Most of us have been pick me's and have learned better. The way I see it, FDS helps us level up but as in life, there is really just the journey not the destination. I notice a lot of if not downright hate, also contempt for men. They deserve it and I get it. But where is there room for learning which must include making mistakes, understanding where you went wrong, and doing something different? I hope there is room for kindness, understanding, and space for making mistakes and learning.
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Absolutely! Please don’t associate radical feminism with male contempt and/or separatism. Most radfems will talk about how they worry for the young boys who will grow into hateful misogynists because of toxic male socialisation. These women are full of compassion and love, empathy and kindness. I implore you to read Gail Dines’ writing, read Simone de Beauvoir, Andrea Dworkin, Bell Hooks (especially Hooks’ book The Will to Change).
I think it’s important to be mindful that there are A LOT of traumatised women on FDS who, to be brutally honest, haven’t done much of the level up work yet and are still fatalistic in their views about men because their trauma is still so fresh and unaddressed. No judgement, I’ve been there!
The original sub had great posts about this directed to the separatists/WGTOW ladies. There are limited female only spaces online so a lot of separatists come to FDS for the community. I cannot stress this enough though, radical feminism is about women’s liberation.
The women who align with radical feminism are still human, with flaws and biases unique to the individual. Some may be separatist or even straight up hateful of men. Heck, some even have their own internalised misogyny where they think women can’t be cruel or dangerous, or the type that are fixated on other women’s makeup/clothing choices instead of the common goal of liberating women from male tyranny. However, one woman is not representative of an entire collective. She has her own personal experiences which have shaped her views.
It is also important to remember that many women here are only just realising the full and parasitic nature of patriarchy. That it infects almost every part of their life. Some natural reactions to that realisation can either be to detest the reality and become fatalistic, or to reject it entirely and live in ignorance. Radical feminism is neither of these. It is to accept the reality and take action to improve it for women.
Why is women's liberation movement the only movement that is not allowed to show contempt for their oppressors, but also have to show understanding and STRIVE to fix them 🤔 even though their oppressors who are being "oppressed" still view them as second class citizens based on their sex 🤡 We don't hear black people asking other black people why they have contempt for their oppressors and that da whyte man is oppressed too by white supremacist socialization- he's actually a good boy you just need to dismantal the oppressive system for him too! Weird It's like that pickme build a man nature never leaves a woman
Noo this gotta be a joke or a male lurker...
FDS is one of the kindest spaces I know of... for women. Unlike the rest of the world, where women are thought of second, if at all.
One of the few spaces where women can talk freely about their experiences, and you're coming in with "We NeeD to thINK aBout THe PoOr MeN" ???
Why are we always trying to humanise those who dehumanise us?
as a self-confessed radfem, i hold a lot of contempt for men because they have been coddled by society for far too long and also especially by their fellow men. everytime i feel like maybe i need to be kinder, i'm reminded by men around me that NoTaLlMeN. 🙄 so no thank you, i will continue to comfortably put the burden on men to prove to me that they are not scrotes.
empathy for men has been women's worst enemy.
Men have had centuries to course-correct. Not only they haven't done it, but they chose to lean in harder with their misogynistic and violent behaviors. I completely understand why many radfems have trust issues with the male sex and prefer to avoid them altogether.
I think I understand where you're coming from and it shows that you have a huge heart, and a natural kindness and benevolence towards your fellow humans. And I love that so much. However, it is not your job, or my job, or any woman's job to teach men anything at all. We do not owe them that emotional labor. We don't owe them our bodies, our kindness, our attention, our nurturing, our love, or anything else.
Men excel at pretending to be helpless and silly when it comes to understanding how their actions affect us. Their bad behavior goes unpunished because too many women project their own loving heart and motivations onto men. But know this: even many LV men live by a strict honor code towards other men. We hear it all the time in their repulsive sayings, like "bros before hoes" and "guy code." They will actually make sacrifices to avoid breaking that code or hurting their brothers even if it costs them personally. This proves that men know how to behave; they know how to do the right thing. They are fully aware that their actions can have devastating consequences for others, and many of them work tirelessly to avoid committing that kind of dishonor towards other men.
Now, ask yourself why these same men are suddenly oblivious, clueless, naive, ignorant, or otherwise lack agency in their dealings with women. Ask yourself why you feel compelled to make excuses for a guy who can rewire an entire house, repair a complicated machine with his bare hands, engineer marvelously complex structures and chemicals and technologies, build massive gleaming cities housing millions of people...but just can't seem to figure out how to not treat women like they are less than human, the poor silly goose! If only we invested more time in him, gave him more chances to hurt us, just let him have one more shot--then he'd finally understand! He'd get it! He'd stop doing these hurtful things!
Queen, he does get it. He knows. He does it anyway. HE DOESN'T CARE. Or if he's particularly odious, hurting you is part of the thrill.
Do not fall for weaponized incompetence, which extends to far more than just pretending not to know how to load a dishwasher or clean a bathroom. Men know what they are doing when they do it; they simply don't care enough to stop. Or, if they hate women (and many men truly hate women), hurting you is one of the goals of that behavior. The only defense against this is to stop making excuses for men, stop pretending that their malicious or heartless behavior is anything but what it is--unacceptable. You wouldn't take it from a girlfriend, so why allow it from a man? The only way to win is to ghost, block, and delete low value people from your life.
Men have to take the responsibility upon themselves to change. They need to be mature enough to realize their privilege and the abuse we as women suffer from them. They need to realize FDS’s harsh stance is completely justified given how they take our lives and freedom away daily not to mention the constant social and cultural policing and belittling. Any man too hung up on himself to go through the hard process of unlearning and becoming a true HVM deserves all our vitriol. A HVM will not need us to coddle him and make him feel like a gOoD gUy. As women, we need to demand better of men and put consequences forth when they don’t reach our expectations . If you treat us this way we will actively hate you, avoid you, and take measures to keep other women away from you as well. This angers men who feel entitled to our bodies. HVM have empathy and do not take offense because they know the harshest things either don’t apply to them or they know they’ve changed and rightfully regret and are embarrassed of their past behavior. They know they deserve it all.
Outrage, memes and anger is what drives engagement. This is an online forum and we had the same problem on the sub. A man bashing meme will get more clicks and comments than a long good reflecting post. FDS is not a religion or a cult. It's a dating strategy. We also get to be angry here and I think women deserve that.
I think I have a lot of contempt for men for a good reason, and from personal experience. That said, I also know there ARE good men in spite of the flaws of the peers. I have a good father, and I think that helps a lot. Women who have had poor relationships with their fathers, especially if those fathers were absent or abusive, so often get labeled as having "daddy issues" - when those issues were the fault of the FATHER, not the daughter. That said, even in my good father, there are traits about him that are not entirely high value. He's a product of his generation, and his socialization. All men are, just like women. We're all human, regardless of gender, and we are limited by nature and nurture, and it's important to remember this in dealing with any value man.
The best course is to take a middle route. Don't be someone who straight up hates ALL men, but you have every right to treat them with suspicion, every right to expose depravity and poor behavior. You cannot afford to, as a woman, see men as a group as your allies. They are not. By and large, they are not. Handfuls of them are. But none of them can truly be 100% on your side. See their humanity of course, they will make mistakes just like you, but keep the majority of them at arm's length. I hate that it's like this, but it is, and until men naturally behave better, or are socialized better, it has to be.
I see now what you mean but I think it's unreasonable to expect "kindness" towards men from women here. The visceral reaction women here have is very much warranted. You can make a personal choice to be kind to men but you cannot expect other women to make the same choice too. I'd rather direct this kindness to other women and most importantly towards myself and maybe to some chosen HVMs. Men already took enough from most of us here to give them a drop of anything more.
Could you please elaborate on these mistakes that you keep alluding to men make in your post? Are we in the ballpark of my boy toddler forgot to pick after himself to my 55 yo husband of 30 years forgot the same thing? Or, are we in the ballpark of my husband left me after extracting 6 kids off me, only to proceed onto subjugate the whole world? Woman, all the so called unicorn like HVM from real life also saw your poem for these men with mistakes and laughed at th condition of some women in this modern era because of 'men who get by making mistakes'. So, while your call for men to level up is not only futile, there's a whole world of secure people doing just fine. Not all of us have Savior complex issues here, you know. You can keep your trope of broken men, be kind in the wrong places, then keep giving up over and over again. Try using your kindness in places that would matter. The world appreciates when you are kind at work, charity etc. People around you would know if you are being all dumb and trying to give up on wrong people. Why begin in the first place? You may or may not take the above with a grain of salt.
OP is annoyed because some of us didn't like her last pickme-ish post.
I am truly perplexed. The same women who understand there are billion dollar corporations/forces using high level data from psychological research to literally hijack and f*ck the minds of girls and women in order to get them to buy into sh*t that only harms themselves and others (beauty industry, fake empowerment, diet culture, sociak media, anything associated with libfem bs) do not grasp a similar thing is going on with men. Literal billion dollar industries are using high level data from psychological research to hijack the psyches of boys and men, particularly with regard to very dangerous addictions ( gaming, porn, drugs, guns etc.). And the hijacking mind warp foisted on boys/men is even worse because it encourages and normalizes totally anti-human behaviors that truly work to destroy a socially functioning brain, thus leaving these dudes effectively in vegetable states.
I am not saying this is our fight or struggle. We have our own. But since this is a site dedicated to women *dating men* (or hoping to find men to date)!, there needs to be some level of humanity when considering who men are and the variety of truly horrible sh*t destroying their psyches starting at an age that is way too early to make them blameworthy (I heard the average age boys are exposed to porn now is SEVEN?!) . Men who don't consider the really shitty deal women and girls have been dealt are generally undateable because they are not grasping the full humanity of the people they want to date. Women who don't consider the really shitty deal men and boys have been dealt are equally undateable for the same reason. I do not think this means women should tolerate men's bad behavior. I am simply saying IF you are a woman and you want to date and eventually spend your life with a man, you are going to have to face the reality that not only are men very, very different from us (which makes sense...each sex is devoted to an entirely different species function ..that's why reproduction works), which in and of itself makes it difficult to mesh lives many times, but also ALL (yes, ALL men) are socialized with demons quite different from ours and they need to be given the same space and grace as we ask for to climb the uphill battle away from these traps. This is not a matter of kindness per se. This is a matter of humanity.
I expect a lot of downvotes for this, so this is written specifically for the women I know will be capable of receiving it.
Traumatized radical feminism is incompatible with having a healthy, high value relationship with masculine, healthy provider men. Sorry. You can't hate men or focus on the bad men of the world over the good ones, and still value masculinity and expect that victim energy not to leak into your dating life. I've never met a radfem who had a healthy relationship with men, or who didn't attract awful men into her life in some way.
I'm speaking as a former feminist who studied feminism academically in college for 8 years.
The foundation of radical feminism is the idea that femininity is an oppressive invention of patrairchy to keep women in their place, and a social construct (it is not, it is biologically innate to the female sex and this is observed across all animal species), and that men are oppressors of women and womanhood is inherently oppressive and men are tyrannizing women and women are victims, men have a rape gene, and men just do not respect women. These concepts are incompatible to healthy relationships with men, and yourself as a woman.
Does male violence against women exist? Of course. Does patriarchy exist? Of course. Can you separate yourself from both of these things? Yes, you can actually. The myth is that you can't.
Feminism is a tool that is needed to liberate women who are genuinely oppressed by laws that keep them uneducated, unable to work, unable to move freely, and tied to abusive men. Anything beyond the initial tool devolves into mentally ill discourse that's not worth our time.
Most radfems are extraordinarily traumatized and highly mentally ill. You will see in their circles discourse about how all fathers want to rape their daughters, all men are predators, makeup is oppression, all sex is rape, women are better than men, men are useless, and western women are somehow oppressed by the beauty industry.
Radical feminism has its roots in the right place, when you study it academically, it makes sense, but that is negated by the actual movement which is rooted in the trauma that most radfems have experienced in their lives which causes them to become completely unhinged about men and the reality of sex differences between men and women (which are vast).
Gender is not a social construct. Forced gender roles are. Gender roles come from when we had to survive as a tribe, they have nothing to do with oppression or men hating us. The solution to forced gender roles isn't abolishing gender, it's choosing which gender roles you want and which ones you don't want and moving on with your life and refusing the vicrtim narrative.