

One of the main reasons the Second Amendment exists is because the founding fathers envisioned a world where the military could not be deployed against civilians. Not one where the majority of gun-toting fools would gladly swallow whole the boot of any soldier.

It's not maternal gatekeeping. It's paternal weaponized incompetence. It's not her fault he's a bad parent. It's his. Why do we blame women for everything?

zawn.substack.com/p/its-not-ma...

Why is it so hard to have feminist arguments? Hatred, division, and abusive conflicts are tools of patriarchy. Here's why feminists so often fall into these behaviors.

zawn.substack.com/p/why-is-it-...

Chronic grumpiness: How men use bad moods to control their partners (paid subscriber bonus) When you never learn to control your emotions, you expect everyone else to manage them for you--and can extract a lot of free labor in the process.

zawn.substack.com/p/chronic-gr...

Misogynistic default annoyance: Why so many men see their partners as annoying, boring, and trivial It's not that you're boring. It's that he doesn't like women. Or you.

zawn.substack.com/p/misogynist...

Your misandry makes me hate myself. Feminist Advice paid subscriber bonus A male writer demands accountability for my 'misandry,' and wonders why I'm not being more helpful to men.

zawn.substack.com/p/your-misan...

Patriarchy's rules for women in relationships Knowing how patriarchy implicitly controls your behavior and expectations can help you better understand your own relationships.

zawn.substack.com/p/patriarchy...

Just a PSA that books on Princeton University Press's website are 50% off with the code Bloom50. And their books are already incredibly cheap.

What I've learned about red pill ideology from watching Andrew Tate videos I watched hundreds of hours of Red Pill content. Here are the core messages the manosphere sells men--and why they're so seductive

zawn.substack.com/p/what-ive-l...

Being disliked by bad people is a compliment. Take the compliment. We must be willing to be disliked if we are going to stand up for others.

How to decenter men in your life The less we care about and focus on men, the safer we become.

Once I realized how heavily men's hatred of women influences their opinions of us, I no longer cared what they thought of me. It's been the best gift I could give to myself. zawn.substack.com/p/how-to-dec...

'We teach people how to treat us:' Patriarchal myth of the month Why do we pretend that women want men to treat them badly? Or that they're too stupid to teach men better skills?

zawn.substack.com/p/we-teach-p...

Men are not protectors or providers. Women are the only people consistently protecting women from male violence, or providing any form of meaningful support for one another.

zawn.substack.com/p/men-are-no...

Are men biologically wired to ogle women, watch porn, and ignore boundaries? Feminist Advice A reader wonders if it's reasonable to ask her partner to consider how she feels when he engages with strippers and porn.

No. And if they are, that's an argument in favor of avoiding men--not tolerating bullshit. zawn.substack.com/p/are-men-bi...

The number of times a day that I talk to the animals in my house and then ask them why they're not answering me is definitely not zero.

The more aggressively patriarchy--and the misogynistic men it creates--insists something is true, the more likely it is to be false. We see this, for example, in propaganda about lonely single women, the wall, women "needing" men or marriage, and most men being nice and safe.

Scheduled sex is coerced sex. Stop recommending it. Putting sex on a calendar will not solve a couple's sexual problems, but it will often force someone to have sex they don't want.

zawn.substack.com/p/scheduled-...

Women are better drivers than men. Here's why that matters. Gender stereotypes about women are so strong that, even when they're objectively superior at something, we treat women like they're incompetent.

Patriarchy needs to depict women as incompetent, even when the evidence is overwhelming that they are not. zawn.substack.com/p/women-are-...

'Just communicate better!' The lie at the center of advice for exploitative marriages If we use the right words, will men stop abusing us? No. But will people take the abuse more seriously if we can prove we communicate correctly? Also no.

It's not that you communicate badly. It's that he wants things to be exploitative. zawn.substack.com/p/just-commu...

I accepted misogyny in my marriage for years. Is it unfair to leave now? A reader wonders if it's unfair to leave her abusive husband now that her standards have changed.

You can change your mind about your relationship at any time. A relationship should not be a punishment for prior bad choices.
zawn.substack.com/p/i-accepted...

Treating Children Like People Who Matter, With Dr. Naomi Fisher Mom-guilt helps obscure the political nature of parenting, and the oppressive systems in which we expect children to thrive.

Naomi Fisher's work fundamentally changed my parenting, and helped my thrive after trauma. It was such an honor to interview her on my podcast. zawn.substack.com/p/treating-c...

Why men dismiss feminists as angry--and what it means about masculinity and misogyny When men take my work personally, it's a sure sign I'm writing about them--not all men, but this man.

Patriarchy insists that, above all else, women must be nice. Because being nice to men—tolerating their abuse, giving them the benefit of the doubt, giving them more of our time and everything else than is fair—makes it easier for them to oppress us.

zawn.substack.com/p/why-men-di...

'But he means well!' Why we pretend abusive men have good intentions Good intentions only justify sexist behavior when you think women's experiences don't matter.

zawn.substack.com/p/but-he-mea...

Why did my husband change when we had a child? So many men become abusive when their partners give birth. Why is this?

He didn't actually change. He refused to change, to accommodate you or the child, or to act like parenthood matters.

zawn.substack.com/p/why-did-my...

How patriarchy weaponizes child-free women and mothers against one another--and how it hurts us all Patriarchy cannot succeed when women band together. So it pits us against one another.

When we focus on who has it worse, who is worse to the other, or otherwise demonize other women, we distract ourselves from fighting our common enemy: patriarchy, which oppresses us all. And that's exactly what patriarchy wants. It can't win if we aren't complicit. zawn.substack.com/p/how-patria...