A backlash against “pink pill” is beginning to emerge online, fuelled by concerns about the suspicion and transactional dating advice it has brought into women’s relationships. The idea that “women are the prize” creates unhealthy standards, Klaudia Evora says in a TikTok video. Another creator, Lynette Tesaga, says pink pill ideology stems from “pain” and trauma. Zoë Mills shares that being “pink-pilled” left her with the expectation of Chanel bags on the first date, whilst Reagen Josephine calls it “trad-wife propaganda that has been repackaged”. So, how did pink pill ideas take root in Western culture, and how has the “femosphere” shaped online discourse about women’s relationships?
The origins of pink pill feminism
Pink pill emerged as women’s response to incel “red pill” ideology, dressed in women’s empowerment. Its rise coincided with the decline of the previously dominant trend of “girlboss” feminism which promoted equality in relationships through personal independence, financial autonomy, and not relying on a man. Yet, with the dramatic ascent of the top 1%, who have claimed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth created since 2020, the prospect of economic mobility became less accessible. Further, t, to women’s healthcare, male violence against women continued at “epidemic levels” in the UK (whilst a “silent epidemic” haunts the US); many women were angry.
A growing nihilism towards gender roles, money, individual power, and political change bled into social media spaces, and a vacuum opened up. Influencers like the Wizard Liz, Shera Seven and Kanika Batra began to fill this space, offering varying guidance to Gen Z women through the challenges of dating (amid economic and social crises). They gained millions of followers by talking about how to prioritise yourself anduse relationships with men to your advantage. They criticised liberal feminism for forcing women into masculine roles in relationships. These influencers presented dating as a game against a dangerous opponent. Winning includes cash, flights, flowers, and paid bills. Whilst girlboss feminism told women to avoid economic dependence on men and find purpose in their careers, the femosphere offers a calculated alternative – to extract capital.
The risky business of heterosexual relationships
Because the pink pill movement’s impact has not matched the documented impact of “red pill” ideology on women’s safety, its psychological dangers have often been overlooked. Education magazine TES recently published a piece warning about how pink pill can promote unhealthy relationships in schools, outlining how its values go under the radar. I spoke with Dr Jilly Kay, a senior lecturer in communication and feminist media, who says that the movement pulls young women in by identifying “important and legitimate concerns – such as misogyny within dating culture and the pernicious influence of the manosphere, and men’s tactical dehumanisation and manipulation of women”. As Dr Kay explains, pink pill offers “reactionary solutions” based on waking up to “brutal truths” of biological sex differences. This bioessentialism implies that misogyny is fundamentally unchangeable. Dr Kay says it tricks women because it “is a doppelgänger of feminism – on the surface it looks and sounds like feminism, but ultimately it undermines feminist values of liberation and gender justice”. One of how pink pill undermines feminist values is through transactional relationships.
American YouTuber and author of Sprinkle Sprinkle: How To Date a Provider and Avoid a Dusty, SheraSeven, whose full name is Leticia Padua, gained social media engagement with the viral phrases: “sprinkle sprinkle” and “all men cheat”. The latter phrase was soon co-opted in pink pill spaces. Shera teaches that since loyalty is a rarity in heterosexual relationships, women should shift their priorities: “It’s not about how to stop him from cheating”, she says, “it’s about how to capitalise on their mistakes”. In another video, pink pill-inspired influencer Sukaina Benzakour says “you need to charge men to send DMs” because men “see you women as objects of desire”. The Wizard Liz also enforces this concept in her video called “stop dating broke guys”, saying, “I don’t need to bring anything other than my presence, my personality and my beauty.”
The idea of heterosexual relationships being unavoidably transactional has even been popularised in activist circles. British feminist and author of What a Time to Be Alone, Chidera Eggerue, suggests that marriage should come with land and money as a kind of reparations, especially considering the statistical risk of violence that men bring to women’s lives. Eggerue describes men as our “apex predator” and implies that if women choose marriage, they should at least gain financial security from it. In the Facebook comments of her Oxford Union speech on marriage, one woman writes: “She’s right. [marriage] is a business contract and always was.” The result is a bleak proposition: if patriarchal relationships cannot be confronted, women should at least profit from them. Following this logic, women’s desires for love and connection become secondary.
What would radical feminists think of pink pill?
Pink pill is often presented by its followers as a radical, reactionary movement. It calls for a cutthroat approach to a patriarchal world and criticises liberal feminism for its maintenance of the status quo. Pink pill creators would probably agree with radical feminist Robin Morgan that liberal feminism only offers women a “piece of the pie as currently and poisonously baked”. Inversely, though, what would radical feminists make of pink pill?
Author of the canonical Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centre, bell hooks was an advocate for anti-racist, intersectional feminism and for men’s allyship to the feminist cause. She explored heterosexual dynamics in her seminal work: The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. hooks described her experience as a feminist emerging in an era of intense ‘male bashing’. Identifying herself as a visionary radical feminist, hooks challenged the ‘misguided notion’ that men were ‘the enemy’. In 1984, she wrote a chapter titled ‘Men: Comrades in Struggle’, which urged ‘advocates of feminist politics to challenge any rhetoric which placed the sole blame for perpetuating patriarchy and male domination onto men’.
hooks outlines that multiple realities exist: where men oppress women, people of all genders are damaged by rigid gender roles, and women play a part in upholding them. hooks described psychological patriarchy as a ‘dance of contempt’, a form of connection that replaces intimacy with ‘complex, covert layers of dominance and submission, collusion and manipulation’. This dance of contempt echoes pink pill sentiments. On the other hand, radical American feminist Andrea Dworkin, known for her activism about sexual violence against women, insisted that women continue to believe in men’s humanity “against all the evidence”. In her book, Right-Wing Women, she empathises with women aligning with patriarchal dynamics for survival, meanwhile calling for the overhaul of these dynamics. Coming from contrasting sides of the radical feminist spectrum, hooks and Dworkin are at times utopian and at others, pessimistic. But pink pill’s fatalism – giving up on social change due to dire circumstances – is nowhere to be found in either radical feminist’s liberation efforts.
Pink pill may have presented itself as a doppelgänger of feminism, an alternative to previous waves of feminism that didn’t deliver. But according to media experts such as Dr Kay, pink pill ideology only ends up reinforcing patriarchal roles. Its apoliticism is antithetical to the views of Andrea Dworkin, whilst its rejection of emotional intimacy clashes with hooks’ vision of a world in which heterosexual relationships can be transformed. Furthermore, pink pill’s reliance on fatalism and bioessentialism undermines hope and constrains diversity of expression, both of which are essential to the feminist movement. As Dr Kay says, “we need to demand the impossible!”