Can we just decide that “men” means.

#notallmen Yep, sorry. Can we collectively decide that when we make a "negative" post about "men" that we are talking about the global majority of people who have been socialized as men under a patriarchal society. That we are talking about big picture over arching aspects of male socialization that lead to fairly universal issues for women in relationships with these men? Additionally, female socialization in that same society conditions #notallwomen to tolerate, overlook and make excuses for these "male people socialized under patriarchy" (seriously, can we just say men?)

really, when I'm talking about "men" I'm really talking about patriarchy but that doesn't lend itself to dating discussions when we need to talk about actual real life concrete men who are acting badly because of the patriarchy. There have been many deeply good HVM in my life, I know at least two genuinely decent and good husbands and fathers. I'm hopeful that we will find good men to date and marry, but we need to avoid the shitty guys long enough to find the good ones, yanno??

Can we all come together and just make a decision that FDS is fundamentally a hopeful place because it is based on the premise that HVM exist and the best way to find them is to identify and avoid LVM. So can we finally stop chastising people for being pessimistic when they share their bad experiences? Can we appreciate that they took the time to be vulnerable in order to contribute to our collective pool of shared knowledge? That women have been sharing this kind of information through "gossip" for eons in order to protect ourselves from the very real dangers than #notallmen pose to us? For every red flag story or man rant I read there is something I can sidestep and avoid experiencing myself- why should we have to learn the hard way just to avoid the possibility of being pessimistic? Women have been so effectively silenced and shamed for sharing this information that now we are doing it to ourselves.

FDS is a deeply hopeful philosophy- how can we ask for change unless we beleive men are capable of change? How can we expect better unless we beleive better is out there? Pointing out bad behavior to warn others what to look out for comes with the necessary corollary that #notallmen are like that. Because why bother to describe any problem if we beleive it is the universal fixed nature of all men? Why bother to type it all out if that is the case? What's the point of avoiding LVM if they are all bad? The act of posting about negative experiences is by nature optimistic because it follows that this is something that you hope can be avoided by other women. You learned the hard way but because you shared maybe they don't have to. Therefor a rant about bad men proves that we believe it isnt all men.

I've seen a few posts getting feedback about being pessimistic but I think the rants and general "what to watch out for" posts are really helpful and what makes FDS a great resource and sisterhood. It can't all be handbook posts and positive stories. the real life examples are so helpful to me because they help me really internalize the FDS values in a way that the handbook posts can't. I can study the handbook like it's my phd and still get caught up making excuses for a guy but reading about the same red flag in a personally story helps me see that it's happening to me as well.

Lastly, these "negative" posts bring much needed feelings of solidarity into my life. Not only does it seem like there is a nearly universal and fixed set of issues and experiences #notallwomen tend to experience with #notallmen but I don't have a single irl friend who isn't a total pickme. Every one of them loves and supports me but they ultimately undermine my standards because they think having a man is that important and their standards are so far below mine that they just don't "get it". It's so easy to let your standards creep downward over time when all of the guys your friends are married to are worse than the guy you are dating, and the men on tv/movies/everywhere else. The handbook starts to feel kind of abstract and rigid without the real world examples the wonderful women here take the time to write. And they are so well written too, especially compared to the anti-grammar seen on dating profiles and Reddit!

Think about trying to quit smoking when all of your friends and coworkers and family are all smoking around you all the time. It's possible, but finding like minding people who are also quitting would be really helpful.

Lastly lastly: FDS is the only place I've found where I can just SPEAK. Speak my experience and my truth freely without having to self censor and edit everything I say with caveats and edits. I don't want to be "nice" when I'm here. I want to say fuck those men who treat us badly, men are trash. I don't want to have to say some men can be trash because patriarchy socialized men to act in trashy ways but #notallmen. Fuck being nice and mincing our words. Gossip like your life depends on it, because it does. Because #enoughmen kill their partners. And #evenmoremen just drag their partners down, hold them back, and steal their youth/happiness/free labor etc etc etc.

Please let's stop policing each other's language. We wouldn't bother to post here ofnwe thought it was all men. That actually seems like it should be obvious. Just let women be angry and express themselves.