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.
Hey David, can you edit the survey post to say it closes tomorrow? Midnight EST works for me, but anything before that works, give at least 12 hours notice though? For people in various time zones and schedules.
Thanks!
Thanks, Ally! 🙂
Heh, I hope you’re not up, SittieKitty, given it’s mega-late across the pond. (6pm here, I got home a little while ago but I’ve been reading about Mick Aston’s passing.)
Heh, excellent segue. ^_^ Weirdly, in that episode I was all of sad when they split up because they were so cute. But otherwise yup, that episode was awful.
Well the part about The Internet was freaking epic. But the trans part… nopenopenope. Don’t even go there, people.
I am eternally amused by Moss because I think of him first and foremost as Saboo, which is pretty much the opposite character to Moss. “You know nothing of the crunch!” I love it when Moss and Roy practice Moss responding to the hecklers. “Nice hair, innit!” Hehehe. Stopping now…
I am no good at drawing, but I can paint. Walls, ceilings, dropcloths, pants. I can cover them all.
What I can do is photograph.
Saboo!!
@sittiekitty
*Is impressed* such neat lines. Cute, too 🙂
@kittehs
Can’t tell how neat they are (so many!) but that is a nice picture 🙂
And, I cannot resist the urge to art share when everyone else is doing it, so here are my sketchies: http://i.imgur.com/gveDhvy.jpg (remember, I am messy! XD)
LBT, have you read the Invisibles? It’s weird that several people including herself refer to Fanny as a “transvestite” when she and others also make it very clear that she’s a woman, not a man in women’s clothing. I haven’t been able to find out whether it’s the author who doesn’t know the difference or whether terminology was actually different in the nineties, when the comic was written…
HOWEVER she’s a super kick-ass heroine. Which I thought was cool. She doesn’t have to be a victim or anything just because she’s trans (or I mean, she does get into tough spots from time to time, naturally, but she’s not victimized in that special minority way). Okay, it’s obviously not my place to judge what’s a good representation of trans people or not since I’m fairly cis, but I just thought on reading that comic book that it was cool and refreshing to have a kick-ass trans heroine.
pecunium, me too! but mine tends to happen after the painting has been completed by people and ruins the paint job because I can’t stand plain walls and I like to ruin them with murals.
Those are great Marie. I have a really difficult time with dynamic poses, you did a really good job.
*is distinctly ignoring Heartiste and his shittiness*
RE: Dvarghundspossen
I haven’t read the Invisibles, but I think I recall Fanny. IIRC, the creators just did not do the research, which is sadly common. You get a lot of sloppy creators just going, “Ah what the hell, drag, trans, cross-dressing, it’s all the same really,” and kludging it all together without really bothering to learn otherwise.
Reading… her arc is called She Man? REALLY? They do all the work to come up with an interesting back story for this woman, and they have to call her arc THAT?
Fuck LBT, it was a while since I read the comic, I totally forgot that! Yeah, that was really bad. Especially since there’s a point in the comic where she’s having a conversation with another character, who used to be a real transphobe but is just getting over it. He goes “But… since you’re a boy who wants to become a girl, why don’t you just have the operation?”. She then points out that she’s NOT “a boy who wants to become a girl”, she IS a girl. Considering that… pretty fucked-up title.
@SittieKitty
Aww, thanks 😀 ::blushes::
Marie, those are great! I particularly like the one at top left. Like SittieKitty said, you do good dynamic poses.
RE: Dvarghundspossen
See, that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. Even the well-intentioned will throw in just complete awful things like that, and ‘she male’ is about the most offensive thing you can call a trans woman in English. See why I tend to just stick with trans people’s work?
See your point, LBT: 🙂
I don’t have anything like a sketch handy, but this is one I did for class years ago (and need to rehang, thing’s currently covering my laundry basket!)
http://instagram.com/p/bCtoudo9pF/
Uh, potentially NSFW, naked mannequins.
Hey, nice colour work, Argenti!
@kittehs
Thanks 😀
@Argenti Aertheri
That really nice, I like your lighting/ shading thing. 😀 (coloring? I bad at words)
Thanks guys! It was for class, so we had all the big art class spotlights to make the shadows and highlights as dark/light as possible. And it’s still one of my favorites 🙂
Marie — you’ve totally got me beat for people doing stuff. I’m horrible at anything not a still life (or landscape, but same thing really)
Beautiful Argenti!
I’m trying to recall if I have any pics of people doing things and all I can come up with are 1) Vlad Tepes decapitating an enemy and 2) totally NSFW stuff. 😛
In lieu of which, I’ll just show one of my favourite pencil ones, never to be inked.
http://i.imgur.com/SKni8Nz.jpg
That’s fantastic Kitteh, I love the expression! There’s a real sense of movement.
This is turning into one of our funnest threads.
@Argenti Aertheri
It’s a shame we can’t combine our skills. XD I fail drawing most object, besides ‘chair-ish item’ or ‘couch like’ thing. People* have anatomy and muscles. They I can understand. It’s everything else I can’t XD
*And animals, but animals are easier for me to draw once I open an anatomy book. I got Fade a comparative anatomy book for christmas, and she lets me use it some times, it’s super awesome.
/rambling about art.
@kittehs
Like his hair especially 😀
SittieKitty, Marie, thank you! 🙂
“I fail drawing most object, besides ‘chair-ish item’ or ‘couch like’ thing.”
I hope they’re hard chairs.