Are progressive/liberal/well-read men any better than others?

scooter_se · 2021-08-25T05:44:35+00:00

Any man who makes it part of his dating persona is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

PumpkinEnjoyment · 2021-08-25T05:22:22+00:00

In my experience, it's generally a facade. They adore the veneer of being considered a feminist, but despise giving up their misogyny. It's easy to read a book, but it's harder to take any of that information to heart or examine their own misogynistic principles.

Just because a man claims to be something doesn't mean he's any better than the rest.

jupitarianrise · 2021-08-25T04:31:43+00:00

Their facade. I am very suspicious of (all) men to be honest but especially the woke ones, those who mirror my interests and political views. I’ve met men who did it for sympathy, to look like the good guys, the allies, only to be misogynistic, rapey nvm in private. Men care a lot about their image, more than you think. The smartest (= worst) ones can be very calculated and have perfected their mask.

backforbeskar · 2021-08-25T04:39:08+00:00

Hard no. Woke guys are a fucking nightmare. They are low key virtue signaling because they WILL break all the boundaries once you’re in a committed relationship. These are the guys that wait for you to fall in love and then announce that they are poly and how liberated women can have threesomes. Stay away. Also, if they are super obsessed with blm, they’re probably racist and have zero poc friends.

WorkaholicParty · 2021-08-25T08:17:24+00:00

Their opinions should always be meaningless to you at the beginning. Everyone can talk, especially a man who wants to fuck you.

Never act impressed, fish for their opinions if you want and delineate your boundaries. If they start negotiating them and your standards, especially using woke talk, you'll know what to do.

HengroenAndLlamrei · 2021-08-25T05:15:38+00:00

Nope. It’s all free love and shit with them.

Some-Air9442 · 2021-08-25T04:35:01+00:00

“Woke” guys are often just compensating for their inner bad attitudes.

riricide · 2021-08-25T06:03:10+00:00

Difficult to say. I've met both types, but usually the decent ones aren't shouting from the rooftops about it because to them this is a way of life not a "personality trait" to show off.

Sidenote, watch Ramy on Hulu. It's about an infuriating man who virtue signals about being religious and trying so hard to be a good Muslim, but really is the fucking worst. They should make a series like that about the fake woke guys who are actually inconvenienced by true liberalism.

Amazing_Wolverine_37 · 2021-08-25T04:48:25+00:00

I'm going to be the odd one and just say it's not always a cover for something sinister. But it's usually myopic in its own right and devoid of intersectionality and nuance. Also so many men are ok, passive or whatever in their actions but let their buddies literally get away with murder. All men benefit from the patriarchy. Period.

ashcantcatchabreak · 2021-08-25T15:16:19+00:00

There’s a whole joke in leftist communities “yes he reads communist literature, but does he wash the f**king dishes?”

The answer is no, he doesn’t. Leftists and even “feminist” men are just the same as any other

Big-Respond8481 · 2021-08-25T11:46:56+00:00

Some men act woke to gain sympathy points from women, but are just misogynistic. They want women to be vulnerable with them so they can exploit us better.

And when they hurt us, they hide behind their social activism/good person mask and people will say: "You are a liar, he is not the kind of person to do that. Look he donated to charity for a woman's shelter."

Actions speak louder than words. A guy doesn't need to brag about his moral/ethical standpoint. If he really holds those views, it shows through consistent actions and his behavior in many different areas of his life.

If a man has "woke" all over his dating profile and he really tries to convince people that he truly, really is woke and an ally to women, he is probably not.

LWF3957 · 2021-08-25T08:09:42+00:00

If they don't walk the talk, they're using it to hide their abusive core.

If they're doing the hard stuff (like being vegan, not watching porn, going to therapy for their own trauma, delving deep inside themselves to figure out their flaws and actively work on them - aka the non-performative actions) (performative actions being going to marches (to meet women), or joining woke book clubs (to pick up women), or talking about how woke they are on OLD (to pick up women)) then they're probably not compensating or hiding. But most guys won't do this. It takes a strong man to check his ego like that. And it's part of the vetting process, because you don't want to be with someone who is incapable of self reflection and introspection.

dancedancedance7 · 2021-08-25T07:18:38+00:00

Passionate liberals (of both genders imo) are mostly virtue signalers. Unless those people actively contribute to a cause with their time or money, just blabbing about it to dating partners makes them "look good".

throwawayastrogirl · 2021-08-25T11:30:30+00:00

I don't trust the so called progressive men; they are the same right winged men only wrapped in a nice woke clothing. Men are the most privileged class on the planet, why would the so called progressive man sacrifice one bit of that privilege?

t3ddi · 2021-08-25T13:31:13+00:00

Malcolm X literally described Liberal men as wolves in sheeps clothing. Liberalism does not equal enlightened... an inability to see politics from either side is just a lack of critical thought.

lansburysoda · 2021-08-25T04:51:45+00:00

I’m suspicious of any man with strong political opinions re: feminism at this point—liberal or conservative

oliviasmoon · 2021-08-25T12:44:18+00:00

Oh dear, if I only had the time and desire to fully roast the woke Scrote I dated in undergrad. He was cheap. Porn sick. Alcoholic, which made him age like 20yrs in a span of 5yrs. Short. Cheater. Arrogant. I can go on and on. But I just get disgusted.

Oh and he got kicked out of grad school cause he was so pathetic.

turtleshame · 2021-08-25T14:38:10+00:00

I don’t think progressive / liberal / well-read are synonymous, so already I’m probably going to get some backlash here, but here’s my attempt at a nuanced answer.

On my scale of who I’d rather be trapped in an elevator with, I’ll pick the well-read lefty over the MAGA mullet man. I know I’ll enjoy the conversation more, and can short-hand basic concepts to leap to more stimulating topics. My conversations with more conservative men have centered around them trying to draw me into their epistemic bubble - which is both exhausting and ultimately frustrating, because at the end of the day there’s no there there, and they are frustratingly blind to it. These conversations usually end with, “so you’re just going to blindly believe your science then!” As if science is somehow my personal salad bar that I can pick and choose from. Replace science with history & CRT, rinse, lather & repeat.

With liberal so-called “woke” intellectuals, especially white intellectuals but it hits across lines, you run into the conflict between how they see themselves vs. how they actually are. They’re just too comfortable that they’re not The Problem so they can go on doing all sorts of problematic shit unexamined, because they have no bad intentions. Or any intention afaict 🙄. I am 100% sure you know exactly what I’m talking about. Is that better than a guy who watches Tucker Carlson & thinks Matt Gaetz is unfairly targeted by the FBI? Sure, but hopefully no one is fishing in that puddle either.

My point is that most men have never put in the work to examine their belief systems, which is a key component to being HV. Even those that are starting that work - for example, by reading Black feminist literature, might not be examining thier blind spots.

Frankly I love Black feminist literature, I think some of the best intellectual progress made is coming from that corner. There’s nothing inherently controlling about men who read feminist literature, it’s just a lot men are inherently controlling and will use anything they perceive as an opening to gain access to women’s bodies. I am more than a little amused (and slightly jealous) that you’re running into men who believe bell hooks and Kimberlé Crenshaw hold the secret to that success. Bless their hearts.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using that as a common interest, although as people have mentioned if you’re on OLD it’s possible people are simply adjusting their profiles to match yours. But fundamentally, it’s not a bad pool. It weeds out a certain type from the get go, leaving the remaining weeding up to you.

There was a good post about early boundary testing, maybe revisit that & introduce it earlier in your vetting process?

SkyWanderluster · 2021-08-25T17:34:08+00:00

Right wing men see women as private property, left wing men see women as public property.

Lefty men are usually "free love", poly and pro sex work types aka "women as public property".

If you're POC, there's a high chance he's dating you not because he's free of racial prejudices but because he fetishizes you.

LeyMio · 2021-08-25T17:34:46+00:00

Men who claim to be liberal only do it for their own benefits. It is easier to conceal their misogyny and manipulate women, if they label themselves as the "good guys".

Men brag about their reading habit so that they could pretend to know more about feminism than women. They distort what they have read from books and mansplain about how women should work harder in order to look like "real feminists". Meanwhile all they care about is how to enable LVMs' entitlement.

Ironsculpture · 2021-08-25T11:11:56+00:00

No. Misogyny isn't based on a lack of knowledge or understanding, as some may think, but on the inherent nature of the individual.

If someone is inherently evil and desires to be above others, that's the way they were from the day they were born and no amount of knowledge can change their nature.

Unlike what people like to think, not all of us are innocent at birth and are later tainted by others. Human beings are more complicated than that.

BlueSkiesOverLondon · 2021-08-25T15:04:38+00:00

Remember, your perspective is unique. Meaning, if someone has the exact same perspective/opinion as you on everything, they are lying to you. This is especially true of politics among the politically active, IMO; you need to agree with your partner on some fundamentals, but you can expect to have some disagreements at some point. If a man fronts with believing the exact same things as you, particularly if they relate to groups you’re a part of and especially if he’s going out of his way to learn about them (ie a white man reading Black womanist texts, or a weeb who insists he has a deep connection to Japanese culture), proceed with extreme caution.

The men who truly care about Black people, or women, or other progressive causes, will tend to be humble and not bring up their advocacy unless the topic comes up naturally. They also tend to have actually taken action in unglamorous roles, not just read a ton of theory and blown countless hours grandstanding on Twitter. The phrase “virtue signaling” has a bad reputation among progressives, but it’s applicable here: the louder he’s shouting, the less you should believe him. After all, if he was really concerned about, say, women’s rights and voices, he wouldn’t try to be a leader in their movement or speak for them.

povofme · 2021-08-25T09:05:23+00:00

Low key woke guys are probably the best bet. The woke guys who go about it in a performative way for their own image or gain (trust with women) are the ones who could be doing it out of guilty conscience or as a facade. The ones who don’t need always be telling everyone and are more low key about it are probably the ones who aren’t doing it to show off

Repulsive-Ad1092 · 2021-08-25T13:02:04+00:00

Many activist/“woke” guys hang out around liberal circles because they think left-wing women are easier preys

insurrectionaryINTJ · 2021-08-25T17:31:01+00:00

I’ve met so-called progressive/liberal men who read black feminist literature and knew the lingo, and I’ve never been called more degrading names by anyone else when I stood by my values and beliefs.

andwhenwillitbegin · 2021-08-25T08:17:42+00:00

If it comes up in conversation/in their actions, then those men are better than right-wing men, in my opinion. But if it’s mentioned from day 1 and seems to be a personality trait, rather than something one could just see from their actions, then yes, I would be wary.

For example, my current partner never mentioned his political views for quite some time. But he was kind to servers, disciplined bad (racist or sexist behaviour) at work, doesn’t watch porn and had always listened to my views on misogyny etc. and picked up from that where his own might be and has corrected it.

Actions speak louder than words, and if it’s only words then it’s a tactic or just wanting to appear to be a good guy.

Inside_Inside_8610 · 2021-08-25T17:15:26+00:00

Nope. I'm more wary of them than I am a self confessed misogynist or conservative (or both). At least you know where you stand.

cherieblosum · 2021-08-25T05:29:12+00:00

They're worse

throwawayastrogirl · 2021-08-25T11:29:02+00:00

No, xy is the same regardless of political affiliation. Men are our natural enemies and every single man is affected by misogyny and patriarchy unless he grew up in the woods where he only interacted with women.

Impossible_Mud_7599 · 2021-08-25T14:27:13+00:00

TLDR: no.

MamaGia · 2021-08-25T22:00:49+00:00

Japanese_Lasagna · 2021-08-25T05:46:56+00:00

I had a date with a man before who said a lot of feminist stuff, and then I agreed with him and he turned around and wigged out, like it was a test? I don’t trust it. I’ve known several men who’ve claimed to be feminist and acted as the woke police if I stepped out of libfem thought and more radfem in views and sought to have me shunned. Men lie about so many things I don’t trust their words.

Shot_Presence_8382 · 2021-08-25T16:29:24+00:00

To answer your question: no. They are not 😒

Title	Are progressive/liberal/well-read men any better than others?
Author	SlayOfSunshine
Upvotes	232
Comments	53
Date	August 25, 2021 4:18 AM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/FemaleDatingStrategy
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/comments/pb3saa/are_progressiveliberalwellread_men_any_better/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/are-progressiveliberalwell-read-men-any-better.1064854 https://theredarchive.com/post/1064854

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