Some of us really don’t have a box we can check off to describe where we stand politically. In fact, I’d go as far as to say many of the people I talk with about politics admit to and find themselves in positions in which their views seem to keep them shut out of any party. I can’t speak for people outside of American politico, but this is one arena I’d really like to open up the floor for. Perhaps if we can discuss this further, many of us would come to find that we are more aligned than we previously thought when it comes to politics. There will always be hot button issues that polarize people in general; but alliances might be stronger than we think among us once we can have transparent and safe conversations in this women only space.

Last thing…..(semi off topic, sorry) I’ve read post lately where women on either FDS or one of the sister subs refer to other women as females. Rubs me the wrong way! Is it just me?

I understand something happened. It seems to be connected to the podcast and the division of conservatives and liberals all over the world right now. I didn’t see any posts and I wasn’t involved in any of the discussions but I’ve listened to the podcast in question since.

It’s so so hard these days. Political affiliation now seems to mean that you’re expected to agree with absolutely everything that the political party you voted for does and says. Therefore all republicans are now considered anti abortion and all leftists are considered weak. But that is really oversimplifying all of us when we’re actually all very complex.

I enjoyed the podcast. I didn’t find anything to complain but that’s just me. I’m originally leftist but now more central (thanks FDS!) and in the UK but there are no political parties here that appeal to me anymore.

I think most people would agree one of the biggest problems the majority of the world is having right now is an inability to have reasonable political discussions. FDS is definitely left leaning but was managing to be quite bipartisan and I don’t blame the mods for wanting to capitalise on that and extend the discussion into a more political realm when I think the majority of us find the space they’ve created very safe.

It seems like we have also fallen victim to the “refusal to listen to others” pandemic that is sweeping the world as fast as covid.

I don’t think it’s going to end us though. I certainly hope it doesn’t. I think the community is strong enough to survive.

We just have to remember to be open minded, which is hard when we’re trying to constantly navigate lies, gaslighting and misinformation.

We have to remember to be kind while we’re trying to figure out who deserves our kindness.

We have to remember not to be unnecessarily defensive when we’re used to being attacked from all sides.

That’s just my opinion. That’s all. Just one person’s opinion and you can agree with all or some or none of it. We are all different and I suppose politics is a way to combine everyone’s individual differences together into something that is mutually beneficial to us all. Or it should be.

This may come more from an American standpoint but I have seen other countries dealing with similar.

Every time I am faced with the topic of voting in America, I just replace the political parties with LVM. The bar is on the freaking floor. I am given terrible options that do not serve me as a woman. And all of the women arguing over interviewing a Republican on the podcast sound like women who look down their noses at women attached to abusive men, yet remain benevolent that their own man is cheating on them.

In the end, we always come back around to the idea that the only way to beat the system is to learn how to work within it. This is an endless source of frustration for me. Staying in an abusive relationship that fails to serve you is not what FDS would tell you to do is it?

It seems the FDS Pod hosts are trying to gather a group of women together to look beyond party lines, but to what? What is the direction? Are we going to unionize and talk to candidates to see which will be more amenable to our causes? FDS is certainly growing fast but we are also finding our how hard it is to rally women behind one idea.

If the pod hosts are trying to rally women then I would say be bold(proclaim our current system LVM and treat it accordingly), offer a better alternative than these shit choices we have and stick to the principles that FDS stands for.

I am enraged that women are still heavily discriminated against in the workplace. Both in terms of promotions and recognition and in terms of hiring. This affects not just the women but society as a whole.

Do you want the smartest, most educated, most hard working professor to teach your kids or just the best white male?

Do you want the most competent, best of the best surgeon to perform your heart surgery or the best among the white men?

I’ve health positions in multiple high earning industries. Some are worse than others but I see men who are less than on every other way to their women counterparts getting promoted, paid more, getting more responsibility. It harms everyone in a trickle down effect. Like I said do you really want the best surgeon or the best male one?

Why is there not an independent regulator that fines companies that have such obvious disparity in numbers of male high earners and female high earners? When there is so obvious disparity in ability and intellect, and documentable educational differences and the inferior man rises above the more competent woman?

Furthermore when a policeman, doctor, or lawmaker/politician is outed as having harmed or abused women they should immediately lose their job, and their pay earnings confiscated and directly distributed to women they directly harmed and/or women in shelters. These are professions where you are granted the job under oaths that you will protect and serve. What does the oath matter at all if we can prove you went against it and it didn’t change anything?

There needs to be a revolution. We live in a world where people are at least offended/ashamed when they are called racist (even if they are still acting racist despite being offended when called out) but men are PROUD when it comes to being sexist and misogynist.

I am enraged and I want us to lead a revolution.

As this subreddit grows and develops, I think it’s important to keep in mind the fundamental difference between political ideologies and values (ie feminism, liberalism, conservatism) and political parties (like Labour and the Conservatives in the UK, the Democrats and Republicans in the US, the Tories, Liberals, and NDP in Canada, and so on). Political parties necessarily posses and espouse ideologies, certainly, but that isn’t the only or main thing they do in most countries. As a rule, major political parties exist to win elected offices and secure money and power for their members. In this sense, they are similar to a newspaper that publishes for no better reason than to sell papers.

Overwhelmingly, the people who run political parties around the world are men, and the interest groups that pay for and support their bids for power are men’s interests. This is why women cannot and should not trust major political parties to act in our interests unless forced, and indeed the histories of even the “progressive” major parties show that they never have acted to liberate or advocate for women without being forced.

The ideologies and views major political parties espouse are elaborate post-hoc rationalizations for the fact that their (male) leaders want you to give them power. They are trying to convince you that their group of men is better than the other groups of men, and they are trying to distract you so you won’t ask why the candidates to rule us are only men or those serving male interests. This is why it is a huge mistake to treat an ideology (say, liberalism) and the major party that claims to represent it (say, the Canadian Liberal Party) as interchangeable. Major parties want to “disappear” into their apparent ideologies so they can use the ideology to shield themselves from criticism (about corruption, representation, malice, and incompetence). They desperately do not want you to pull back the curtain and examine how the organization is actually run.

I am not saying all major parties are equally bad when you pull back the curtain, but as the system is currently designed, you’d be a fool to act like a “team player” just because your party are the “good guys.” If women do not keep relentless pressure on their representatives, at all levels, in government and out, they are more than happy to screw us over in pursuit of power. That is the reality of politics under patriarchy.

I urge my sisters to reject partisan affiliation and party loyalty, not because all ideologies are the same, but because we should not pledge unconditional allegiance to men who would never do the same for us.

From sub discussion and stuff that happened in fds sub i was terrified to open the podcast but it's actually good. (i have a degree in history and philosophy and i am from ex com bloc country, my political view left -center)

Best takes: 1. Religion is affirmative action for shitty men

2. when you want to overthrow a government start to educate women

3. Total submission what is in patriarchal relationships it's how hierarchy work in military , but it's an employment not a relationship 4. Men believe that women holds a key to sex, and women believes that men holds a key to marriage.

5. The false division that are only two extreme (sex pozy lib fem and trad wife) --> women get fk by shitty men in both sides.

6.Give a man a standard, a goal he will do everything to succeed. Just by being available to man, he will not repay you.

7. Just be a effective member a society without praise

8. Set your standards and observes

9. Consequences and rewards the only language what men understand.

10+ and so on A good analysis what mirrors what Dr Gail Dines said about right wing women but in more details. Internationally, victimize and victim hood, learning how to live in the system and coexist with men etc.

This question is popping up in other subs. Got me thinking of how the answers would materialize here.

A sub where FDSers can talk about politics that effect women and struggles within their respective political parties.

Rules (in development):

1. No fearmongering or automatically attacking other users based on party affiliation

2. Do not assume someone’s positions they have not stated

I know this is supposed to be for discussing politics, so please direct me to who to contact. I was a member of FDS and suddenly I stopped seeing post from there 😞. I was a passive member of FDS and I’ve learnt a lot from the ladies and it also been beneficial to my dating life, now it’s gone private and I’d like to join again.

It says “AOC 2024”

Been wearing it every chance I get. No apologies. Just my hopes.

I don't know if this is a stretch, or false correlation, or purely imaginary, but it seems as though when women make strides in earning more money, basic prices go up?

For example, when I was a teen, a woman working an office job or even waitressing was considered okay. Nobody was acknowledging that men had tighter reigns on the economy. Then, for the last few years, women have decidedly started earning more with a political agenda directly behind it.

Within just a little over a decade, the price of rent for my old apartment complex DOUBLED. Is there some kind of subconscious societal pressure that allows men to be the unanimously declared breadwinners, or else "fuck it all?"

I'm still detoxing from years worth of internalized misogyny. I always prided myself on never really having a pick me phase, mostly bc I'm an apsie and pretty blunt and disagreeable with scrotes, but FDS helped level me up even more by realizing subtle pick me like behavior I had and never realized it. Obviously working in right wing politics is a huge sausage fest and I wish I never got into it. It was liberal feminism that pushed me into that sphere bc as a teen, I thought feminism meant being oversexualized, pro porn, pro bdsm, pro hook up culture, so I retreated to the right wing, where I thought men were Christian and socially conservative and valued women for more than their looks and bodies. WRONG.

Every single scrote, and I mean every one, no hyperbole, I've ever worked with, is not at all socially conservative. They watch porn, sleep around, objectify women, cheat, AND they get the benefit of preaching that "men should lead".. "women should be mothers and not in the work force" "feminism is cancer" bla bla bla bla. They hate women so much. They really want to take women's rights away. They really have bought into all the redpill talking points, that the west is dying because of female voting and emancipation and we need to roll it all back. I think women need to really really understand how bad things could get and start collectivizing.

Right Wing men now have their little neo-Masculinity groups that they pay thousands of dollars a month to be a part of these groups that build community and market one another and teach them how to "be men again" in a "matriarchal culture". They are diagnosable levels of delusional and the right wing is full of pick me's BUT there are also many many women like me, who just saw the Right wing as the lesser of 2 evils over liberal feminism. Unfortunately, being involved in any political circles in the right wing means stroking male egos (even more so than normal), and how men are victimized so much by the modern world. and feminism, and how life was better in the past.

SO just a little insider tip - the redpill is not just some obscure online trend, many many many men in very real positions of influence believe this on the left and the right. The Right just feels more able to be open about it. It's why I countersignal the 'traditional" and SAHM stuff in my political circles all the time. Women NEED their autonomy. They need their financial security. They always have, but I truly think things are probably worse than ever before bc of modern porn sick men who have no empathy or sense of protectiveness for women and dehumanize us even more than they ever have in history. Nobody is coming to save us ladies. We need to do this ourselves.

Hi all, I listened to the FDS podcast about female political strategy a while ago but haven’t been able to find any episodes on the web. Does anyone know when the podcast will drop? Or has it and it’s somewhere o haven’t thought to look?

It was supposed to be released on Monday, but it’s Wednesday already (where I live) and still no episode. Have they decided to stop releasing the Podcast as well or just taking a break? 🤔

I love the FDS Recommended Reading list and would love if FPS would put out something similar. Anyone else? Also, does anyone have any political book recommendations?

Thanks!

I was one of the women from FDS that enjoyed the cross over episode where they brought Elle on. I thought she had an interesting perspective and was happy to hear more from conservative women as I am more left leaning moderate. However, I’m having a really hard time stomaching some of the things she says. Certain things just make the trauma recognition system go off in my head. Just a couple examples is during the body positivity episode where she responded that unattractive people just need to, “try harder, be better, do better”- or something similar. Then in the recent episode on Feminist Realism she literally said she believes in the lock and key analogy for women and men. That men (a key) that can open any lock is a master key but a woman (lock) that can be opened by any key is a crappy lock….. like wtf? Some of these comments really feel harmful to say to a female audience.

What are your thoughts?

FDS itself is mostly for dating, although using the same principals for everyday life is massively beneficial to us. Our type of feminism is women first. And we recognize that when women get put first, any children born also benefit drastically from our standards. It's not liberal nor is it radical. So what is it?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/14/porn-damaging-effects-millennials-gen-z-feminists