In this episode of The Feminist Reclamation, Daddy Heather and Miss Rose Violet wade straight into the prickly topic of “toxic femininity” and strip it down to what it really is: internalized misogyny dressed up as good behavior. They unpack how messages like “that’s not very ladylike” train girls from childhood to make themselves small, pretty, quiet, and safe for men, while men are allowed to be “boys” without accountability. They link this to the “mother wound,” toxic nurturing, and the impossible expectations placed on mothers in a capitalist, patriarchal culture that demands total self-sacrifice and then blames women when they inevitably fall short.

Heather and Rose dig into how these patterns poison femme spaces, from women’s groups to the kink scene, where scarcity mindsets and competition are weaponized to keep women policing one another instead of building sisterhood. They talk about comparison, judgment, neurodivergent masking, and the way patriarchy turns information, credit, and beauty standards into control mechanisms. Throughout, they offer a different blueprint: name the cage, refuse forced ranking, practice cooperative leadership, share information freely, and let each person define their own femininity and power, especially within kink dynamics.

If you’ve ever felt yourself shrink around other women, judged a “too confident” femme, or struggled to reconcile your feminism with how you were raised to be a “good girl,” this conversation will hit you right in the nervous system and hand you language to start breaking those bars.