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Heartiste: Men need to be able to hit their mates in order to “retain” them

A better way to retain your mate: Be a sharp-dressed man.
A better way to retain your mate: Be a sharp-dressed man.

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:

When someone asked what sort of threats he meant, he elaborated:

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.”

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:

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.

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thebionicmommy
thebionicmommy
11 years ago

Agh, I messed up again. This is the wrong thread, so I’ll go put that in the correct thread.

SittieKitty
11 years ago

Gillian, I use the mania to paint. I have cream walls and they are slowly getting re-coloured with (mostly half-finished) paintings. I don’t usually have a lack of motivation to write, the compulsion is too strong. When I edit I usually can tell how happy I was when writing by how much I emotionally torture my characters – darker story = more depressed. If ya ever want to send me ideas I wouldn’t let them go to waste!

Marie, yea, I’m a lot more critical about my work when I’m depressed. It’s hard not to look at all the mistakes and get annoyed by it. I try not to stress over it and put my supplies away instead of continuing to focus on it.

LBT
LBT
11 years ago

RE: Falconer

I’m glad you liked it!

RE: SittieKitty

Your prompts have been uploaded! Thanks for the participation. Hopefully I can get a hold of you at some point and set up what you’d like for your bonus sketch.

RE: trans women episode

Man, my whole reaction is just “NOPE NOPE NOPE.” I’ve reached the point that any time I see a cis person say, “it does a GREAT representation of trans issues… almost,” I just flee screaming into the sunset, because I know it will INFURIATE me. (I got snookered into reading most of ‘Almost Perfect’ because of a rec like that–sons of bitches.)

If I want good trans representation, I read stuff like this. (Though I haven’t read the last in a while, and apparently there was a clusterfuck? So be aware.)

SittieKitty
11 years ago

Oooh, super exciting! I’mma read them after my dinner. Thanks LBT!

Kittehserf
11 years ago

@Nepenthe:

“(Hypothesis 2: she doesn’t understand English.) ”

Nah, cats understand exactly as much English as they need to. They’re also very good at 1) getting humans to understand Cat and 2) giving humans a hard time for not understanding Cat.

Cats, turning human brains to mush since Ancient Egypt.

Kittehserf
11 years ago

@Marie – “my style tends to err on the ‘pretend it’s stylistically messy’ side.”

Can I join that club too? 🙂

SittieKitty
11 years ago

More the merrier kitteh!

Kittehserf
11 years ago

Yay!

SittieKitty
11 years ago
katz
11 years ago

That’s a cute one. Those look like digital lines; do you use a tablet?

Kittehserf
11 years ago

That is clean!

SittieKitty
11 years ago

No, that’s hand drawn, just my scanner makes it look like that.

katz
11 years ago

In that case, those are *very* clean lines.

katz
11 years ago

Kitteh, it’s fun seeing your drawings since I’ve really only seen your photoshops.

SittieKitty
11 years ago

That looks great Kitteh! So much detail…

Kittehserf
11 years ago

Thank you both! 🙂

Right, I’m off – catch anyone who’s awake later!

SittieKitty
11 years ago

Sleep well! I hope dearly I am not here when you get back or I’ll need someone to force me to go to bed.

cloudiah
11 years ago

You’re all so talented, I am jealous. Just for the record, I am a very talented painter* but unfortunately my work doesn’t scan well.

* You should probably insert a “not” in there somewhere.

SittieKitty
11 years ago

Painting generally doesn’t scan well. You could take photos though, I’d love to see it!

(I love how we turned this thread into the Art thread)

cloudiah
11 years ago

I can’t get up. I have a cat on my lap. No wait, now she’s kneading my shoulder — oh wait, she’s on my lap again. Wherever she is, she’s purring and the laws of the universe say that though shalt not disturb a purring cat.

SittieKitty
11 years ago

Wherever she is, she’s purring and the laws of the universe say that though shalt not disturb a purring cat.

I know that to be the truth. I would never want to risk arising the ire of the Furrinati by advocating the movement of content kitties.

cloudiah
11 years ago

“Though” should be “thou” of course, but the sleeping cat makes typing & spell-checking difficult.

Ally S
11 years ago

I’m digging these real kitty avatars, cloudiah and Kitteh =D

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