You may know Heartiste as a reactionary, misogynistic, proudly racist dispenser of manipulative, sometimes abusive dating advice to would-be “alpha males.”
Did you also know that he was an open advocate of domestic violence against women?
Well, I didn’t, until a friend pointed out a strange little exchange on his Twitter account the other day.
Last Tuesday morning, apropos of nothing in particular, Heartiste made the following pronouncement:
Depriving men of the means to make credible mate retention threats will assure that women need more retaining. #evolutionaryarmsrace
— heartiste (@heartiste) June 18, 2013
When someone asked what sort of threats he meant, he elaborated:
@ChrisCaroll1 Violence. Abandonment. Shame. Ostracism. etc. RT: What are "credible mate retention threats"? That's a new one on me.
— heartiste (@heartiste) June 18, 2013
The latter three items on the list (“Abandonment. Shame. Ostracism”) are standard techniques in Heartiste’s dating strategy, but the open advocacy of violence is, I think, new.
In addition to being repugnant, Heartiste’s argument here doesn’t even particularly make sense. Essentially, he seems to be saying that men need to be able to hit women to keep them in line so that they won’t have to … hit women to keep them in line.
Also, the phrase “mate retention strategy,” apparently popular with Evo Psych types, gives me the creeps. I’m pretty sure the best “mate retention strategy” is to be the sort of person your “mate” wants to be in a relationship with.
I did a quick search for the phrase, and found numerous references to two academic studies. One suggested that some women fake orgasms as a “mate retention strategy.” Another possibly more revealing one claimed that men of “low mate value” often insult their mates to lower their self-esteem so they won’t feel confident enough to leave. That seems more or less in line with what Heartiste’s general approach. And certainly, by any reasonable definition of the term, Heartiste and his followers are some pretty “low value” people, both as “mates” and as decent human beings generally.
I also found this reference to research by Evo Psych big daddy David Buss suggesting that violence — surprise! — isn’t actually a particularly effective “mate retention strategy.”
Also, beating up your mate is, you know, just generally a pretty shitty thing to do.
If Heartiste takes his tweets down, I’ve got screenshots.
EDITED TO ADD: Heartiste has really been going wild with the Twitter lately.
Here he claims to have invented the term “hivemind.”
Interesting that this pants-wetting manboob stole the Chateau Heartiste coinage "hivemind." A reader is outed! http://t.co/F729vnZLRe
— heartiste (@heartiste) June 24, 2013
After I pointed out that this belief was delusional, he suggested that I kill myself. Very alpha!
He’s also been on a bit of a racist rampage, posting lots of stuff like this:
What leftoids see as "white privilege" is just organically emergent consequences of biological realities. They know this, so they lie.
— heartiste (@heartiste) June 25, 2013
See also here, here, here, here, and here.
Phrasing your racism in pseudoscientific terms doesn’t make it right, dude. It just makes you a pretentious racist.
I… what? Yeah, I got nothing, apart from not feeling surprised, at all. I mean, this is the guy who said you should threaten to harm your partner’s pets to keep her from leaving you.
Hot damn, that’s gross. I just can’t understand the amount of sheer doucheyness that’s needed to actually support a worldview like this.
How has Heartiste not collapsed into a singularity of doucheitude? Science would like to know.
Roissy’s a grad-e A crap human being. This may be the worst thing he’s written, and that’s saying a lot.
WAH MY GIRLFRIEND MIGHT LEAVE ME SHE SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO DO THAT!!!
These guys are pathetic.
So, remember how Amanda posted on PUAs and the Kickstarter thing?
The trolls are out of the woodwork, naturally.
One in particular started by saying how REASONABLE he was, and how he just wanted to discuss MOERATE PUA things, it’s not all about rape stuff, maaaaaan.
Then, after 15 comments, somebody asked him about how useful these techniques would be on her.
“It would waste their time attempting to break a woman so aware and opposed to pick-up artists (“girls like you”)”
…
These fucking guys…
“Essentially, he seems to be saying that men need to be able to hit women to keep them in line so that they won’t have to … hit women to keep them in line.”
I read it more like “Men need to be able to make credible threats that they will, among other things, hit women, otherwise they will have to resort to actually hitting them to show that they mean business.” Not that it’s any better of course. This whole mate retention stuff obviously comes from a place of some pretty profound insecurity.
He is one messed up human being.
“Credible mate retention threats” uuuuuggggghhhhh *pukes everywhere*
Seriously the cutesy slang that these contemptible garbage monsters come up with is so disgusting
Howard: Yeah, I noticed a few more coming out of the woodwork over there, and may jump back in. (I’m on Discus with my real name. Won’t mention it here to keep up the paper Google wall, but the icon similarities probably give it away.)
Husband has an incredible memory for my stated preferences, so if I mention in passing, in whatever context, that I like or would like to have a certain thing, he’ll still remember it months later. So when my birthday or Christmas comes up, he’ll buy that thing for me as a gift, and since I won’t remember by then that I said that, I’ll be happily surprised.
I’ve found that many women who hear about this are very impressed by Husband’s memory skills, so I throw this out there, for anyone reading this blog, as a suggestion for a probably successful mating retention strategy. Although Roissy would probably think that this is a strategy for manginas.
[TW: domestic violence]
…I really fucking hope this asshole doesn’t have any female partners.
I mean, I’m always repulsed by MRA misogyny, but this time what I’m reading really upsets me a personal level because my mom recently told me about an instance of physical abuse she suffered from my dad when she was married to him. (She came back from the grocery store late once, and when my dad confronted her about that, she pointed out that he used to stay out late with his friends as well and all she was doing was shopping. And then he gave her a black eye.)
Fuck this guy.
totient, yeah, except that a “credible threat” of violence needs to be backed up with violence if someone “calls your bluff” to be credible. It just seems a bit circular to me.
I know a few guys who quit reading Roissy (er, Heartiste) because of his racism, but are just not bothered by his sexism based on assfax cloaked in sciency words (the Deepak Chopra of misogyny? Ok, I digress)… Of course, racism is a good reason to ditch him already, but I find the double standard against bigotry odd.
Anyhow, these tweets sound like monsieur Heartiste is admitting to being full of shit, no? Since his entire blog is about teaching white men to gaslight women and feel superior to PoC, he’s pretty transparent about his ‘strategy’ IMO.
Also, I’m pretty sure he’s tweeted that rape and DV is proof that brown people are inferior, since it’s always their fault. I feel dirty just repeating his bullshit (and my choice of words is a lot kinder, I just can’t). Those assfax are really flexible, I guess.
Nobody actually listens to this guy, right? He doesn’t have “fans” or anything, right? Right?
Ugh . . . this world . . .
Maude, adding to the hypocrisy, if you look at his twitter timeline, he posted something around the same time he posted these tweets about how DV is a 50/50 male-female thing. So he’s basically trying to say both that “women are just as bad” and that male violence against women isn’t bad.
I thought women were supposed to seek out and throw themselves at “alphas”? Doesn’t the apologia for DV conflict with that? Man, it’s enough to make a guy think that PUA is really just an excuse to justify coercive and all-around shitty behavior.
I posted this before, but here’s a sink kitty for anyone who needs brain bleach: http://i.imgur.com/EbjBiZ3.jpg
I’d go further than saying it’s Roissy being a horrible, disgusting human being (which he is) and further than screaming insecurity about being left – I’d say it’s the active desire to have someone to terrorise. I don’t think he wants to keep a woman around and will do whatever he thinks it takes: I think he specifically wants to be an abuser. Someone staying around because she liked him (not likely to happen anyway) wouldn’t fit the bill for him at all.
@MaudeLL: He’s a racist on top of everything else? Although, it does make sense – bigotry is always a package deal, no one hates just one group of people.
Andrew, if I understand these theories correctly, women will constantly seek the man who’s currently got the highest status of all, but since status fluctuates a bit it means women might go after man A one week, when he’s the absolute leader of the pack, but next week status might have fluctuated so that man A is number two and man B is the absolute pack leader, and that week women will throw themselves at man B instead. That’s why it’s difficult to keep a woman faithful to you.
I can’t keep the different Manboobs David quotes from separated, so I don’t know if it was Roissy or someone else, but I’m pretty certain at least some of these douches have explained female behaviour along the above lines…
Roissy, a hypocrite?
::entire worldview collapses::
Brain bleach is a good idea, Ally.
Here are the Furrinati approving of our cold winter (coldest in a decade, so far).
Fribs
Mads
Oh, does that mean the only reason I’m not chasing anyone other than Mr K is ‘cos he’s a king and nobody’s more alpha than that? (Well, except emperors and I can’t think of any emperors offhand I’d fancy.)
Damn, and here I thought it was that we loved each other. Live and learn.
Kitten, yes, that is undoubtedly the reason. And the only reason I’m faithful to my non-royal husband must be that I’m so hideously old (36) that nobody else would want me anyway.