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Can you date folks with different politics?
I watch this stream yesterday and i find it quite interesting. Im actually kinda in this situation now, i took a girl on a date, she made it obvious she was a progressive. I often dont share my own views on these things in real life, due to how toxic these conversations can be, so i just try to listen and empathize with where the person is coming from. Though im planning to open my mouth a little more about things on the 2nd go round, as to not give a misleading representation of who i am.
Whats interesting is that the streamer in question distinct "politics" from "human rights", she gives a pretty weak example with Roe V Wade. However i think the distinction between "politics" and "human rights" is shaky to begin with. No one really agrees on what human rights even are, per her roe example, gun control (constitutional arguably, but still) being another one, & there are still societies/people that arent accepting of LGBT although thats been on the decline over some decades. My guess is she is taking this to mean, "you probably shouldnt date a nazi", which is perfectly fine. But there arent a lot of those guys around in this day and age. For myself, i dont really believe any idea is above criticism, so i dont see how having a different idea of what constitutes human rights is much different from just having different politics.
According to pew research, most people, (myself included) are fine with dating people across the political aisle {note that many people wouldnt date a trump voter, but many would date a republican, but i suspect many people might view trump as a fundamentally immoral individual, and thus that makes him distinct from just mere disagreement}. I also find that peoples political beliefs arent good measures of how moral they are in real life. There are many progressives ive seen who were cheaters, liars, lazy, ect & conservatives who were kind hearted, hard working, & loving ect (& vice versa). But i want to know what you guys think.
Way back in the day, when I was first trying to date as a young adult in my college town, I ran into a woman who was nominally part of the "geek/nerd/gamer" subculture of the early 2010s (read: she preyed on geek/nerd/gamer men). She was abusive, manipulative, and a pathological liar. She also used all the progressive feminist lingo of the time. At me. A lot. Because she knew enough about my subculture to know the words that would particularly hurt me and isolate me. The same language that I saw wielded by other women with slightly less-conscious malice, but I still saw as them shitting on their captive audience, because most of their friends were geeky/nerdy/gamer men who would tolerate being shat on. I remember a few months where every woman I tried striking up a conversation with would immediately start talking about rape on college campuses at frat parties, despite our college not having frats, extravagant house parties, or whatever the fuck "greek life" is, and both of us being introverted shut-ins who watched anime.
When I was designated-driver-ing and dropping off the gang at the end of the night, the last person in my car for me to drive home was a short, pear-shaped girl with dark hair who I had wanted to talk to more, but apparently one of my male friends had invited her out for his own reasons, AND she turned out to still be hung up on some third dude, so neither of us got anywhere with her. But I didn't want to drive silently, I remembered she was Supernatural fangirl, I knew OF it, I tried asking her favorite episode.
Her response:
I had minimal interest in politics way back when beyond "Republicans=Religion, Me=Fedora-tipping Atheist," but I kept noticing that ever since I managed to get out of having to go to CDC, the people who were getting pissy and censorious and kept "won't someone please think of the children"ing me were always Liberal Feminists, and then moved on to being Anti-Racists, and later NB-Queer/Trans-Allies. Noticing that every day I was being entreated to have more and more empathy for whatever group at the time was demanding something (and less and less for myself); Women who wanted to work in "tech" but didn't like computers, women who had transitioned to being (homosexual) men whom actual homosexual men wouldn't date, women and black people and genderqueers who wanted to play Magic the Gathering but didn't feel represented despite the game having all of those things featuring prominently in it since 2002. I remember the first time I was actually called a Straight White Male, in real life. I chortled, and said "Go back to the dumb part of the internet, and take your lingo with you."
Almost ten years later, I'm watching The Imitation Game with a woman I've been casually seeing for a few weeks. I make the mistake of saying "Ah, and here we see Kiera Knightly, yet again reprising her role as a Modern Woman trapped in a Period Piece."
(Which isn't even much of a crack against Miss Swan herself, more gentle ribbing. She was a bounty hunter that one time, after all. It's a similar joke to how DiCaprio's roles have progressed from Ambitious Young Man Torn Between Loyalty and Ambition, to Ambitious Man Undone By His Ambition, to Ambitious no-longer-young-Man Living In The Ruins Of His Life [That His Own Ambitions Ruined].)
This got me a talking-to, about how it was less than a hundred years ago that women were finally allowed to vote, how dare I make light of such an important historical figure. I responded with "And less than 50 years ago, black people couldn't vote. And before 1776, no one could vote, no matter what genitals they had or what color they were. History was shit for everyone until very, very recently."
It eventually devolved into her blaming me for her younger sister not being allowed to wear bellyshirts at school, at which point I said "I should go" and Shep'd out.
What's onerous/dangerous in relationships are people who are infected with an ideological memeplex, or people who have sold out to an ideology; the first type will constantly be mentally coughing on you, the 2nd type will walk on you without a second thought if it advances them up the ranks. It's not about getting along despite having "different politics," it's about having enough self-awareness to notice there's a person across from you instead of a collection of labels, some of which you're allowed (encouraged, actually) to shit on.
When I've expressed my own equivalent frustrations about politics to women I'm intimate with or want to be intimate with,
I typically don't.
I phrase it in the context of concrete events that happened to me, so I'm telling personal anecdotes that inform the person I am today.
I use my own fucking words, and typically it's mildly entertaining so long as I'm brief.
Also, an addendum regarding Wokefishing: No, the guy who pretended to be feminist wasn't secretly an alt-right fascist the whole time. He was secretly a NOTHING the whole time, you tard. The only people who can so perfectly comport themselves on-demand into what you want in a partner are empty, predatory husks looking to briefly fill themselves (by filling you).
If i could give you an award on this site, i would! LOL!
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