Was asked in the discord, so might as well make the essay a hexbear post, right? My most recent research can best be described as "analyzing all mentions of FDS during the week on reddit", which is far from exhaustive, but the allegations against FDS are not new in general.
So at the root core, the sub has a sociopathic philosophy of exploiting value out of men, and dehumanizing men that have less value for exploiting. This includes using terms like "scrotes" and "LVM" (low value men). The central idea behind "value" can be oversimplified as "marry a guy with money". The sub is dedicated to strategies around that philosophy.
I just happen to be a Marxist Feminist, which vaguely means I think exploitation is bad.
They use some kind of script to autoban people who post in threads in other subreddits that criticize FDS.
They ban people for stepping out of line with the core philosophy or questioning the rules.
I've seen reports/allegations that at least one mod could be racist, transphobic, anti-sexworker, etc.
During my research, I found that most conversation about FDS was going on in MGTOW and redpill type subs. The primary complaints I did see seemed to be about the actual toxic behavior in FDS, even if the male comments in complaint threads were also expectedly toxic.
The main counternarrative to FDS is to describe them as "female incels" which I find distasteful because femcels actually already exist, and is punching down at both incels and femcels, and they seem to be technically more voluntarily celibate, if only for the sake of withholding value to extract value.
There wasn't a lot of feminist conversation going on about it, other than a single example of a black woman in r/blackladies complaining about an allegedly racist mod.
One sub explicitly mentions "Do not dehumanize others. RedPill, incel, Femcel, FDS, PUA, MGTOW, etc. content is not allowed. Ignorance of these hate groups is not an excuse to parrot their ideology." in a comment removal message /r/datingoverthirty
I did get some tradwife vibes from a few things.
somebody created r/femaledatinghelp which I joined instead of continuing to promote r/twoxdating.
From what I've seen, when they talk about LVM and HVM in the abstract they insist it's not just about them making money. They'll pay lip service to idea like him being a good listener and other such things.
But when the talk about HVM in concrete terms and examples of HVM, the only thing they ever have in common is that the make a lot of money. That's it, that's all it seems to take to be a HVM to them.
So yeah fantastic write up just thought I'd add this observation because any FDS person would just write off this criticism by saying that they care about more than just money. However a basic analysis of their actual post show this incongruity.
Another observation:
I read posts were they talked about balding men in multiple threads. They talk about them with complete revulsion and derision.
After being upset by it at first, I realized they were simply reflecting the disgusting way some men talk about women's attractiveness; and in particular their value as they age. I'm sure they have been hurt by the way men treat women in this regard and instead of trying to go beyond it, the resort to just reflecting it back at them.
I think the HVM v LVM is the same dynamic. They're just doing what some men (many tbh) do to them. Treating them like value objects. For men this is valuing women by their attractiveness. For women this means valuing men by there money.