Crossroads Podcast: Alex Cooper Is Pregnant, But What Do Her Disciples Say?
No one who has followed trends in the powerful world of podcasting was surprised by the headlines following Alex Cooper’s announcement that, after raising eyebrows by getting married to a stud Hollywood producer, she is now happily pregnant.
Consider the following background information from the buzzy New York Times story that served as the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast.
First, here is the double-decker headline:
You May Now Call Her Mommy
Alex Cooper, the host of the popular podcast “Call Her Daddy,” announced in an Instagram post that she was expecting her first child. The news shook the internet.
Why all the fuss? Oh, and “Crossroads” followers may wonder: What does this announcement by the ultimate cyberspace sex-positive feminist role model have to do with religion? That second question will take some explaining (listen to the podcast) and I will return to it.
First things first:
Cooper’s announcement — as with any personal news from the host who has built her entire brand around sharing details of her private life — threw her fans into a tizzy. Some posted reaction videos on TikTok of the moment they saw her announcement while others said they were “pretty shook” by the news. …
Cooper became one of the internet’s biggest personalities and one of the country’s highest-paid podcast stars in part by sharing the intimate, unfiltered details of her sex life, including her relationship with [Matt] Kaplan, whom she initially introduced to listeners as “Mr. Sexy Zoom Man” because they first met over a work-related video call. The pair were married in 2024.
Why would her millions of digital disciples be shaken by this?
For starters, her fans are called the “Daddy Gang.” Why is that? For years, they have heard Cooper preach “Call Me Daddy” podcast sermons stressing that, when it comes to girl-boss empowerment and down-and-dirty hook-up culture skills, single women should become the “Daddy,” the dominant force, in their own sexual adventures.
Consider this classic quote: “Kiss them on the first date, [sleep] with them the first night, like I don't care. You have to go based on what feels good to your body and what feels right to you." From the same search file, hear this: “I always want women to go for what they want, even if only men have occupied that position in the past."
Consider the following from a Harvard Independent essay by one listener. The contents here are mild, mild, mild, compared to most of the online commentary describing Cooper’s just-between-girls advice on sex:
On “Call Her Daddy,” Cooper executes a women’s version of “locker-room talk,” where women are comfortable with getting personal. Cooper wants to own locker-room talk — and do it better — as a form of reclamation. And she does it in a way where women and girls feel personally connected to both her and one another.
Most importantly, Alex Cooper has shown that silly, raunchy girl topics, like her specialized oral sex technique, which she famously referred to as the “Gluck Gluck 9000,” can be a multimillion-dollar media empire that is taken seriously by traditional media, which then destigmatizes these topics.
Now, here is the question to ponder: Why were some "Daddy Gang” members in a “tizzy” or even upset about these happy pictures of a beautiful (rich) young bride, her handsome (rich) young-ish handsome husband and her baby-bump in a (rich) “family” photo?
This would have been an interesting angle to investigate. My take: Were some of the single-women who have followed Cooper’s doctrines about solo adventures, abortion rights, hook-up culture morals and personal empowerment curious to know why she had taken this new tack?
She was not, pray tell, being hypocritical because the heart of her social-media work has always been freedom of choice. Now she was merely making a different choice (a choice that might not be available to many of her listeners).
She was not ashamed of her earlier choices and now she is not ashamed of her new approach to life, romance and sex. Some might say that her gospel is “choice” and being a radical individualist, just like everybody else.
I found one publication — today’s version of Newsweek — that tapped into some of the online debate and even rage linked to this story. However, that material fell into the popular “conservatives pounce” hook for a news story. The headline: “Conservatives Accuse Alex Cooper Of Being a ‘Fraud’ Over Pregnancy Reveal.”
While Khloe Kardashian, Kesha and Taylor Lautner and others voiced love and support for the soon-to-be mom, some conservatives offered different reactions. See these examples:
The political commentator Link Lauren wrote in a post viewed 4.8 million times: “As I’ve said, she tells her audience to be promiscuous and have sex with strangers. Meanwhile, she’s living the white picket fence dream with a traditional family. She needs the young girls who follow her to stay single and immature, otherwise her entire business model collapses. She’s a fraud.”
The conservative influencer Isabel Brown shared in a post on X viewed over 60,000 times, “Genuinely so happy for any woman to experience the joy and purpose of motherhood—there’s nothing like experiencing that kind of love.
“Interesting, however, to see how many influential women in America today have built multimillion dollar empires encouraging promiscuity, abortion, and avoiding marriage at all costs because it’s somehow ‘beneath women’… All while falling in love, getting married, and having babies themselves.”
The author Gina Florio wrote in a post viewed over 2 million times, which read in part, “Even if you don’t see anything morally wrong with the hookup culture that Alex Cooper praises on her show, young women would be smart to understand the real world, and that you have a much greater chance at locking down a high value man when you’re younger and a bit more austere.”
News consumers seeking an essay built on this perspective can turn to this Ashley McGuire feature for the website of the Institute for Family Studies, under this headline: “Alex Cooper Built an Empire on Misleading Young Women.”
Here is a key chunk of that. This is long, but it offers a point of view that would have added depth to mainstream coverage.
Cooper has described her podcast as: “a bunch of predominantly women that are excited to engage in a roller coaster where we don’t know what happens next.”
Except that we do know what happens next: STIs, unplanned pregnancies, abortions, infertility, emotional damage, and the general destruction of dating and marriage, leaving people lonely and uncoupled much later into life than they hoped.
Despite more data than ever on the damage of the hook-up culture, Cooper has gotten rich promoting it. And now she has opened the trap door and escaped at least some of the consequences of her lies by doing the very thing she profits from encouraging women not to do: getting married and becoming pregnant right away. These two things are luxuries for young, beautiful, educated, and wealthy women still in their fertile years. But unfortunately for the countless women who follow her advice, when the bill comes, they will have nothing but heartache and regret.
Even the ordinary denizens of social media know this. As one X user wrote:
“alex cooper turning ‘call her daddy’ into straight mommy content after years of pushing hookup culture and zero consequences is the biggest grift in podcast history. she made millions telling girls to sleep around then quietly locks down a rich producer for the perfect pregnancy glow-up modern feminism stays winning on both sides while the fans who followed her advice stay single and broke.”
Another X user called her actions “incredibly subversive.”
It is subversive, and it’s a part of a broader trend wherein political and social elites aggressively push anti-marriage and anti-family agendas, even as they increasingly return to these core institutions in their own lives and benefit from the stability that marriage and family life provide.
Should The New York Times and others have included a few Cooper critics, even some from (#triggerwarning) religious groups that take traditional stands on sex, marriage, hook-up culture, etc.?
Another question: Should editors have asked why visiting the “Call Her Daddy” influencer was an essential stop in the White House campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris? For starters, single women are, at this point, one of the most powerful, if not THE most powerful, voting blocs in the Democratic Party.
Scan this transcript of that podcast, which indicates that at least half of this friendly duet focused on abortion rights or “choice” broadly declined.
Early on, there was this quotable exchange:
COOPER: I'm curious. You don't do too many long-form interviews. What made you want to do Call Her Daddy today?
HARRIS: Well, I think you and your listeners have really got this thing right, which is one of the best ways to communicate with people is to be real and to talk about the things that people really care about. What I love about what you do is that your Your voice in your show is really about your listeners. And I think, especially now, this is a moment in the country and in life where people really want to know they're seen and heard and that they're part of a community, that they're not out there alone. And so I'm really glad to be with you.
The assumption is that normal “Call Her Daddy” content is drawn from the real lives of the listeners. Thus, a female Democrat seeking the presidency would need to salute that lifestyle.
Now, in the podcast, I said that it was highly unlikely that any elite-newsroom editors would pause, after hearing about Cooper’s pregnancy and the digital reactions, and say: “Huh. I wonder if there is a religion angle in this story?”
I doubt anyone would have asked if some Cooper disciples were in a “tizzy” because she may, in her deeds, have abandoned them. After all, Cooper had, in a way, been offering her listeners sex-positive rites and sacraments. Now, she was acting like a sex-positive heretic, even though her beliefs — personal choice, choice, choice — were the same.
Why would editors pause to ask if Cooper might be a hypocrite of some kind?
Let’s turn this around. What if evidence emerged that one of the relatively rich, superstar “trad wives” online was secretly hoping from bed to bed or committing other major violations of her conservative religious beliefs? Would that be treated as mainstream news?
Also, if an “anti-choice” woman was found to have made wild sexual choices, that would be hypocrisy. It would — for many valid journalistic reasons — be important to interview critics of the sinful trad wife on both the cultural left and right. That would certainly be important material in this news story.
Meanwhile, it’s hard to be a hypocrite when preaching the gospel of choice. Yes, Cooper is young, beautiful and rich and has choices that other women may not have. But she is simply saying: These are my choices. Tune in tomorrow for more lessons on the moral choices that lead to sexual liberation and happiness.
You see, it’s much easier for people to be hypocrites and, make elite-media news, when they have been preaching that God has said some choices are sinful, while other choices are blessed or even sacraments. It’s news when believers of this kind violate their ancient doctrines and infuriate their followers. Correct?
Just asking.