I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Reddit (and any semi-anonymous forum) has an interesting habit of polarizing very quickly. A lot of people assume we here at FDS are "man-haters" and "man = bad, woman = good". And many of us are working through intense, lifelong issues with men who have hurt us so it's not hard to see how someone could come to this conclusion.

But this assumption is faulty. If we hated men, why would we actively create and contribute to a community about finding and keeping a great relationship with a great man? That makes no earthly sense. We're not incels who just seek to criticize and whine or TRP who just seek to use and discard as many people as possible. We actually want strong, healthy relationships.

Sometimes we get conflated with incel communities (which is silly because no woman would ever be an incel. There will always be a man willing to bang, that's just a fact). And incel and Red Pill communities, in fact, do hate women and seek to use and abuse us with their manipulative and dangerous emotional and physical tactics, so there is a legitimate confusion there. If people label us the "female version" of those people then, by the transitive property, we would be trying to manipulate and hurt men, and that's just not true. For some reason, expecting effort from a man, according to men, is the equivalent of abusing them. Interesting.

But at the end of the day, we at FDS don't hate men. The issue isn't us against men. It's high value versus low value.

There are many, many, many high value men. There are even more low value men. Why? Well, obviously, because being high value is harder and men have hundreds if not thousands of years of being told (i.e. socialized) that they don't really need to try as hard to maintain relative status in society. Eating junk food is easier than cooking healthy, so most will eat junk food. Working retail is easier than getting advanced degrees, so most people will have uninspired careers. Drinking and doing drugs to manage negative feelings and memories is easier than going to therapy, so most will just numb themselves. Being low value makes sense, especially when you don't have consequences for your lack of effort, and most men have been able to avoid the social consequences of poor behavior and still manage to find wives and have families despite, for all intents and purposes, not putting in the work because they have been the ones with access to education, employment, freedom and political spaces.

This is changing, of course. We as women are nearing equality in many ways and the balance of power is shifting. We are in a financial and emotional place to expect higher quality behavior, and we've had to be higher quality in order to demand equality within a system designed to prevent equal rights from happening. But that doesn't mean that we can expect high value men and be low value women. That's not realistic. We have to bring beauty, intelligence, kindness, hard work and a dedication to continued self improvement if we expect to find a man to bring those things, too. Nobody is sitting around saying we can be lazy, boring, manipulative, entitled takers and still expect a man of substance to invest his time and energy into us.

The issue has never been "men = bad". The issue is "low value = bad", gender irrelevant. We should be expecting the men and women in our lives and in our inner circles to have quality character. I personally believe you are the sum of the 5 people you spend the most time with, and I want to be around people that build me up and expect better of me, regardless of gender. In the FDS Discord we are constantly pushing each other to work hard, better our careers, prioritize our mental and physical wellness, and give back to our communities. We seek to be quality to attract quality.

FDS doesn't hate men. FDS hates low value bullshit.