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The Queens Respond to Listener Feedback + Future Plans for FDS!
23 Plays4 years ago
We take inventory of the podcast so far and respond to the most common criticisms/praise from our listeners. Plus a very special announcement on future plans for the brand!
Follow us!
Patreon: www.patreon.com/TheFemaleDatingStrategy
Website: www.thefemaledatingstrategy.com
Twitter: @femdatstrat
Instagram: @_thefemaledatingstrategy
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/The-Female-Dating-Strategy-109118567480771
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Transcript
Support and Expansion
00:00:00
Speaker
What's up, queens?
00:00:01
Speaker
It's your host, Ro.
00:00:02
Speaker
Do you like female dating strategy?
00:00:04
Speaker
Would you like to see us expand on a lot of different platforms?
00:00:07
Speaker
Then please sign up for our Patreon.
00:00:08
Speaker
We are currently targeting a $10,000 per month goal, which would allow us to work full time on female dating strategy content in order to expand on different platforms and upgrade our media presence.
00:00:20
Speaker
As a special thank you to our current Patreon subscribers, we will be increasing our upload rate for our bonus content to be weekly on Fridays, as well as offering a special discount for paid annual memberships.
00:00:33
Speaker
So please check out our Patreon at patreon.com forward slash the female dating strategy.
00:00:37
Speaker
That's patreon.com forward slash the female dating strategy.
00:00:40
Speaker
Thank you.
00:00:41
Speaker
Let's start the show.
20th Episode Milestone
00:00:47
Speaker
What's up, queens?
00:00:49
Speaker
Welcome to the Female Dating Strategy Podcast, the meanest female-only podcast on the internet.
00:00:54
Speaker
I'm your host, Ro.
00:00:55
Speaker
And this is Savannah.
00:00:57
Speaker
And this is Lilith.
00:00:59
Speaker
So this episode is our feedback episode.
00:01:01
Speaker
It's our 20th episode, which I can't even believe we've made it this far.
00:01:04
Speaker
We've already made it farther than 50% of podcasts.
00:01:08
Speaker
Most podcasts.
00:01:10
Speaker
50% of podcasts never make it past episode 15.
00:01:13
Speaker
So we're killing it over here.
00:01:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:15
Speaker
Yes.
00:01:17
Speaker
Wow.
00:01:17
Speaker
20 already.
00:01:18
Speaker
That just seems so.
00:01:20
Speaker
Yeah, it seems so weird.
00:01:22
Speaker
20.
00:01:23
Speaker
It's hard to believe we just started.
00:01:25
Speaker
We kicked off in March.
00:01:26
Speaker
So it's not been that long.
00:01:28
Speaker
Feels like it's been a long time, but not even.
00:01:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:32
Speaker
Not half a year yet.
00:01:33
Speaker
So.
00:01:35
Speaker
Another month or so, we'd have been doing this for six months, but.
00:01:38
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
00:01:39
Speaker
July.
00:01:39
Speaker
Yeah, we've only been doing it five months.
00:01:41
Speaker
Wow.
00:01:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:42
Speaker
Makes me want to get my champagne glass and be like, woo, cheers.
00:01:48
Speaker
Cheers for a successful 20.
00:01:49
Speaker
Hopefully we'll have another 20 or 100 or we'll see.
00:01:53
Speaker
Here's to a thousand.
00:01:54
Speaker
Here's to a thousand female dating strategy podcast episodes.
Technical Feedback and Challenges
00:02:00
Speaker
So we thought since this is our first foray into doing this podcast thing that we would solicit some listener feedback and get an idea of what people are liking about the pod, what's resonating with people, what kind of things they don't like.
00:02:16
Speaker
And the number one overwhelming piece of feedback that we got is you all hate Savannah's microphone.
00:02:22
Speaker
Noted, guys.
00:02:26
Speaker
The cap.
00:02:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:28
Speaker
So I'm pleased to say I have actually got a new microphone.
00:02:31
Speaker
This is like a gamer microphone.
00:02:33
Speaker
So it looks really cool.
00:02:35
Speaker
It's sort of like, you know, those, like when you go to the barbershop or like a brothel, it has like the red light outside.
00:02:40
Speaker
That's literally what my mic does now.
00:02:42
Speaker
So it literally, yeah, it lights up red.
00:02:45
Speaker
It's very... It lights up red.
00:02:46
Speaker
It's very good.
00:02:47
Speaker
It's great audio quality.
00:02:49
Speaker
It has a red light.
00:02:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:52
Speaker
Hopefully the audio quality will be much better.
00:02:54
Speaker
It has a red light.
00:02:55
Speaker
It's got a red light.
00:02:57
Speaker
So yeah, hopefully it's a better quality.
00:02:59
Speaker
But in all seriousness, I'm really, really flattered that you guys seem to want to hear from me more.
00:03:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think it sounds better already.
00:03:09
Speaker
It sounds promising.
00:03:10
Speaker
Yeah, I hope that my red light mic comes through for this podcast.
00:03:14
Speaker
Your brothel mic, your gamer brothel mic.
00:03:17
Speaker
And the other thing too was some of the mastering issues on our podcast, which long story short, we were mastering to the wrong levels because apparently the published levels for
Subreddit and Community Management
00:03:31
Speaker
Spotify, iTunes are not what anybody uses.
00:03:35
Speaker
So we didn't know that.
00:03:36
Speaker
So we were, you know, we're amateurs over here and we do most of our stuff.
00:03:39
Speaker
We do most of our post-production in-house.
00:03:42
Speaker
So actually all of it.
00:03:44
Speaker
We do all of our post-production in-house.
00:03:46
Speaker
I was going to say, what part do we outsource?
00:03:50
Speaker
Nothing.
00:03:50
Speaker
Yes.
00:03:51
Speaker
Nothing, actually.
00:03:53
Speaker
So what you're hearing is amateur quality post-production.
00:03:56
Speaker
But part of it was because something that we just now learned, which is that the published standards on the platforms is not what most people are following.
00:04:07
Speaker
So if you're actually following the published standards, your podcast is going to sound quiet and equalized weird and not... And shit, basically.
00:04:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:17
Speaker
Yeah, and shit, basically.
00:04:18
Speaker
So we corrected that.
00:04:19
Speaker
Hopefully, these new episodes should sound better starting from the last episode on.
00:04:27
Speaker
So, yeah, our bad, guys.
00:04:28
Speaker
We didn't know.
00:04:29
Speaker
But we're fixing it.
00:04:31
Speaker
Hopefully, we'll be better this time.
00:04:35
Speaker
Stitched up by the podcast industry, that was.
00:04:38
Speaker
Complete stitch up.
00:04:39
Speaker
I had to learn about it on Reddit, so...
00:04:43
Speaker
To kind of give you an idea of like how this is actually a common problem that a lot of people who are podcasters didn't know about it.
00:04:51
Speaker
Well, at least Reddit is good for something, eh?
00:04:53
Speaker
Yeah, true.
00:04:55
Speaker
Front page of the internet and all that.
00:04:57
Speaker
So yeah, so that was our biggest piece of feedback and hopefully we fix that to your liking.
00:05:02
Speaker
The next thing, this is my feedback to y'all.
00:05:05
Speaker
We can't handle subreddit issues outside of the subreddit.
00:05:09
Speaker
So there's been a few people that have spammed this on Patreon and Instagram, on Twitter.
00:05:14
Speaker
We cannot mod for profit.
00:05:16
Speaker
We also like don't have the same people managing a lot of the off subreddit stuff.
00:05:21
Speaker
Um,
00:05:22
Speaker
As on the subreddit So it's not all It's like It's not like There's a direct overlap Like everyone's managing everything Like it's just very specific people So
Website and Funding Needs
00:05:32
Speaker
If you have a question about Your ban on the subreddit Don't message the website Don't message Twitter Don't message Instagram Don't message Patreon
00:05:41
Speaker
we can't handle those issues there because those are brand issues.
00:05:44
Speaker
And if we're grounding as a brand, we have to only manage brand issues off the subreddit.
00:05:48
Speaker
You can't manage subreddit issues.
00:05:51
Speaker
Like you can't just like, um, you know, sign up for our Patreon and expect to get unbanned on the FDS subreddit.
00:05:58
Speaker
Cause that would be like modding for profit.
00:06:00
Speaker
Right.
00:06:00
Speaker
So those things have to be kept separately.
00:06:03
Speaker
Like Rose said, it's different people.
00:06:05
Speaker
So the people that see the Patreon are not necessarily going to be able to even see action your request on the subreddit, even if they wanted to.
00:06:12
Speaker
So it's just a bit of a waste of your time.
00:06:14
Speaker
I think if you have an issue with the subreddit, the mods on the subreddit are crazy good at what they do.
00:06:21
Speaker
And because the subreddit has grown so much, you can imagine that their workload is immense.
00:06:27
Speaker
They will eventually get to you, especially if you've been banned.
00:06:30
Speaker
Because sometimes, because I think the subreddit
00:06:34
Speaker
it sort of has to have a high wall to keep out people we don't want in it basically it's easy to get caught up in that like I was banned when I was a mob just randomly randomly banned I was banned when I first joined FDS like
00:06:49
Speaker
Getting banned from FDS is not a big deal, honestly.
00:06:52
Speaker
We ban a lot of people.
00:06:53
Speaker
Even our own users sometimes get caught up in auto-ban.
00:06:57
Speaker
Even the mods have been stung by it as well, so no one's immune from it.
00:07:02
Speaker
But just drop the guys a message and they will get to you.
00:07:05
Speaker
I know it's tricky, but just be patient and they will get to you.
00:07:09
Speaker
Yeah, remember it's a lot of volunteers, right?
00:07:11
Speaker
And people are doing it for free.
00:07:12
Speaker
And I don't know what the other subreddits look like, but I know our workload is...
00:07:17
Speaker
I know the subreddit workload is really, really, really high.
00:07:24
Speaker
So just keep in mind that you're asking people to take a lot of time to do it.
00:07:29
Speaker
And it's just not something that's necessarily... People aren't really getting paid.
00:07:33
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:07:33
Speaker
People aren't getting paid for it.
00:07:34
Speaker
Everyone is doing it on their spare time.
00:07:37
Speaker
And as much as I think people would like to respond timely to requests, it's just hard.
00:07:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:45
Speaker
But we do have a website, which I keep trying to plug at the end of the show because the website gives everyone a lot more freedom and a lot more ability to control who gets on to it or who doesn't versus on Reddit where we're at the mercy of their rules all the time.
00:08:05
Speaker
So...
00:08:07
Speaker
You know, I'd like to encourage anybody who's like super frustrated and fed up with the subreddit to maybe migrate to the website.
00:08:13
Speaker
And I know there's some people working behind the scenes to make the user experience and the website better.
00:08:17
Speaker
But that's also my suggestion.
00:08:21
Speaker
Because I'd like to end our dependency on Reddit at some point, you know.
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:25
Speaker
Also, although I will admit, our website right now is pretty glitchy.
00:08:29
Speaker
And that's why we need money, so that we can pay developers to make it better.
00:08:33
Speaker
So sign up for our Patreon, please, so that we can make a better website.
00:08:38
Speaker
And then we can also have more freedom over the content, I think.
00:08:41
Speaker
And a huge issue with Reddit is that we just have to be so careful about what we say.
00:08:45
Speaker
And especially as a female-only subreddit, our rope is a lot shorter than many, many other subreddits.
00:08:52
Speaker
So...
00:08:53
Speaker
Yeah, other subreddits get to be so edgy.
00:08:55
Speaker
Like, you'll see guys joking about using pitbulls to kill babies and stuff on Reddit, and you report that, and Reddit says that that does not violate their policy.
00:09:05
Speaker
But if you're a woman saying, like, I want a man to pay for dates, it's like you get a million reports and, you know... I got a three-day ban from Reddit for saying that, like...
00:09:16
Speaker
for speaking facts like okay i mean but there are subreddits that are literally misogyny fetish like but that's allowed to run but anyway i i digress yeah like the rules are not fair the rules are not applied equally but if we want to stay on reddit we have to work with that unfortunately
00:09:35
Speaker
But if we all go over to the website, then we'll have the freedom to write, curate, share content in an even more unfiltered way.
00:09:44
Speaker
So if you want FDS to be even more unfiltered, I think it's quite unfiltered now, to be fair, even more unfiltered and outside the gaze of the Reddit overlords, then yeah, please support our Patreon.
00:09:59
Speaker
It's not, it's getting better.
00:10:00
Speaker
It's just more or less, I know there was an issue, I believe, with the verified memberships for a while.
00:10:07
Speaker
So they're working behind the scenes to clean that up as well.
00:10:10
Speaker
So it's, you know, it's not perfect, but it's just a slow process, but I think it's worth it.
Content Analysis and Direction
00:10:17
Speaker
So I thought we would also talk about which episodes performed well and which ones you guys seem not to like as much.
00:10:24
Speaker
And if you have any feedback on our discussion of this to say, do you guys want us to keep doing these type of episodes?
00:10:32
Speaker
Let us know.
00:10:33
Speaker
So some of our lower performing episodes have been the more pop culture stuff.
00:10:37
Speaker
Like we did Bridgerton.
00:10:39
Speaker
We did a discussion on, on Disney.
00:10:45
Speaker
And the Disneyfication of our culture, basically of our dating culture and how we understand sex and love.
00:10:53
Speaker
We were thinking we would do less pop culture stuff on the pod if you guys feel any strongly either way.
00:11:00
Speaker
The focus has been to get back into strategy and more back to basics, FDS, FDS.
00:11:07
Speaker
core principles, right?
00:11:09
Speaker
Because I think people who are not on the subreddit may have missed all that stuff.
00:11:13
Speaker
And we took it for granted that they had read a lot of the things on the subreddit.
00:11:16
Speaker
But I'm kind of getting that we're picking up an audience that's not super duper familiar with the subreddit.
00:11:21
Speaker
So they'd like to hear us discuss some of these concepts in more detail, which we will.
00:11:27
Speaker
Which was our best performing episode?
00:11:28
Speaker
Was it the male socialization one and the Gail Dines one?
00:11:31
Speaker
It was Gail Dines.
00:11:32
Speaker
I think those are the two best.
00:11:33
Speaker
Queen Gail.
00:11:35
Speaker
Yeah, kudos to Gail.
00:11:37
Speaker
And then Boomers, Coomers, and Consumers.
00:11:39
Speaker
You guys liked that one.
00:11:40
Speaker
That was kind of after our sex work Twitter beef, too.
00:11:44
Speaker
But that one is still consistently performing pretty well.
00:11:46
Speaker
People liked that one.
00:11:47
Speaker
And that was more of a core FDS principle discussion type episode.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:54
Speaker
I mean, we love roasting men here.
00:11:56
Speaker
That's a big part of what we do.
00:12:00
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:12:02
Speaker
I don't know.
00:12:03
Speaker
I've been wanting to do a female socialization episode.
00:12:06
Speaker
I think that's more complicated, though, because with men, it's easy.
00:12:08
Speaker
It's like porn, video games, porn.
00:12:11
Speaker
boomer relationship dynamics, and red pill shit.
00:12:14
Speaker
That's why men are trash.
00:12:15
Speaker
You can easily identify three, four, five things that contribute to male trashness nowadays.
00:12:22
Speaker
With female socialization, it's so multilayered, and there's so many little things that add up throughout your childhood that create pick-me's and that sort of thing.
00:12:35
Speaker
I feel like that's so much more complicated to address, so...
00:12:39
Speaker
Might take me a while to get around to that, but we'll probably touch on that eventually.
00:12:42
Speaker
Let us know if you want that.
00:12:44
Speaker
I'll make it higher priority.
00:12:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's so many pieces to that.
00:12:48
Speaker
We can probably break that down and do like five episodes about that.
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah, a long term series where we attack different parts of the culture and just say this is a kind of messaging that we're getting as women that's contributing to the pigmesia behaviors, which we do some on the Patreon bonus content, too.
00:13:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:07
Speaker
And I mean, we talk about that a little bit in almost every episode, but we just haven't had a dedicated female socialization episode.
00:13:14
Speaker
So yeah, we'll see.
00:13:15
Speaker
It's so multifaceted.
00:13:17
Speaker
But yeah, we'll go, we'll dive into that.
00:13:20
Speaker
And we just, we took all your feedback on the different episode topics you wanted us to cover.
00:13:25
Speaker
So I was actually pretty surprised that most of the feedback was just about... Requesting specific topics.
00:13:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:30
Speaker
Requesting specific topics and not dragging us for whatever...
00:13:35
Speaker
So that means that you guys are fans.
00:13:37
Speaker
You like us for real.
00:13:39
Speaker
No, the only thing they dragged was the audio quality and Savannah's mic.
00:13:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:43
Speaker
The biggest drag was the audio.
00:13:45
Speaker
We're working on it.
00:13:46
Speaker
All right.
00:13:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:48
Speaker
So other than that, like we'll take all your ideas down and we'll plan some episodes around those.
00:13:52
Speaker
So thanks.
00:13:52
Speaker
Thanks, you guys.
00:13:53
Speaker
That's probably like a year's worth of podcasts right there just from that one thread.
00:13:57
Speaker
So yeah, yeah, definitely.
00:14:01
Speaker
And actually the strategy, I found the strategy podcast really, really enjoyable to record.
00:14:10
Speaker
Actually, it was nice.
00:14:11
Speaker
Obviously, Queen Gail is like in a different category.
00:14:16
Speaker
That was another level, wow.
00:14:18
Speaker
It was another level, but in terms of the episodes between the three of us, I found those really enjoyable because it was almost like basics, like going back to basics with FDS.
00:14:28
Speaker
And if you've been around on FDS for long enough, you'll see how the subreddit has evolved.
00:14:33
Speaker
I mean, we touched on this briefly in one of our episodes as to why that was.
00:14:40
Speaker
But it's... I mean, it's...
00:14:43
Speaker
I mean, it's returning to its roots, but yeah, it was nice to go back to FDS 101 in those episodes, I think.
00:14:52
Speaker
Yes.
00:14:54
Speaker
Yeah, I think we want to do more because a lot of people who are listening to the podcast for the first time are not familiar with Reddit or don't use Reddit.
00:15:02
Speaker
And so we do want to have more episodes coming up where we talk about, yeah, FDS 101, go through posts in the handbook or have episodes centered around handbook posts, if that makes sense.
00:15:16
Speaker
Yeah, or just around
Unique Ideology of FDS
00:15:17
Speaker
the concepts.
00:15:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:19
Speaker
You know, the general core ideas that made FDS blow up the way that it did, as opposed to every other dating subreddit and every other type of girl boss subreddits there were.
00:15:30
Speaker
So what set us apart was specific principles and specific ideas and the way that we integrated our cultural critique with our dating strategies, which I think actually significantly...
00:15:46
Speaker
changed a lot of people's mindset, you know, people that were already in the immersed in the whole dating level up culture, because especially if you're an Instagram user, there's so much of that on Instagram.
00:15:56
Speaker
But FDS in particular is somewhat unique in the fact that we are able to weave real feminist theory,
00:16:06
Speaker
cultural critique, dating strategies for individuals into a complete, coherent ideological package for people, I think is what has made our particular brand of dating advice be so potent.
00:16:22
Speaker
And be so potent as to have been picked up by mainstream media.
00:16:26
Speaker
Like, we're worrisome to mainstream media in a way that I don't see a lot of these other girlboss
00:16:32
Speaker
type brands are.
00:16:33
Speaker
So you have to wonder, like, why are they so specifically threatened by us?
00:16:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:37
Speaker
They freak out more about us than any other type of dating advice stuff that I see.
00:16:43
Speaker
It's very satisfying to watch, actually.
00:16:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's because we come for them.
00:16:46
Speaker
We come for the media because we kind of point out that a lot of the cultural messaging that women are getting that's
00:16:53
Speaker
just point blank unhealthy is coming from them.
00:16:57
Speaker
So they don't really like the spotlight turned on them, I think is part of it.
00:17:00
Speaker
And then also the porn machine.
00:17:03
Speaker
The porn machine is going to keep trying to protect itself.
00:17:05
Speaker
So there's always...
00:17:08
Speaker
you know, this knee-jerk reaction to any medium that's critical of porn.
00:17:14
Speaker
So especially, you know, they always like to paint it as anti-feminist or that you're some kind of religious conservative rather than giving honest critique of why this is actually probably bad for most women.
00:17:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:29
Speaker
I mean, but it's also quite refreshing as well.
00:17:32
Speaker
I've seen, you know, men who are clearly the opposite of religious conservatives being very anti-portant, not necessarily because of the abuse and exploitation of women, but because they see to some degree the damage and just the worthlessness of the whole industry.
00:17:53
Speaker
And I'm sort of glad that the arguments against porn are actually shifting, you know, from the religious argument of, you know, it's, you know, to more academic and more tangible arguments as well.
00:18:07
Speaker
Because anyone can argue with, oh, God doesn't want you to watch it.
00:18:11
Speaker
But you can't argue when you've got, you know, porn-induced erectile dysfunction.
00:18:16
Speaker
That is a bad thing, right?
00:18:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:19
Speaker
And I'm so glad we were able to get Gail Dines because she gave us a lot of insight about how the media is just completely locking out any type of serious analysis on porn.
00:18:31
Speaker
They're complicit.
00:18:31
Speaker
Right.
00:18:32
Speaker
Like you can't get porn critical stuff published, even if there's even if there's a ton of evidence.
00:18:38
Speaker
They just won't pick it up and sensationalize it the way that they try to normalize porn usage, which is which is really, really concerning.
00:18:47
Speaker
Because it's ideological capture of the media.
00:18:51
Speaker
I bow to you, Queen Gail.
00:18:52
Speaker
I'm bowing, I'm bowing.
00:18:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:56
Speaker
Hopefully, yeah, maybe in the future we'll get her back on the pod when we have something more interesting to talk about.
00:19:01
Speaker
But yeah, she was a great guest.
00:19:03
Speaker
And we were really surprised, but also ecstatic to get her because that was a very informative episode.
Raising High-Value Men
00:19:11
Speaker
So one of the things we asked her during that episode, which...
00:19:15
Speaker
was really, really insightful was how she raised her son to be a high value man or how she raised her son to be porn critical, have feminist values.
00:19:26
Speaker
That was part of a larger discussion we were trying to mount about how do we raise high value men from children to adults.
00:19:35
Speaker
None of us here are parents and we can only go from our personal experience being children and the experience that we have interacting with boys when we were children.
00:19:45
Speaker
But we're not boys and we don't have boys.
00:19:48
Speaker
So we were trying to get a variety of perspectives of how to raise boys into high value men.
00:19:54
Speaker
And we ended up talking to one person who was a childhood educator on one of our episodes who had some ideas about how she was working in our classroom to encourage boys to
00:20:05
Speaker
to be more fair, be more high value, take an interest in their studies and their community, how to redirect some of the boys that were aggressive.
00:20:16
Speaker
And that episode ended up being kind of controversial.
00:20:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:20
Speaker
So this episode with Zoe, where, um, we wanted to invite a childhood educator onto the show to talk about, you know, child development related type of stuff and how to raise, um, men to be high value, how to raise boys to be a high value.
00:20:36
Speaker
Um,
00:20:38
Speaker
So yeah, I wanted to address the question that's asked a lot in our subreddit, you know, how do I raise my son to be a good man?
00:20:44
Speaker
And it's a difficult question to answer because there's so many factors that go into, you know, cultural factors that go into creating low value men.
00:20:53
Speaker
And the usual answers on the subreddit are, you know, you can't or there's no point, you know, there's too many cultural forces working against us and so on.
00:21:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:04
Speaker
You know, the only kind of parenting advice that we give just because we're not parents ourselves is like just to have kids with a high value man.
00:21:10
Speaker
And, you know, that's not really helpful to people who already have kids.
00:21:14
Speaker
Right.
00:21:16
Speaker
And so the idea that Zoe had pitched to me that I liked was,
00:21:19
Speaker
was that she wanted to address how boys socialize one another to be hostile to girls.
00:21:24
Speaker
She wrote me this paragraph about how the simple phrase, bro, that's so messed up, can be so powerful because men tend to seek the approval of other men.
00:21:35
Speaker
And so her objective in her classroom is to instill attitudes in boys when they're young, to feel a sense of pride in standing up for girls and holding other boys accountable, which she hopes will carry over into adulthood.
00:21:46
Speaker
And I, of course, love this idea because what we see nowadays is men have a very strong class consciousness with one another and they use misogyny to oppress women.
00:21:56
Speaker
And so I read that paragraph and thought like, yes, like if we just break up that class consciousness that boys have for one another and teach boys to seek the approval from others.
00:22:04
Speaker
And if we're not women and girls and have positive male role models instead of misogynistic bullies to imitate, you know, we'd all be much better off.
00:22:13
Speaker
But altogether, I would say that our framing of this episode was not great.
00:22:17
Speaker
We kind of derailed it and ended up talking about...
00:22:20
Speaker
you know, gender roles more generally rather than what we'd originally planned and what the idea that was originally pitched to me.
00:22:27
Speaker
And so that's on us for not framing it or for not guiding the conversation in the right way.
00:22:34
Speaker
You know, a lot of commenters were...
00:22:37
Speaker
A lot of commenters were angry with this take and talked about how gender roles negatively affected them and their childhood and so on.
00:22:47
Speaker
A lot of the feedback was actually really valid, so let's talk about it.
00:22:52
Speaker
I'm actually just going to read one comment.
00:22:55
Speaker
I had a few comments here that I wanted to read, but I think the most important one, which summarizes the issue really well, was the top upvoted comment was Eve Lowe wrote...
00:23:07
Speaker
Eve Lowe wrote,
00:23:33
Speaker
Three, man is protector from other men is played out and has been used to oppress women since however long.
00:23:38
Speaker
I think it's just as good to teach kindness to everyone.
00:23:41
Speaker
I'm not sure how much of an effect testosterone plays in the development of children before puberty, so I was surprised to hear that statement go unchallenged.
00:23:49
Speaker
I was looking forward for, I was looking forward to this episode.
00:23:52
Speaker
I'm sad.
00:23:52
Speaker
It didn't live up to expectations.
00:23:54
Speaker
Not every guest has the kind of presence that these three Amigas do.
00:23:57
Speaker
Please don't be afraid to challenge the guests as they can go off on a tangent.
00:24:01
Speaker
The last one sounded like a red pill woman, honestly.
00:24:04
Speaker
So first of all, like, I don't think it's always a red pill woman.
00:24:07
Speaker
Well, it's difficult to talk about it because it's like she is talking about gendered play, right?
00:24:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:13
Speaker
And I know it's very taboo.
00:24:14
Speaker
It's very taboo to talk about like average personality differences between men and women or boys and girls because, you know, historically it's used to discriminate against women.
00:24:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:24
Speaker
But at the same time, I don't think that we're doing ourselves any favor by pretending like men and women are cognitively the same.
00:24:31
Speaker
I mean, I don't believe here's the thing.
00:24:33
Speaker
I don't believe in a strict gender binary where men are always one way and women are always the opposite.
00:24:38
Speaker
A lot of comments.
00:24:39
Speaker
There was one comment that wrote, you know, a lot of these are human traits and not male or female traits.
00:24:44
Speaker
And that's absolutely true.
00:24:45
Speaker
So things like, you know, kindness, empathy, wanting to take care of, you know, your family and so on.
00:24:52
Speaker
Even, you know, being a protector or provider, right?
00:24:54
Speaker
Like women, you know, mothers protect and provide for their family as well, right?
00:24:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think the issue and probably why people were
00:25:05
Speaker
making the connection to red pill women is because a lot of those concepts in those terms are traditional conservative ideas of thinking about what a male versus a female role in society is.
00:25:15
Speaker
And then I think when we got deeper into the, the, the game that she was teaching them, like princesses versus cops and robbers, it, you know, it came across like it was, it was very gendered and the way that she was encouraging them to play.
00:25:29
Speaker
And there is, um,
00:25:31
Speaker
Not exactly, again, a consensus.
00:25:33
Speaker
I think the comment was spot on about like, what are we talking about when we talk about what's femininity?
00:25:37
Speaker
What are we talking about when it's talking about what's masculinity?
00:25:40
Speaker
And I think that's where we could have framed it better from the concept of what FDS is.
00:25:48
Speaker
And then maybe got a better sense of that with Zoe before we interviewed her.
00:25:53
Speaker
Yeah, because a lot of comments were talking about wanting to abolish gender roles, and FDS, we are not about abolishing gender roles.
00:26:01
Speaker
I'll be blunt.
00:26:02
Speaker
Like, you know, expecting men to pay for dates is a gender role.
00:26:07
Speaker
It's a gendered role, yeah, I was going to say.
00:26:10
Speaker
A gender role is an expectation of behavior based on sex.
00:26:15
Speaker
And, you know, we're happy to deconstruct, you know...
00:26:20
Speaker
A lot of people had the assumption that if we expect men to be protectors and providers, that that means that women are naturally submissive and useless or whatever.
00:26:28
Speaker
And if there's one thing I want to make clear with FDS, it's that you can have expectations for male behavior without having to completely sell your soul to the devil and be like a submissive trad wife to get that.
00:26:43
Speaker
I think having expectations specifically for men are necessary as a way of equalizing the biological disadvantages that women have, right?
00:26:54
Speaker
Having expectations for people based on their sex alone is not bad, and I think we addressed this in the episode, it's just that the patriarchal gender roles are what are toxic, right?
00:27:05
Speaker
Well, it's I mean, the way that FDS has always framed it has been primarily sex based differences.
00:27:11
Speaker
Like we think that men should pay for dates and that men should provide because women are at a disadvantage in society and they need to prove like investment and so on.
00:27:21
Speaker
Like so we're against things like 50 50 relationships because, you know, men can't go 50 50 on childbirth.
00:27:27
Speaker
Yeah, we've always approached it like a strategy.
00:27:29
Speaker
And the strategy is informed by a biological sex, right?
00:27:32
Speaker
Because there are sex differences between men and women.
00:27:35
Speaker
Those are immutable.
00:27:35
Speaker
You can't really change those things as long as we're doing the vast majority of the reproductive workload, as long as we're on average smaller and weaker than them, as long as our sexuality is pretty divergent in a lot of places.
00:27:46
Speaker
That's going to put us at odds and at...
00:27:49
Speaker
it's going to put us at odds with each other a lot of times.
00:27:51
Speaker
And generally when we're at odds, women are disadvantaged.
00:27:55
Speaker
So the idea behind female dating strategy was to look at it from a strategic standpoint rather than an ideological bubble where like there should be no gender roles.
00:28:03
Speaker
Everyone should be equal.
00:28:05
Speaker
Everyone should be the same.
00:28:06
Speaker
Because a lot of times when we talk about things being the same or being equal, it ends up privileging men because we have
00:28:12
Speaker
you end up as women having to ignore the fact that we have specific biological needs and differences for men, right?
00:28:19
Speaker
So female dating strategy is the idea that as a female, we have to try to identify the needs we actually have and then push forward on strategies that are going to give us the best return in our investment with men, right?
00:28:35
Speaker
The issue then becomes, you know, it can be co-opted by more conservative traditional narratives who have this idea that like, you know, if you look at old evangelical Christian texts or like the religious right, it's like God made one man and one woman, male and female, he created the, you know, like they have that whole attitude.
FDS Philosophy vs. Traditional Roles
00:28:55
Speaker
Towards men and women that you can't ever be outside of a specific gender roles and often those gender roles assigned to sex don't fit most men or women, right?
00:29:04
Speaker
It's things like submission, things like aggression, things like being a better leader.
00:29:10
Speaker
These are not sex assigned concepts.
00:29:14
Speaker
I honestly think women are better leaders than men, to be honest.
00:29:17
Speaker
Right.
00:29:17
Speaker
Well, these aren't sex assigned concept.
00:29:19
Speaker
These are gender roles.
00:29:21
Speaker
These don't have anything to do with your biological sex per se, right?
00:29:25
Speaker
The reproductive thing is very much tied to your biological sex, but the other ideas around gender are not actually tied to your biological sex.
00:29:34
Speaker
So I think where the episodes started to veer off a little bit is because there are some concepts and when we started talking more into gender,
00:29:41
Speaker
the princesses, cops, and robbers that veered off into things that weren't necessarily tied to biological sex and were more things like, oh, political leadership or being aggressive or being assertive.
00:29:52
Speaker
And those are qualities that both men and women can have in equal measure that aren't necessarily tied to just your sex.
00:30:00
Speaker
So that's where I think it got a little bit off of FDS and more into a conservative type viewpoint.
00:30:06
Speaker
The other thing I want to point out is that there are more to gender roles that like gender roles as a concept is more than just like 1950s housewife and financially abusive husband.
00:30:19
Speaker
Like gender roles, as in the expectations of your behavior based on your sex, vary from one culture to another.
00:30:25
Speaker
In my view, FDS gender roles are really just, you know, women exert...
00:30:31
Speaker
a lot of decision-making power, not all of it, but the majority, I'd say.
00:30:34
Speaker
And then if men want the privilege of our company, they should respect that.
00:30:39
Speaker
That's how I envision how we should tweak gender roles such that they benefit women.
00:30:43
Speaker
I mean, I think it's an ongoing discussion because like you said, it just depends on the environment.
00:30:47
Speaker
I think for our purposes, like since we're a strategy, I hope that we're very flexible on that.
00:30:53
Speaker
And obviously there's some cultures that allow for a lot more flexibility in that area, other cultures that don't.
00:30:59
Speaker
The idea being that like wherever you...
00:31:01
Speaker
you are as a woman in whatever culture you're in, figuring out how to strategically benefit yourself in a relationship.
00:31:08
Speaker
And generally that starts with your sex-based needs.
00:31:10
Speaker
So I will say it's not even really gender roles so much as it's just like sex roles, like legit.
00:31:15
Speaker
Even if you're a diehard
00:31:19
Speaker
liberal don't believe in the concept of that gender is assigned to sex, that if you're a man, you don't have to be any type of traditional masculine.
00:31:27
Speaker
You can embody every type of non-binary, feminine, androgynous characteristics you want.
00:31:32
Speaker
That doesn't really change FDS that much because at the end of the day, women still take on most of the risk, right?
00:31:40
Speaker
And because of our biological sex.
00:31:43
Speaker
So a lot of the other gender roles that are sort of assigned around our biological sex are just
00:31:48
Speaker
roles that society pushes on people because sex-based divisions of labor make sense, but sometimes they're not always fair, right?
00:31:57
Speaker
Or they're just, you know, men trying to exert control via patriarchy.
00:32:01
Speaker
So they'll say things like, women aren't good with money or good with finance.
00:32:03
Speaker
And then, you know, then finance becomes a masculine gender role.
00:32:07
Speaker
And that's not really true.
00:32:08
Speaker
And then men control all the money.
00:32:10
Speaker
Convenient how that works out.
00:32:13
Speaker
Right.
00:32:13
Speaker
So basically for our purposes, we tend to focus on the immutable sex differences between men and women and then all the other stuff outside of that.
00:32:21
Speaker
And if you've seen Fine as Fuck Fridays, women have really varied taste as far as the kinds of men we find sexually attractive.
00:32:30
Speaker
So it's not even that every man has to be the most masculine manly man.
00:32:34
Speaker
This should work.
00:32:35
Speaker
FDA should hopefully work no matter what aesthetic or...
00:32:39
Speaker
you know, the guy that you're dating is.
00:32:40
Speaker
If you like a traditional, you know, woodshopping, fishing, hunting type man, it should work.
00:32:45
Speaker
If you like a guy who's a coastal, coffee-sipping, book-smart guy, it should work, right?
00:32:53
Speaker
It's because it's based on sex and not, you know, a cultural thing and not from the idea that there are certain things that men are, only men should be involved in or only women should be involved in, which I think separates us significantly from trad cons.
00:33:08
Speaker
Yeah, TradCon's the whole like men are protector and providers is a justification to keep women in the financially subordinate role.
00:33:19
Speaker
You know, at FDS we say you should, a man should pay for dates, but also you should be financially independent.
00:33:24
Speaker
You shouldn't rely on a man financially.
00:33:26
Speaker
And a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their mind around that.
00:33:28
Speaker
They think if men should pay for dates, then that means he owns you.
00:33:31
Speaker
Right, which is stupid, yeah.
00:33:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:34
Speaker
That's him earning his keep around here.
00:33:37
Speaker
Yeah, that's men earning their keep, okay?
00:33:39
Speaker
Like, we don't have to give up our freedom in order for a guy to pay for dinner.
00:33:43
Speaker
Like, we can have expectations for how men should act in terms of... I almost want to say that, like, if you were to make the argument that one sex was more naturally more suited to protecting and providing, I'd say it would be females, definitely.
00:33:57
Speaker
Like, if you look at nature, you know, females of all species, you know,
00:34:01
Speaker
have that natural instinct to protect and provide for their young.
00:34:07
Speaker
Males of all species, a lot of them, some males like geese, for example, will stick around and will help to raise the babies and stuff and also have those same instincts.
00:34:14
Speaker
But it's not a guarantee.
00:34:15
Speaker
There are a lot of species where the male mates with the female and then they just fuck off and she raises the young by herself, right?
00:34:25
Speaker
In humans, I'd say both males and females have that
00:34:28
Speaker
drive to protect for your young or to protect your young, right?
00:34:33
Speaker
Um, or to protect and provide for your young.
00:34:36
Speaker
But I will say that with men, it's almost like there needs to be a gender role to compel them to do something, you know, just, just to make sure that they stick around and help raise those kids as opposed to just going around and being a fuck boy.
00:34:50
Speaker
Right.
00:34:50
Speaker
So this is an ongoing conversation.
00:34:51
Speaker
You know, that was a little bit of a slice of life episode where we talked to one person about how they were addressing the general issue.
00:34:58
Speaker
I think we're going to get some input from a variety of guests about how they're handling the situation, what kinds of sex-based differences they're noticing between men and women, get some experts on, talk to mothers, talk to...
00:35:12
Speaker
women who have been immersed in this discussion, women who have children, women who raise children, women who research children, women who research adults, to kind of get an idea of what kinds of qualities and traits, what kinds of qualities and traits to instill in them, how to do it, what kinds of incentives to provide, what kinds of consequences to provide if they fail to live up to those things.
00:35:32
Speaker
I think, I mean, that's not a simple question.
00:35:34
Speaker
And I think that was just one person's opinion and one person's... One perspective.
00:35:40
Speaker
Going forward, I think we'll frame it better and just say, okay, this is one discussion.
00:35:45
Speaker
This is one topic that we don't have a definitive idea about, so we're trying to get a variety of perspectives.
00:35:51
Speaker
This was one perspective.
00:35:53
Speaker
It's not necessarily the official FDS.
00:35:55
Speaker
Then people commented and asked us why we didn't push back more.
00:35:58
Speaker
It's because we invited her on, right?
00:36:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:01
Speaker
And so it wasn't... I mean, we're new to this.
00:36:02
Speaker
So the idea of like, yeah, I don't want to be too much of an asshole to the guests that we have on.
00:36:07
Speaker
It wasn't a gotcha interview.
00:36:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:11
Speaker
Plus she was younger in her career.
00:36:14
Speaker
Someone who has a doctorate in a field...
00:36:18
Speaker
they're used to feeling people's questions.
00:36:20
Speaker
They're used to being challenged.
00:36:21
Speaker
She was somewhat new to this.
00:36:23
Speaker
And so it wasn't a matter of us going in and trying to grill her on all her opinions because she wasn't like necessarily an established field expert, right?
00:36:32
Speaker
It was just a person who was expressing what she's doing in her classroom.
00:36:37
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:36:37
Speaker
And I do want to point, add that we do at FDS, we do want to platform women's voices, even if they're not, you know, a subject matter expert in a given level.
00:36:48
Speaker
You know, we think that lived experiences, while it might not have, you know, the same broad appeal, but it's still, you know, listening to mothers, listening to teachers and so on and talking about their personal experiences and their personal opinions.
00:37:02
Speaker
I think those can be just as important.
00:37:06
Speaker
You know, you can still learn from those just as much as you could learn from an expert in an academic sense.
00:37:12
Speaker
And in fact, like, I've noticed a growing almost like disconnect between academic discourse on how things should be done or how things are supposed to be done and how things like the lived reality on the ground for women.
00:37:25
Speaker
Right.
00:37:25
Speaker
So we're almost trying to bridge those two perspectives.
00:37:28
Speaker
Yeah, academia is really prone to ideological capture, which is something Gail Dines was talking about, is that, you know, she's like, today I could never get tenured making anti-porn criticism.
00:37:42
Speaker
And she said that very explicitly in her interview.
00:37:44
Speaker
So academia is just because someone's an academic doesn't mean they're right.
00:37:47
Speaker
That's another thing I see in LibFem media is they'll get like some some idiot and be like, well, they're a therapist.
00:37:53
Speaker
Therefore, everything they say is right.
00:37:54
Speaker
And then they'll go on this whole tirade about how BDSM is super great and healthy for you.
00:37:58
Speaker
And it's like, you know, you can find an academic or a
00:38:02
Speaker
you know, person with a degree or a PhD say any stupid shit, right?
00:38:05
Speaker
So having someone who actually lives and works in this field is going to have a very different perspective than someone who's being paid to promote a certain ideology.
00:38:16
Speaker
Yeah, precisely.
00:38:17
Speaker
Precisely.
00:38:19
Speaker
So we got some good feedback and some good takeaways.
00:38:21
Speaker
So we'll take that feedback from you guys going forward and we'll try to answer this question as best we know how.
00:38:29
Speaker
We're trying to get a variety of perspectives to answer this question because this is an ongoing conversation.
Impact Stories and Sex Work Discussion
00:38:34
Speaker
So the next piece of feedback we got that we just wanted to talk about because it was really, really impactful and really kind of made us feel like, okay, we're doing something that really matters here.
00:38:46
Speaker
Every time we see that FDS principles or ideas have materially improved people's lives and caused them to stop
00:38:54
Speaker
self-harming, self-sabotaging, putting themselves into situations that just aren't healthy for them overall, or following a lot of the libfem ideological nonsense that just gets so many women caught up and end up really, really unhappy.
00:39:10
Speaker
So one of the pieces of feedback we got was from a sex worker who listened to our discussion of OnlyFans Twitter and ended up wanting to get out of sex work.
00:39:22
Speaker
Hmm.
00:39:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:23
Speaker
So yeah, this was, it was, it was a tearjerker for me because I think that when, you know, when you start doing this work or working in this space, trying to challenge, you know, patriarchal norms, trying to, to, to show women that they don't have to settle for whatever shit is served to them.
00:39:42
Speaker
It honestly feels like, you know, you're trying to bail water out of the Atlantic.
00:39:46
Speaker
It feels like,
00:39:48
Speaker
You're just not going to get anywhere.
00:39:50
Speaker
So when we get stories like the one I'm about to read out, it almost makes all of the effort and the grind and the constant, you know, trolling and just the basically the backlash, it almost makes, you know, all of it worth it.
00:40:05
Speaker
Okay, so this story is from ElastishDream751, and the title is, I'm an escort and a cam girl, and the FDS podcast made me realise I need to quit.
00:40:15
Speaker
Okay, so on last week's episode, there was a moment when one of the hosts says...
00:40:21
Speaker
I don't hate sex workers because when I see a sex worker, I think she's not that different from me.
00:40:27
Speaker
She's one of my sisters.
00:40:29
Speaker
I had to pause it because I broke down crying.
00:40:32
Speaker
There were so many moments in this episode that resonated with me.
00:40:36
Speaker
But that sentence alone brought to the surface so many emotions I didn't even know I had.
00:40:41
Speaker
And all this time I was thinking SWERFs, which is sex worker exclusionary radical feminists.
00:40:48
Speaker
Is that correct?
00:40:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:52
Speaker
And all this time I was thinking that the evil swaths are my enemy.
00:40:56
Speaker
But it made me realise that this is just another way to keep women divided and fighting each other instead of the patriarchy.
00:41:03
Speaker
And you three ladies talk about us in a more humanising way than most of my clients.
00:41:09
Speaker
I'm going to break pause here, but I've never understood it when, you know, sex workers say, oh my gosh, my clients treat me with so much respect.
00:41:18
Speaker
If you see the way men, you know, talk about sex workers, the way they openly admit that the only reason why they see one is because, you know, she would be willing to do things that a normal woman, in quotation marks, because they see them as less than a normal woman, would do.
00:41:35
Speaker
It's just horrific.
00:41:38
Speaker
The other thing is that the respect that a client has for the sex worker is entirely conditional on her compliance.
00:41:48
Speaker
And so if she has any boundaries or says, like, no, I don't want to do the sex act or, you know...
00:41:54
Speaker
There's some Twitter accounts I follow that are really horrific and will share stories about like anytime she, you know, maybe asked him to wear a condom or something like that, he'll go crazy and then leave bad reviews on the escort pages, right?
00:42:06
Speaker
So a lot of escorts apparently feel pressure to do certain things because they know that they're going to get a bad review if they don't, right?
00:42:14
Speaker
And so the respect that they have for you is only conditional on you being obedient.
00:42:19
Speaker
It's not real respect.
00:42:20
Speaker
But anyways.
00:42:22
Speaker
So back to the story.
00:42:23
Speaker
So I'm an S-school and a cam girl.
00:42:25
Speaker
And I found the female dating strategy because of that Twitter thread.
00:42:30
Speaker
So the Twitter thread she is referring to is the one where FDS basically went after sex work Twitter.
00:42:39
Speaker
Yeah, we went over it in the whole episode.
00:42:40
Speaker
But I mean, the general gist of it, if you haven't heard that episode, was that...
00:42:45
Speaker
There's a double-minded speak right now when we talk about sex workers between the mainstream face of sex work, which is often very white, very privileged.
00:42:58
Speaker
A lot of them have millions of followers on OnlyFans or Instagram or Twitter, and they sometimes publish content that's
00:43:08
Speaker
very problematic, meaning things that are centered around sexual abuse, things that are centered around incest, things that are racist, things that are, I mean, obviously flat out misogynist.
00:43:18
Speaker
And so the idea was to start to talk, bridge the conversation to say, hey,
00:43:24
Speaker
Not all sex workers are being marginalized victims.
00:43:27
Speaker
And in fact, I feel like the mainstream sex workers have the microphone are often contributing to a lot of problematic content and normalizing things that would be considered sexual abuse.
00:43:40
Speaker
And that if they're going to be content creators, then they should be treated like every other content creator.
00:43:44
Speaker
Whereas if they make questionable content, I think it's okay for us to discuss and call it out, which they didn't really like because they feel...
00:43:53
Speaker
There's some people who are like, well, sex workers are marginalized in society.
00:43:58
Speaker
And I'm like, not you.
00:43:59
Speaker
You have millions of followers on Twitter, right?
00:44:02
Speaker
You have more followers than we have.
00:44:04
Speaker
You have a microphone and a voice and the things that you're platforming are great.
00:44:11
Speaker
quite frankly, really, really making a mockery of women's abuse, right?
00:44:15
Speaker
So that was the discussion with OnlyFans, SexWork, Twitter.
00:44:20
Speaker
That's not a discussion about sex work as a whole, because obviously there are people within this profession that are really, really, really marginalized, especially people who are doing what they call full-service sex work, which I actually just hate.
00:44:31
Speaker
It feels like it's almost making it too...
00:44:34
Speaker
It's covering up for what is prostitution, which prostitution can be very, very dehumanizing to women and women who are actually on the fringes and margins of society, women who are homeless, women who are drug addicted, women who are mentally ill, women who are just barely making ends meet.
00:44:48
Speaker
But the conversation has been co-opted by these very privileged sex workers who just want to make money and then attack anybody who would make any kind of commentary on the content that they produce.
00:45:00
Speaker
So that was kind of the focus of that episode.
00:45:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:03
Speaker
So continuing.
00:45:06
Speaker
So I admit at first I was caught up in the heat of the moment and thought it was highly tone deaf and offensive.
00:45:12
Speaker
But as soon as I listened to the male socialisation episode of the podcast, I was hooked.
00:45:17
Speaker
And I immediately binged all of the other episodes and was left hungry for more.
00:45:23
Speaker
And you ladies are so smart, funny and articulate and your message is so needed.
00:45:28
Speaker
Oh, thank you.
00:45:28
Speaker
Shucks.
00:45:32
Speaker
Thank you for addressing what you meant by those tweets in this episode because it may have just saved my life.
00:45:39
Speaker
I couldn't sleep after listening to the sex work episode and I was tossing and turning all night re-evaluating my life.
00:45:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's to kind of jump in here.
00:45:51
Speaker
I mean, that was part of the reason why you addressed it is because there's so many women that get caught up.
00:45:55
Speaker
They get lied to about the glamour of this industry, right?
00:45:59
Speaker
Because the women who are the most successful at it.
00:46:01
Speaker
And they get groomed, essentially.
00:46:03
Speaker
They get groomed.
00:46:04
Speaker
And it's a multi-level marketing scheme, right?
00:46:07
Speaker
A lot of these women who are successful are successful because they're getting kickbacks for recruiting new women.
00:46:12
Speaker
And they might not actually be successful.
00:46:14
Speaker
They're just kind of putting on that image to get more money.
00:46:17
Speaker
And so what ends up happening is you have like people who are 17 and a half being like, I can't wait till I'm 18 and do an OnlyFans thinking this is going to be a path to money.
00:46:26
Speaker
Younger, like 14 year old girls on TikTok are saying that shit.
00:46:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's disturbing to see.
00:46:33
Speaker
girls being groomed into what is an exploitative dehumanizing industry for women.
00:46:38
Speaker
Right.
00:46:38
Speaker
And so we were calling, you know, we're calling out the sex workers that are doing this.
00:46:41
Speaker
And then, you know, it's hard to say, you know,
00:46:44
Speaker
It's hard to, you know, draw a line between, you know, yes, if you're an adult, you can do whatever you want.
00:46:51
Speaker
But at the same time, like, let's not actually recruit girls into this industry that they're never going to actually own or control.
00:46:57
Speaker
Because like we said there, the house always wins.
00:47:01
Speaker
Men are the primary clientele.
00:47:03
Speaker
The demands from men are, it's not like they just say, okay, well, that's enough sex now.
00:47:07
Speaker
And that's, that's dehumanizing and degrading enough.
00:47:09
Speaker
They don't have an off switch.
00:47:11
Speaker
So, you know, we just started to see that some of that messaging was just capitalism gone awry, where Pornhub, OnlyFans, all those entities, they have a PR arm.
00:47:25
Speaker
And a lot of times it's liberal, feminist, privileged sex workers who glamorize what's really going on behind the scenes.
00:47:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:36
Speaker
And okay, so back to what the Luscious Dreamers were saying.
00:47:40
Speaker
Because when I was a little girl, I had all these dreams about changing the world.
00:47:45
Speaker
And now I'm sleeping with old men for money.
00:47:46
Speaker
And I disassociate every time I have sex.
00:47:51
Speaker
And I thought to myself, what the fuck am I doing with my life?
00:47:55
Speaker
Browsing the subreddit
00:47:57
Speaker
Browsing the subreddit since then has really solidified my decision that I need to quit this line of work, especially that post.
00:48:04
Speaker
Sex work is just another way for patriarchy to keep women out of the workforce.
00:48:10
Speaker
In the past few months, I've been feeling more and more negative about my job.
00:48:18
Speaker
It's making me depressed.
00:48:19
Speaker
And when I'm not working, I just lie in bed looking at memes to distract myself from feeling like shit about myself.
00:48:26
Speaker
I'm one of those former gifted kids and it makes me sick to my stomach to think about all the teachers who recommended me, who supported me, who told me I had so much potential and I just feel so much shame that they would be disappointed in me for what I'm doing now.
00:48:41
Speaker
I want to say, girl, you're not a former gifted kid.
00:48:44
Speaker
You're still gifted.
00:48:46
Speaker
You're a gifted woman.
00:48:47
Speaker
You still have a future.
00:48:48
Speaker
You're gifted.
00:48:50
Speaker
You're only a former gifted kid in that you're now a gifted woman.
00:48:52
Speaker
OK, like you're going to go there and you're going to have a perfectly good life.
00:48:55
Speaker
You ladies inspired me to actually put my degree, which is in social work, which is an amazing degree, to good news.
00:49:03
Speaker
And my dream now is to become a social worker who supports other sex workers.
00:49:08
Speaker
And I hope to use my experience to help them leave this industry and transition to civilian work.
00:49:13
Speaker
Absolutely amazing.
00:49:16
Speaker
Yeah, that gets me emotional, even now.
00:49:20
Speaker
I'm smiling so much.
00:49:22
Speaker
This is just amazing.
00:49:24
Speaker
I mean, I know that because, yeah, and I really, really commend her for doing this because it's not easy for a sex worker to transition into sex.
00:49:36
Speaker
the civilian life, as they call it.
00:49:38
Speaker
So I really, really commend her for being honest and having the awareness that she can do better.
00:49:46
Speaker
And because it's easy to fall into that trap of sex work, because you see sex work as...
00:49:51
Speaker
You know, falling in and out of the industry because they just cannot acclimatise to not being a sex worker.
00:49:59
Speaker
Because in some respects, it's all that they've known.
00:50:02
Speaker
And there's this idea in the sex worker industry that being a sex worker is easier, in quotation marks, than working a civvy job.
00:50:11
Speaker
Because you get to set your own schedule and you get to do things on your terms.
00:50:15
Speaker
And it's all an illusion, ultimately.
00:50:17
Speaker
It's all a massive, massive illusion.
00:50:19
Speaker
I mean, there's just something so powerful for, you know, having complete control and ownership of your own sexuality.
00:50:25
Speaker
Yes, yeah.
00:50:26
Speaker
And that's why I think we just advocate so strongly to not have your sexuality be part of your job.
00:50:32
Speaker
I mean, it's just that...
00:50:33
Speaker
At minimum, you're taking a part of yourself that should be shared at your leisure and at your pleasure and making it into something that's done for men, you know, often at your expense.
00:50:44
Speaker
And that I'm not just just that alone, you know, regardless of like what you feel about.
00:50:51
Speaker
you know, the right of someone to be a sex worker, meaning legally, it's just, we just more or less take the discussion about it to the point, to the place where we just, like, what is it actually physically and mentally doing to most women?
00:51:05
Speaker
And it just does not seem good.
00:51:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:09
Speaker
Short term or long term, and most sex workers will say that long term, to have your entire life be based around making yourself into a sexual object for men, often at the expense of your own desire.
00:51:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:25
Speaker
Sexuality is a very basic thing.
00:51:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:28
Speaker
and very personal thing.
00:51:29
Speaker
She then goes on to say, a big part of the reason why sex workers are trying to normalise sex work as any ordinary profession is precisely because we are, is precisely because we are afraid of, you know, of essentially what might happen when we try to lead.
00:51:45
Speaker
Deep down, we know that society won't accept us once we are contaminated, in quotation marks.
00:51:51
Speaker
So that's why we are trying to change that.
00:51:53
Speaker
Well, on that front, I want to say there should be zero issue with women who want to leave the profession leaving the profession.
00:52:01
Speaker
Yeah, I agree.
00:52:02
Speaker
I don't think it's like feminists.
00:52:04
Speaker
Like, here's the thing.
00:52:05
Speaker
It's not feminists that are making it hard to reintegrate into society.
00:52:09
Speaker
It's men being sexist.
00:52:12
Speaker
Bing, bing, bing!
00:52:13
Speaker
And they'll say like, oh, but the feminists are perpetuating the logic that blah, blah, blah, that makes us oppressed.
00:52:19
Speaker
And I'm like, okay, but...
00:52:21
Speaker
Who cares if they're perpetuating it?
00:52:24
Speaker
They're not perpetuating it.
00:52:26
Speaker
But if you say they're perpetuating it, they didn't create it.
00:52:29
Speaker
It's men who create it.
00:52:30
Speaker
And it's the men who really perpetuate it.
00:52:32
Speaker
The focus on SWERFs is a Trojan horse.
00:52:34
Speaker
It's a way to blame women for, again, men's behavior.
00:52:38
Speaker
It's not generally women who are the primary consumers of sex behavior.
00:52:44
Speaker
sexual related content.
00:52:45
Speaker
Most of the time when you're talking about relationships, it's men saying, I won't date a woman who's been a sex worker, or I won't hire a woman who's been a sex worker.
00:52:53
Speaker
That New York Post article that came out about the EMT that was moonlighting as an OnlyFans cam girl, that was written by a man, right?
00:53:02
Speaker
Like most of the stuff is men gatekeeping this.
00:53:05
Speaker
It's not quote unquote, swerfs.
00:53:08
Speaker
Like, normalizing sex work isn't going to make men not misogynistic, right?
00:53:12
Speaker
They're still going to have that, you know, Madonna whore complex.
00:53:16
Speaker
You know, trying to make every woman a prostitute isn't going to make them not... It's going to make them devalue women even more, right?
00:53:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:25
Speaker
That's really the issue because... And also not respect our boundaries as much.
00:53:28
Speaker
And that's been the issue between people who are...
00:53:32
Speaker
like I would say anti-normalizing sex work and people who are pro-normalizing sex work, especially in the age of me too, it's like, no, no, no.
00:53:39
Speaker
We need to be able to say it's not okay to commodify us, period.
00:53:43
Speaker
If you start to try to normalize this, then you're normalizing this as like a form of currency and a form of payment and a profession.
00:53:50
Speaker
Then that means that
00:53:52
Speaker
Any woman could be subject to this.
00:53:53
Speaker
And a lot of women are like, no, we want to make sure that there are clear boundaries here that women are not for sale.
00:53:59
Speaker
We don't have to be for sale.
00:54:01
Speaker
The suggestion that we're for sale should be insulting, right?
00:54:05
Speaker
We don't want to be approached like a porn star.
00:54:07
Speaker
We don't want to be treated like sex objects, especially outside of our choosing, which is in the bedroom, right?
00:54:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:14
Speaker
A lot of the animosity towards quote unquote SWERFs is because they're perceiving that because SWERFs don't want to quote unquote normalize the profession of sex work.
00:54:21
Speaker
It's that they're trying to always marginalize these women.
00:54:24
Speaker
But it's more or less saying that you have to have clear boundaries around the things men are allowed to do.
00:54:29
Speaker
And one of them should be you are not allowed to purchase or demand sexual favors from women in exchange for money.
00:54:38
Speaker
Especially the most desperate one.
00:54:39
Speaker
But now I realize that this attempt to normalize sex work also has the unintended consequence of grooming young girls into an industry that will ultimately destroy them.
00:54:50
Speaker
Yes.
00:54:53
Speaker
Yeah, that line is so powerful.
00:54:55
Speaker
So, so powerful.
00:54:57
Speaker
And in the end, she actually gave a further update where she said that she actually got a job.
00:55:05
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:55:06
Speaker
Yay.
00:55:08
Speaker
Amazing.
Future Podcast Plans
00:55:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:10
Speaker
We are so happy for you, Elustria Stream.
00:55:12
Speaker
And yeah, keep rocking it.
00:55:14
Speaker
Keep rocking it.
00:55:15
Speaker
So the next feedback we got on the feedback thread was asking us what we're doing with the brand.
00:55:24
Speaker
And I thought we could preview some of that here.
00:55:26
Speaker
We could talk about the direction we wanted to go.
00:55:30
Speaker
So you heard it here first.
00:55:32
Speaker
Right now we're workshopping two new podcasts.
00:55:36
Speaker
One will be focused on politics.
00:55:40
Speaker
The vision we have for it right now is for it to be a bipartisan coalition of politics.
00:55:47
Speaker
women focused on female-first political issues, how to attack the system.
00:55:53
Speaker
And that means the political, economic, financial, social, legal system to benefit women.
00:56:00
Speaker
You know, we touched a little bit on that in the El Camihira podcast.
00:56:05
Speaker
where she talked about Jennifer's Law and coercive control and how these power structures work together to oppress women who are going through different types of violence.
00:56:15
Speaker
We want to focus on that specifically and focus on how...
00:56:19
Speaker
both on the left and the right, there can be more discussion about how to push forward female-first policy.
00:56:24
Speaker
So we're workshopping that right now.
00:56:26
Speaker
We're looking for a more conservative host to put forth some more conservative ideas and who's really tapped into that culture.
00:56:36
Speaker
So we're looking through our diehard FDS membership for our more conservative users to get an idea of someone else who would like to participate in that pod and could talk intelligently on conservative issues.
00:56:50
Speaker
So that's number one.
00:56:52
Speaker
I think we're all kind of excited about that one.
00:56:54
Speaker
So I just want to jump in and say for any people who are like maybe spotty senses tingling at the phrases bipartisanship and kind of conservative and stuff, I want to be clear that.
00:57:05
Speaker
It's been challenging to find that type of host because most of FDSers are liberal or left-wing.
00:57:13
Speaker
So I don't want people to think like, oh my gosh, you're like butting up with conservatives.
00:57:18
Speaker
No, it's just that we want to create a dialogue from both sides of the aisle.
00:57:21
Speaker
Because if there's one thing I've learned in the past few years is that the left doesn't really have women's best interests at heart.
00:57:27
Speaker
And the leftists can be just as misogynistic as conservatives.
00:57:31
Speaker
And so...
00:57:32
Speaker
We almost want to look past that and form a coalition of women, regardless of your political beliefs, to advance female-first needs.
00:57:42
Speaker
Right.
00:57:42
Speaker
And it's the crux of the culture wars, too, because you have to remember, not everybody lives in a coastal city, went to an Ivy League school or went to a liberal arts college and lives that way culturally.
00:57:54
Speaker
And there's a whole swath of women who are often left out of the conversation of quote-unquote feminism because they don't live that kind of...
00:58:03
Speaker
liberal cultural value, but I don't think that they're not feminist.
00:58:07
Speaker
It's just not, they're not always, it's not, feminism isn't always presented in a way that shows that it actually has benefit for them, right?
00:58:14
Speaker
Like one of the clearest examples of that, not to get too deep into political discussion, but it's like when we were talking about Hillary Clinton and her run against Donald Trump and people were like, why are so women, why are so many women voting against women's interests by voting for Trump?
00:58:28
Speaker
Well, a lot of these women that voted for Trump live in places where
00:58:32
Speaker
Their communities have been economically devastated.
00:58:34
Speaker
They don't really give a crap that like someone like Hillary Clinton gets a corner office and doesn't feel like she represents them because they're like, you're not representing the issues that are actually going to affect me as a woman directly right now in my life.
00:58:46
Speaker
And so the attempt on being bipartisan is so that we can address people who are not quote unquote a traditional feminist, but also white.
00:58:57
Speaker
you know, still want to push pro-female policies.
00:59:00
Speaker
There's plenty of people on the conservative side who, you know, they're not necessarily traditional liberal feminists, but they have female first attitudes.
00:59:09
Speaker
They understand that patriarchy is often a power structure.
00:59:13
Speaker
They're fighting on their side as well against more patriarchal and
00:59:20
Speaker
you know, tendencies and fighting against more patriarchal narratives, you know, and conservatism.
00:59:24
Speaker
So we just think there's room to talk to women on the right, as well as us over here, us lefties, about what they're doing in their communities to push pro-female policy.
00:59:36
Speaker
So that's what we're workshopping.
00:59:37
Speaker
We want to get a variety of perspectives.
00:59:39
Speaker
Again, this is not like a...
00:59:41
Speaker
You know, we're a female first podcast and we do try to be inclusive of people regardless of their political affiliation.
00:59:48
Speaker
Because essentially, if we can find the common ground between women and keep on code, as they say, as the kids say, we can stay on code as women and privilege ourselves and push forward policies that will help us, I think...
01:00:07
Speaker
Ultimately, that's a good thing.
01:00:08
Speaker
So that's podcast number one.
01:00:10
Speaker
Podcast number two is about, it's going to be a true crime-esque podcast from the FDS lens.
01:00:18
Speaker
But again, still workshopping this, the idea behind it being we want to look at historical crimes as well as
01:00:27
Speaker
key historical figures in their relationships with women, the kinds of red flags and things that maybe would have been picked up by FDS, as well as showing insight into how the men's behavior could have been predicted by some of their behavior with women.
01:00:43
Speaker
I think one of the most infamous examples is obviously someone like Hitler.
01:00:47
Speaker
Hitler was essentially an incel for most of his life.
01:00:51
Speaker
So there's just so much material there.
01:00:54
Speaker
Yeah, like FDS true crime fiction.
01:00:56
Speaker
Spinoff.
01:00:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:57
Speaker
We're still workshopping it.
01:00:58
Speaker
Like I said, these are in their nation state stages and we're, we're targeting, you know, sometime in fall to get these launched.
01:01:06
Speaker
So stay tuned.
01:01:08
Speaker
That's where we're going with the brand that way.
01:01:10
Speaker
We're also working on the website.
01:01:13
Speaker
We are ramping up our Instagram presence.
01:01:15
Speaker
We're really trying to overall end our dependency on Reddit.
01:01:18
Speaker
And I know Reddit's really great because we have,
01:01:21
Speaker
a huge platform.
01:01:22
Speaker
And I think, I think part of the reason why we got so much media coverage is because we're on Reddit and Reddit is just frequent frequented by so many people in the media versus if we had started on our own website, we may not have gotten the, uh, the coverage that we enjoy now.
01:01:36
Speaker
So it's a love hate relationship with Reddit right now.
01:01:40
Speaker
Uh, mostly hate, probably like 85% hate, but, uh, you know, it did give us a platform that we may not have gotten, uh,
01:01:47
Speaker
otherwise.
01:01:48
Speaker
So we are going to, you know, obviously stay on Reddit as long as they'll have us, but we do, we don't like that we're so dependent on them, but you know, tell your friends, like a lot of podcasts travel through word of mouth.
01:01:59
Speaker
So if you like what you hear and you keep liking what you hear, then just, just make sure to let your friends know.
01:02:06
Speaker
That's our feedback episode, guys.
01:02:08
Speaker
So if you have feedback on the feedback, you can post it in the weekly episode thread on the subreddit.
01:02:19
Speaker
We'll start making them on the website too for people who are website users and want to talk about that.
01:02:24
Speaker
So that's our show.
01:02:26
Speaker
please check out our Patreon at patreon.com forward slash the female dating strategy, as well as our Twitter at fem.strat, as well as our website, the female dating strategy.com.
01:02:39
Speaker
Thanks for listening, Queens.
01:02:41
Speaker
And for all you scrotes out there, keep your feedback to yourself.
01:02:44
Speaker
Die mad.