Call Her Daddy and Other Feminist Illusions

By Claire Gallagher

When I first started having casual sex in high school and the term “hookup culture” was coined, I thought I was living a feminist, girlpower wet dream. My junior year, I was introduced to the podcast Call Her Daddy, and I was hooked. Call Her Daddy in its original form was a sort of advice podcast run by two women in their twenties, Alexandra Cooper and Sofia Franklyn. They conceptualized their podcast as a modern take on feminism through a reversal of gender roles in sex and relationships. There was something entrancing about their tight-knit friendship, their unabashed confessions of crazy sex stories and of manipulation tactics in relationships. Their podcasts were filled with references to their exciting lives together in New York City and promises that life would not always be as dull as the one I had at my 400-person high school. There was admittedly a certain shock factor; I had never heard anybody talk about sex and men in the way they did, especially not young women. They were unapologetic in their sexuality and they assured that their advice guaranteed control and power in your relationships. Their methods were tried and true. These girls had dated professional athletes and millionaires. They had men flying them out every weekend to California and Hawaii. They were also thin and beautiful and funny and charming and had a certain Manson-esque way of convincing you that you were one of them, like their listeners were a family.

I ran through past episodes in days, and I followed their weekly episode postings religiously. I re-listened to old episodes in the space in between until I could recite every story, every trick, and every sex position they talked about. I

knew, surface-level, that a lot of what these girls were preaching was problematic. I defended my obsession with the podcast by saying that it was a self-proclaimed comedy podcast. They didn’t really mean everything they said. But comedy or not, I internalized every word. I repeated their mantras like prayers:

Translation: The only thing men see you as is a sexual object, and you have to accept that to survive in the world of hookup culture. Embrace it. See yourself that way so you can be more desirable in their eyes.

Translation: You’re going to be cheated on, so you might as well cheat first.

Translation: If you’re not considered conventionally attractive to men, you have to be sluttier, nastier, dirtier, crazier in bed to prove your worth. Why would a man want you otherwise?

Self-explanatory.

Listening to the podcast made me feel like I had some sort of secret “in” or like I knew something that other girls didn’t. I wanted to be like the Call Her Daddy girls, unattached, desirable, unattainable, and in control. I focused on their surface-level promises of turning the tables and reclaiming my body because they told me that “there are two kinds of people in this world: those who finesse and those who get finessed. You decide who you want to be.” I internalized their heteronormative sex advice, the constant encouragement to see myself the way men see me, and the strong implication that if you’re not having constant casual sex, you’re boring or ugly or stuckup. I convinced myself that I was in control, like I was fucking Joan of Arc paving the way for female empowerment, one faked orgasm at a time. Short disclaimer, I am in no way saying that having and enjoying casual sex is wrong whatsoever because it’s not. But being manipulated into feeding into whatever patriarchal bullshit that has convinced women that having any emotions or feelings about sex is crazy and wrong is not the empowering shit that it is made out to be.

REAL THINGS THAT I ONCE WROTE DOWN ON PAPER TO REMIND MYSELF ABOUT THIS ONE GUY: evidence that I was in fact internalizing the podcast’s messages and not in fact believing the podcast’s genre of comedy.

1. NEVER sleep over unless he asks you to stay 2. Do not text him within 24 hours of hooking up unless he texts you first 3. Always remember that you are not the only girl and you are never an exception 4. No physical affection after sex and especially not when you or him are saying goodbye 5. Always give him head when you hook up (Thank you, Sofia and Alex!) 6. No nicknames or pet names 7. Do not initiate cuddling 8. You’re just a hole (*sigh* Thank you, Sofia and Alex.)

Had these been things I wanted to do, I think that writing down a list of boundaries I wanted to enforce would be perfectly reasonable, not including numbers three and eight because I’m not sure how those could be interpreted as being a choice. If you hate sleeping over at someone’s house, don’t. If you’re uncomfortable with physical affection after sex, totally fine and understandable. If you are having great sex with someone and sex is legitimately all you want from said person, you’re golden. But I wrote this list about a boy with whom the actual sex alone was mediocre, as in, not once in our months of sleeping together did I finish. But I had feelings for him, and so I loved sex with him because I loved him. There’s a difference.

In one standout episode of Call Her Daddy, titled “Slut Camp,” Alex and Sofia take listeners through tips and training to convince a man that you’re virginal, innocent, and pure to increase your appeal. The “camp” is for “sluts” who must mask their past experiences and sex drive to prove to men that they are “wifey material.” Besides the glaringly obvious issues behind perpetuating the demonization of

female sexuality, this episode represents one of many contradictions present in hookup culture. Have casual sex—as in, do not be clingy or annoying; do not ask to hang out before the hours of 12 to 4 AM; do not expect or want anything out of your sexual relationship other than sex, which will likely be unfulfilling sex at that because in no way can your emotions be involved in sex. But also, don’t be a slut. Wifey material girls don’t give it up before the fifth date, but you’re fucking crazy for expecting us to go on real dates. Wifey material girls are not sexually experienced, but if you can’t give good head, it’s a dealbreaker. Wifey material girls are not promiscuous or horny, but you should always want me. Wifey material girls don’t dress like that, but you would be so much hotter if you did. Freud coined the term “penis envy” to explain his idea that young girls go through a period of psychosexual development in which they essentially wish they had a penis. I think that pretty much the only thing that girls can be sure of is that having a vagina is their only guaranteed claim to value, so fuck off, Freud. But! I do envy penis-havers for their ability to have value beyond fuckability. The contradictions are endless.

I wonder how many hours my friends and I have spent asking each other, why are we only ever good enough to sleep with, and never good enough to date? And now I can’t differentiate between which of my actions are of my own volition and which ones are just things I think I should be doing. What I mean is, do I never sleep over at a guy’s house because I don’t want that sort of intimacy after sex? Or do I never sleep over at a guy’s house because that could mean that I’m clingy or needy, and that’s the worst thing a woman could be?

The idea of a podcast hosted by women with the goal of being sex-positive and normalizing women liking and enjoying sex is a great idea. It rocks! I love sex! I don’t know if it’s our Puritan roots or what, but seriously, something about the subject of women’s sexuality just really makes us Americans uncomfortable. Look at debates over women’s right to birth control, for example. But that intention backfires when you dedicate every episode to explaining how to ignore your feelings to keep a man. They like to say that they’re not saying any of their advice is healthy— instead, they’re only teaching you “how to play the game.” I thought this was the most insightful shit I had ever heard. It made sense to me; just because I don’t like “playing the game,” doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I had only two options: to finesse or be finessed, to play the game or get played. And then I realized the reason why “the game” is always going to exist is because the game is literally just sexism. Hookup culture restricts female agency in that decisions about the boundaries of the relationship are not typically thought of as being mutual. Sure, I felt as though I were reversing the roles. I felt like I was doing the manipulating and the lying and the unattachment and the not-caring, so why was I still so deeply unhappy with my sexual relationships? Because this “reversal of roles” was still a tangible effort to be viewed as attractive and desirable and “not like the other girls.” In my effort to reclaim my sexuality, I had simply found a new way to cater to androcentrism.

All of this is to say that hookup culture is just one more cultural product designed to make women compete with no way to win. There is never going to be a specific way to have or to not have sex in order to combat patriarchical confines; the idea that enforcing terms and conditions on female sexuality encourages female sexual agency is an ignorance we cannot afford to internalize. Rather, we can work to eliminate the cultural double standards that restrict female sexuality. There is room for both empowerment through choosing to have casual sex or choosing to not have casual sex; the point is that empowerment will come from choosing for yourself. Your sexuality and how you choose to express it should be just that: yours.