This chapter investigates the mechanisms of sexist domination and women’s apparent complicity in their own oppression in the Vindication of the Rights of Woman. It takes as its starting point Wollstonecraft’s claim that aristocratic women are as birds in cages who swap their freedom and reason for clothes and food. I ask whether this can be interpreted as a form of adaptive preferences, and, secondly, existentialist bad faith. I argue that while these theories are useful for understanding Wollstonecraft’s schema, they do not suffice to explain it.