The Dark Side Of Feminism's "Liberation" - Mary Harrington

Harrington urges listeners to see feminism as women’s strategic response to technological and economic upheavals (e.g., work leaving the home, the pill), rather than as a simple moral arc toward ever-greater freedom; this allows a more honest audit of gains and losses.

Prioritizing autonomy, paid work, and detachment from dependency has delivered real benefits, but has also devalued motherhood, care work, and interdependence, leaving many women lonely, ambivalent about pregnancy, and structurally set against their own bodies.

Harrington and others report that the pill alters libido, attraction, and mood, and enabled hookup culture by decoupling sex from consequences; she argues a feminist “pushback” on routine pill use could reduce degrading sexual encounters and re-raise the bar for intimacy.

From Playboy to online dating to OnlyFans and surrogacy, once sex and reproduction are treated as private and consequence‑free, they quickly become sites of trade; Harrington warns that commodification tends to benefit elites while exploiting poorer women’s bodies and fertility.

She connects gender medicine, organ-for-sentence-reduction schemes, and commercial surrogacy to a broader “cyborg theocracy” that sees human bodies as Lego-like resources, arguing this will create class‑based markets in organs, wombs, and gametes unless politically resisted.