Call Her Daddy…Unless You’re Actually Queer

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“At Call Her Daddy we always talk about being a savage, a fucking hustler, A GODDAMN DADDY.” I am a simple girl, and there are actually no words in the English language that will get me more hyped up than Alex Cooper’s iconic Call Her Daddy intro.

 Considering Cooper’s strong opposition to gender roles and the boxes that society categorizes people–specifically women–into, the fact that Call Her Daddy is so borderline homophobic comes as a shock.

 In Call Her Daddy’s defense, the top-ranking (most listened to podcast for women, actually) podcast has been through some tumultuous fucking times, to say the least. Now a national phenomenon, the podcast began with two roommates, Sofia Franklin and Alex Cooper, recording in their shitty New York City apartment. The podcast was later picked up by Barstool Sports, and most recently, Spotify.

 In its beginnings, Call Her Daddy was a way for Cooper and Franklin to rant about their lives, talk about all the sex they have, and give their followers advice. Since Franklin left the podcast and it was picked up by Spotify, the podcast’s trajectory has changed quite a bit. Now, CHD remains mildly raunchy, but has a larger focus on sex-positivity, female empowerment, and interviewing B-list celebrities (rip Hailey Bieber). 

 As a super hot, super toxic, and super sexually active (read: has had sex like once, maybe) girl, I obviously fell in love with CHD. To be fair, I fell in love with it the way I love Selling Sunset or Keeping Up with the Kardashians, where on some level, their content is wholly unrelatable, and I like to live vicariously through Cooper and Franklin.

 That being said, as I got more and more comfortable with my sexuality, and eventually realized I was a lesbian, I just couldn’t relate anymore.

 For anybody that likes to participate in “girl” culture– you know, the gossiping and hyperfixation on appearance– Call Her Daddy has quite the appeal. Every episode feels like you’re chatting with your girlfriends about your feral behavior over the weekend, and their response to any relationship problem is to cheat on him.

 Key word here: him.

 Despite its objective of empowering women, CHD’s episodes largely focus on women in their relation to men. Even now, in Cooper’s newest era, we’re seeing interviews from celebs like Hailey Bieber and Julia Fox mostly focusing on guys. Like Alex, there are more interesting things about girls than who they are sleeping with. This makes Call Her Daddy not only mildly homophobic, because c’mon, how hard can it be to acknowledge gay people in any one of your 100+ episodes, but super fucking sexist.

 I spent hours listening to the podcast, wishing they would talk about ways of psychologically torturing women, just like they spoke about men (#gayandtoxic). But I have come to realize that mainstream media is just not that evolved yet.

 Who knows though, Cooper’s most recent interview features the current star of lesbian tiktok drama, Fletcher, so maybe times are changing after all.

 Until then, if you want a very sexy and fun podcast that doesn’t ignore queer issues, feel free to listen to Jerk’s very own Hit or Bitch podcast.