Sexual vs. personal politics: navigating the modern dating world in a painfully polarised society

by Lucy Hutchings Hunt

This is an issue close to my ideologically scandalised, oft-broke heart. After nearly four years of (on and off) online dating, how can it be, that in 2025 I have found myself resorting to pinning this statement atop my dating profile:

“I am physically unable to be intimate with a fascist sympathiser (ie. a Trump or Reform supporter), so please don’t even bother to swipe right if that’s you”

Indeed, for those of you lucky enough to be in long term happy relationships, or unlucky enough to still be stagnating in longterm miserable ones (ie. those who have not yet felt a requirement to explore the iceberg-like world of swiping left or right on the endless wave of commodified humans seeking love, connection, ego-supply and god-knows-what-else that is our current global dating landscape…) you may not quite comprehend the extent of the diplomatically dangerous minefield that is online dating during our current era of polarised politics. 

Recent dating experiences have convinced me that dating absolutely cannot have been this politically and socially complex since the 1930s Weimar Republic when in Germany you had to be very careful who you flirted with as it was so taboo to date a Jew. There’s an old German saying that ‘if there are ten people sitting around a table with one nazi and no one says anything, then there are actually 11 nazis at the table’. I feel strongly that this is something we should be reminded of when it comes to personal and political standing (or lack of it) in all areas of our lives today. I for one, cannot simply laze idly around the dating pool and NOT say something about the fact that almost one in two of my potential dates appears to be an accidental or (worse) an intentional fascist sympathiser.

My dating experiences lead me to believe there is an onslaught of people who would (say a decade ago) have been utterly appalled by the toxic, racist, homophobic and mysogingistic ideas opined by the likes of alpha male leaders’ such as Putin, Trump and Orban, but who are now embracing and grand-standing them as if they are an acceptable modus operandi. Indeed, I am led to believe we are gravely at risk from what I can only term... ‘a global tsunami of prowling, autocratic fascism’ triggered by the shifting tectonic plates of a bunch of un-consciously wounded, subconsciously-traumatised, dis-informed, brain-dirtied, historically un-thinking humans. 

I’ve been called judgemental myself. Most recently by a guy who I first connected with during the (thankfully now long-forgotten) Brexit-dating minefield. The very respectable (on-paper) and rather handsome ‘partner in a law firm’ swiped right on me no doubt (mistakenly) thinking I was a potentially suitable candidate for his next home-counties house wife. After I had endured a long lecture from him about how awesome Brexit was going to be for Britain and when I was finally able to get a word in edge-ways, I jokingly suggested he might be better off going on a date with my Boris and Nigel Farrage-obsessed mother. This sent him into a humourless tail-spin of anger during which he took great offence and blocked me. 

Hilariously, four years later he swiped right on me again.. this time suggesting I might be judgemental because I’d written on my profile that I didn’t want to date Trump supporters. As I was bored that particular evening (and as he was rather handsome) I once again carved out time to get into a healthy debate (I do love a chance to delve into the why’s and wherefores of others’ differing opinions!) The thing was, when he discovered I am long term sober, and as the chat unfolded, I realised that behind his super successful professional exterior and behind his belligerence and anti-woke anger, he was really quite an insecure, pathetic and tragic character. He shared with me some very poignant personal stories. Amongst them that he’d had a miserable childhood and been through a horribly painful divorce. He had a severe (long suppressed, highly functioning and well hidden) drink problem (side note: interestingly, I find I often inadvertently attract problem drinkers or those unconsciously looking to give up!) He shared that he was fed up with only ‘going home with hookers’ because he was afraid of intimacy, lonely and just wanted some company to carry on ‘doing cocaine’ with. He shared that he was desperately trying to stay sober and stop taking drugs and that underneath everything, he was really just seeking more meaning, fulfilment, gentleness and kindness in his life. 

We had a mutual, very human moment, in which (polarised-politics aside) he was honestly grateful for my compassion and listening ear and in which my recurrently self-sabotaging princess-in-shining armour entertained going on a proper date with him. He was, after all, very handsome despite his political views. Thankfully by the next morning, I’d come to my momentarily deranged senses and sent this idea packing - almost as speedily as it arrived.

So… what is my point? 

Well, childhood trauma and addiction aside, it’s my thinking that we are back in the days of populist, extremist politics offering a very convenient outlet for those deeply wounded, un-evolved adult-children who want to vent away their unconscious self-hatred. Such people are really just sad victims of their own self-loathing. Often hiding their lifestyle-hypocrisy sanctimoniously behind a veil of professional respectability, they are looking to anyone but themselves to blame for (and thus somehow cope with) the burden of their existential human pain. They want to blame ‘others’ because they don’t want to look at themselves or take responsibility for the shadows in their own psyches. Scarily this ‘easy way out’ has just become horribly, out-of-hand catchy because we have 24 hour social media megaphones and an endless stream of bro-sphere podcasters through which to showcase this easy avenue of self-awareness avoidance, not just print newspapers and one wireless per middle class house as in the good old days…

But in other ways we are in a time warp. We’re right back in Nazi Germany between the wars where uber judgement (by self-assessed ubermenschen) and uber divisiveness was bandied about in the court of public opinion as if it were in some way diplomatically and democratically acceptable. Hitler stood on a podium then, railing against the jews, the homosexuals, the drug addicts, the Romanies, the intellectuals, the artists, the people of colour (just about anyone who reminded him of his own perceived human failures. After all Hitler was part Jew and a raging drug addict (please read the absolutely phenomenal Norman Ohler book ‘Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany’) and these were clearly things he disliked about himself) Today, we have exactly the same situation. With another obnoxious, malign narcissist occupying an integral seat in global power structures and galvanising all the desperately disaffected, unconscious, unhealed humans he can possibly reach - into increasingly dangerous, ultimately murderous,  sheep-like action. 

One by-product of this nightmarishly familiar society is that it has resulted in the dating social mores at play today being utterly perplexing. 

(Side note - it certainly wasn’t like this when I met my ex-husband back in the early 2000s. I am sure in those days we just batted eyelashes across an A-politically crowded room, or - even better, got pissed somewhere smoke-filled and sticky, then snogged on (or under) a table, went home together all gooey-eyed and woke up a few years later, married with three kids and a mortgage - politics didn’t come into it as we all took for granted the fact that we lived in a wonderfully safe-to-self-express, hard-fought-for-by-our-forefathers, social democracy!!)

I think a lot about this strange anachronistically politically dangerous world of dating we are in now. Particularly as I have an original movie poster of the 1972 film ‘Cabaret’, framed and hanging on the wall in my stairwell at home. I walk past it every day and the premise of the film is never far from my mind’s eye. I’ve recently found myself re-listening to the Liza Minelli and Michael York soundtrack (which really is phenomenal!) and most specifically, I’ve found myself analysing the words to the song ‘If you could see her through my eyes’ because they are so utterly, topical and horribly profound… 

“I know what you're thinking?
You wonder why I chose her
Out of all the ladies in the world.
That's just a first impression?
What good's a first impression?
If you knew her like I do,
It would change your point of view.

If you could see her through my eyes,
You wouldn't wonder at all.
If you could see her through my eyes,
I guarantee you would fall like I did.

When we're in public together,
I hear society groan.
But if they could see her through my eyes,
Maybe they'd leave us alone.

How can I speak of her virtues?
I don't know where to begin:
She's clever, she's smart, she reads music,
She doesn't smoke or drink gin (like I do).

Yet when we're walking together,
They sneer if I'm holding her hand.
But if they could see her through my eyes,
Maybe they'd all understand.

I understand your objection,
I grant you the problem's not small.
But if you could see her through my eyes,
She wouldn't look Jewish at all!”

If you know the story of Cabaret (please go watch if you don’t), even the sweet old couple in can’t be together because of their ‘racial conflict’ (one is Jewish and the other who is not, is just trying to stay afloat financially and not be tormented by the Nazi authorities) and the perceived political implications of ‘interracial’ dating. This dating world we are living in (and our political world at large) is just so messed up when it seems we have learned nothing from the brutal unnecessary millions of deaths caused by fascism and what should be lessons from nearly a century ago. 

Moral of my story?

Be careful who you swipe right on and then who you go out and date.

And be particularly careful who you fall head over heels for if you want your lover to be on the right side of history and you don’t want to be (rightly or wrongly) accused of “horizontal collaboration”.