'This podcast framed itself as a debate on feminism. It was the opposite.'

On the surface, it seemed like a progressive concept. 

Three women, all from different ideological positions, debating the ways in which feminism does and does not serve us in 2025. 

Stephen Bartlett, host of the wildly popular Diary of a CEO podcast, is joined by Deborah Frances-White, author and host of The Guilty Feminist podcast, along with journalist Louise Perry, who wrote the book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, and therapist/author Erica Komisar on his show for a lengthy debate entitled "Is Feminism Betraying Women? The Hidden Risk of Casual Sex!"

Great! Feminism, like all other social and ideological movements, needs to be able to reflect and adapt. It's why we talk about 'waves' of feminism, and more recently (though not recently enough in white notions of feminism), intersectionality.

Putting aside for a moment the fact that there are only white women represented on the panel, it at first seems like a lively discussion, if nothing else.

Louise Perry's passion point is that the sexual revolution, and the invention of the pill, has actually pressured women to engage in casual sex that makes them unhappy. She believes women should remain virgins until they're engaged (!!) and that we're in an age of "extreme female promiscuity" that leads to psychological harm for most women. 

Erica Komisar believes that we're in a culture that "promotes polygamy" and that the dissolution of traditional marriage, along with mothers entering the workforce and putting their children in daycare before the age of three, is "greatly harming them".

So far, so … un-feminist. 

And then there's Deborah Frances-White, whose lived experience of growing up in a religious cult where she had no freedom, sexual autonomy or choice led her to embrace feminism in later life. As she eloquently puts it: "I know what more rules for women look like. I've lived it. Women do not want that."

For the most part, the debate follows much of the tried and tested white feminism debates that we've all heard. 

Women don't really want sexual liberation, even when they explicitly tell you they do. 

Listen: MMOL explains the emergence of Evie and why we're seeing a growth in conservative women's mags right now. Post continues after podcast.

Working mothers are giving children permanent psychological wounds.

The pill wasn't the freedom from oppression we all thought it would be.

For her part, Deborah Frances-White holds her own as the sole proponent of modern feminism, making some solid points about the reality of marriage not being the utopia the other two panelists attempt to sell it as, and pointing out that the examples they use to back up their viewpoints are both flawed or deliberately cherry-picked to make a point.

But the debate isn't really the point here — and it never was.

While the episode was dressed up as a discussion about whether feminism serves women, what quickly becomes evident is that it's really about whether feminism hurts men.

The manosphere — dominated by male podcast hosts whose meandering, multi-hour episodes run the gamut from biohacking to politics and everything in between — has a reputation as being an online space where young men are increasingly radicalised. That reputation is born out in the data: Sydney University research suggests podcasts can be used to sway young male voters to the far right.

To give him his due, Stephen Bartlett's Diary of a CEO podcast enjoys a more balanced listenership among the genders, as well as in the mix of guests he has on, but here's where it gets icky.

This episode was a dog-whistle to the incels and trad-bros who beat the 'male loneliness' drum as an argument for why women should get back in the kitchen and stop crushing men's feelings with their silly notions of independence and career fulfilment. 

It's why, in an episode supposedly aimed at understanding the way feminism advances the cause of women, Bartlett casually pulls out a report on the declining mental health of men and asks Deborah Frances-White what she thinks we should do about it.

Because in 2025, clearly the only answer to the crisis of mental health being experienced by men, is for women to stop progressing.

"I try to be a good man," Bartlett informs his guests at one point, before asking them to describe to him what they think a good man is. 

Um - do you want a medal?

But the final smoking gun that proves exactly what the real agenda of the episode was? The episode title changed when it was put on YouTube. 

We know that an increasing number of people consume podcast content via Youtube. According to 2024 data from Edison Research, around 33 per cent of podcast listeners choose to consume that content on Youtube. The gender breakdown on Youtube skews male in general (54 per cent in Australia), a number that increases when we talk about podcast consumption in general.

The episode title on both Spotify and Apple Podcasts, for those listening at home, was Is Feminism Betraying Women? The Hidden Risk of the Sexual Revolution!

On YouTube? Where he knows his audience skews male? The episode was titled: DEBATE: Is Feminism Creating Lonely, Broken, Sexless Men?!

The entire ordeal is 2.5 hours of incel-bait, dressed up as a robust discussion, and every guest on the panel should be furious that they were manipulated into it.

The failings and successes of feminism, and the way it needs to evolve in the future, is a worthy discussion to be had at any time. 

But a thinly-veiled attempt to charge feminism with the destruction of male mental health, against a backdrop of women being murdered by men at a rate of two per week both here and in Bartlett's home country of the UK, is abhorrent. 

Because, as usual, this 'feminist' debate turned out to be less about women's liberation, and overwhelmingly about men's liberation from their own accountability. 

Feature Image: The Diary Of A CEO.