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.
Katz: I’ve been lurking for…since the eaaarly days, like 2011-ish? I’ve been saving up all my trolling for my epic troll-de-lurk moment, so as soon as I’m done being all silly and excited to be welcomed, I’ll put my plan in motion. Hell, even my CATS are misandrists! (which is funny, because two of them are boys, but they’re just self-hating manginas…er..cat-ginas?) I just love this site and everyone on it (barring the MRAs) and am so excited I decided to be brave and make a silly comment^.^ And I have cat pictures galore! How do you folks feel about Siamese kitties? I have three! And they all hate men.
Melody: I think the survey had a lot to do with me getting up the courage to finally talk! I hope it’s helped other lurkers too! I know there have to be others who have been just reading for as long as I have or longer! I’ve had many bad commenting experiences, and my own brand of weirdness makes me hesitate about posting…so I’ll try to be better so I can take part, too!
Freemage: Thanks so much! I am so happy I de-lurked today^.^
Also Katz: I could just be a masochistic troll who LOVES tarring and feathering…it’s like being a fur with petrochemicals!
*I have very little mouth/brain-filter, so I often get impulsive and say stupid things, so you’re very welcome to mock me for it. Hell, III mock me for it^.^
Yay, more new people (or newly de-lurked people) to be mean to. 😀
That ferret video is adorable! I was listening to Lindsey Stirling while watching it, so it was like the ferrets were dancing to it. xD
Bonktamus Prime
*dies*
I’ll finish reading the rest in a minute – I just had to share that part.
Speaking of fish tanks, I spent yesterday and today emptying my 40 gallon and now my back hurts. There was nothing in it but a plecostomus and about 60,000 snails. The plec is safely in the snail-free tank and now I have to get the other one clean before it starts to stink from dying snails in the gravel.
Sorry about the ich, Argenti! Ich is truly icky, for sure.
cloudiah: Yes! Be mean to me!
*I’ll stop now, I promise^.^
Welcome aboard, Abominable Snow Pickle! I knew you existed, and now my faith will be rewarded by the out-of-focus video of your comments in going to sell to CNN.
AbominableSnowPickle, welcome! I love Siamese kitties and would love to see some pictures.
tom-ginas?
Tulgey Logger: As long as I get a cut of the profits, you can take as much out-of-focus footage as you want! Though it’s summer, so I don’t go out much because I don’t want to melt…Then I’d just be the Abominable Puddle of Green, Vaguely Dill-scented Water…not cool^.^
*I actually detest pickles and most things that are pickled, but I was at the ER for a massive kidney stone and to keep me from screaming, my mother told me a horrible joke to distract me while they were trying for the IV a fourth time. I don’t remember the joke, but Abominable Snow Pickle was the punchline and it’s stuck with me^.^
serrana, since I’m going to try to stay de-lurked, the Meezer photos will be forthcoming^.^
chibi: well, they ARE castrated…proves how much of a misandrist I am^.^
“I was kind of bewildered when I first learned about cloacal kissing.”
Lol, I know! And some cichlids do this weird nip his fins to show interest thing!
Serrana — yuck. If the snails are still alive you can trap them with cucumber. They’ll nom on it and then they’re super easy to catch.
And yeah, ick to ich! Amazingly, the clown loaches are doing well, even after the malachite green dosing. Since only the danios seem infected, I’m not sure the nasty little parasite has made it into their cave *crosses fingers*
Oh noooo, sick fish! Hope they all make it, Argenti.
I love how disparate and interesting fish mating strategies are. Bettas are always an interesting one to explain to new fishy people. 😀
In the 13 years we’ve been together, MrB has only ever hit me on the fencing list. And since I had equal chances of hitting him (better than equal once I learned to counter his favorite move), I somehow doubt Roissy would approve.
Argenti, that’s good to know about the cucumber in case I accidentally introduced snails into the other tank. Thanks!
The only fish I’ve ever had mate, besides the live bearers I had as a kid, were some freshwater angelfish. She laid eggs on one of the riser tubes of the undergravel filter, and then he’d fertilize some of them, then eat them. Then he’d fertilize a few more and eat them. I told that story to a co-worker once and he thought that was the grossest thing ever.
@delurkers: welcome! 🙂
@Dvarg:
“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.”
That’ll be it, of course. Same here, too: I’ll be fifty on Friday (whoot!). It’s amazing I’m even alive at such a Methuselah-ish age.
@Chibidgodzilla:
“Every time there’s a post about Heartiste, I automatically think of calling him “Fartiste”. Because I am apparently 12 years old.”
Same here. How I am 50almost and 12 at the same time I don’t know.
@guffaw ferrets:
“Unless, of course, Roissy does in fact suffer from constant, uncontrollable, literal flatulence. Which I don’t really want to think about right now since my stomach is already a bit churny due to the heat here.”
That could explain his extreme insecurity and bizarre “mate retention” strategies. Could also suggest he needs wind retention strategies more.
@tedthefed: “Like, you couldnt say “fear exists to draw attention to present danger.”
How does that need any evopsych to back it up? It’s simple biology, the brain, adrenal glands, sympathetic nervous system interacting. It’s covered in cognitive behavioural therapy and my psych sure didn’t go in for any evo psych nonsense when he was showing me how to deal with anxiety and panic attacks. Shit, I’d probably have walked out if he had.
@AbominableSnowPickle – Siamese kitties! PICTURES PLZ!
@AbominableSnowPickle I love meezers, and I’m looking forward to those pictures!! My girls are torties, but one of them definitely has that squeaky meezer voice, so we wonder a bit about her parentage.
Gillian – I wonder that about Katie. She has a very Siamese build and one hell of a Siamese voice. (Warning for extreme cuteness in that pic: her first day with us, three months old!)
@Kittehserf: “How does that need any evopsych to back it up? It’s simple biology, the brain, adrenal glands, sympathetic nervous system interacting. It’s covered in cognitive behavioural therapy and my psych sure didn’t go in for any evo psych nonsense when he was showing me how to deal with anxiety and panic attacks.”
The neural and physiological aspects of a psych phenomenon (like fear) can only describe what’s happening in the present. They can’t do anything but show a correlation between biology and a subjective experience… there’s no information there about why the experience OR the pattern of biological actions exists in the first place.
Evopsych gives us the philosophical justification for saying why our brains, minds, physiology, and behavior are the way they are. That obviously can be misused, but the alternative would be that these tendencies, potential experiences, and phenomena just EXIST, period; we have no basis on which to assume a function. It’s the psychological version of saying, “Molars are there for chewing food.”
Now obviously, you have to be super careful when drawing conclusions, but for forming theories, as experimenters, it is almost impossible to devise a causal link between a situation and a behavior without some kind of functional psychological process happening in between.
It’s INdirectly related to stuff like CBT, I guess. Because, CBT often focuses on feelings and thoughts that don’t match the situation and aren’t realistic. Like… I dunno, someone can use CBT to deal with excessive fear or shame or anxiety. But there can’t be such a thing as “excessive anxiety” if there wasn’t such a thing as APPROPRIATE anxiety. And there’s no justification for any emotion being appropriate for any situation without some theory like evolutionary psych to say what anxiety is for.
Caveat: I hope this would be obvious, but I think 99.99% of what evopsych says about human attraction is full of shit.
We hold these biotruths to be self-evident, that not all men were created equal, so some would have to threaten to beat women to keep them interested (or at least too scared to admit that they’re not, or something).
Also lol@roissy still being online. His mate guarding strategies must be highly effective, which frees up most of his day so he has more time to discuss how well they work on Twitter.
Of course he’s a sociopath. The only way sociopaths can conceive of relating to women from what I can gather is via gaslighting and abuse. If those don’t work on you, you’re crazy, a lesbian, a witch, or all of the above. Or the proverbial gold digger of the many scented candles and bon bons.
Kitteh! Where’d your kitteh go!
Hmmm. Almost makes me think it shouldn’t even be called evopsych in serious studies, since it’s so polluted by all the bullshit attraction stuff.
Argenti – I changed to a pic of Mads but she refused to come out and play!
Second page! I can derail!
Ever notice how your baby’s ability to go without your immediate attention is exactly as long as it takes you to make supper?
Ding ding ding we have a winner! Like all the other PUAs, eternally online about their great sex lives, or the MGTOWs, eternally online complaining about women even though they totally don’t think about us or need us or anything at all.
😀