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.
“Mate retention” just made me think of urine retention. Which, with the name Fartiste, sounds … unfortunate.
I like the IT crowd too, lots of it’s hilarious, but there’s the ep where horrible boss Douglas dates a trans woman… I can’t even decide whether it’s offensive or just weird that she’s portrayed as having completely manly hobbies, like football and beer and whatnot. I mean, AFAIK that’s not an established prejudice about trans women? The prejudice would rather be that they’re really some sort of effeminate men, not women with manly hobbies? So at the end of the day I think it’s more weird than offensive.
And SPOILER ALERT there’s a scene where Douglas eventually finds out that she’s trans and goes spare over it, but I think the joke there really is on Douglas. The thing is, for you who haven’t seen the show, Douglas is a completely horrible person. So when she tells him she’s trans and he’s just shrugs and acts like it’s no big deal at all, you’re surprised at the fact that he’s not horrible for once. And then it turns out that he is a complete transphobe – it’s just that he never actually listens to what women tell him, and so wasn’t listening when she first told him she was trans.
So yeah, there are lots of “he found out his girl was trans and OMG GROSS” in pop culture, which is super offensive, but I think this IT crowd ep is more okay because the joke is really “Douglas isn’t completely horrible, he’s not a transphobe for instance – oh wait a minute we fooled you, he totally is a transphobe only his sexism momentarily eclipsed his transphobia!”. But YMMV on this one, so be warned, everyone looking for non-offensive British comedy.
Thanks Kitteh 🙂 Yea, his face is supposed to be a lot longer. I only picked up this art style yesterday, so I’m still working on getting used to proportions. It’s tougher than I thought – I can do the girls no problem but guys, with the smaller eyes, much more challenging.
Let’s break down the PUA position on relationships.
1. A man is entitled to do anything, up to and including break assault laws, in order to “get” sex.
2. If he doesn’t want a relationship with the woman he just had sex with, she better slink off in embarrassment, that stupid slut, and she better realize that she’s put her chances of a future relationship at risk.
3. If the man does want a relationship, he’s allowed to do whatever it takes to get one. Using emotional abuse to break down the woman’s self-esteem is always a good option here if she’s not immediately swayed by your furry alpha hat.
4. Once in a relationship, it isn’t over till the man says it is, and he has ever right to do whatever it takes to keep that bitch in line.
5. When he decides it’s over then lol, isn’t it hilarious how much older his ex is now and how little sexual market value she has? Serves her right for being a slut.
Yesterday! I haz an impressed. I’ve never picked up a style, and it’d take forever if I tried, I suspect (haven’t drawn for years’n’years, I was seduced by the
dark sidejoys of photoshopping).“if she’s not immediately swayed by your furry alpha hat.”
I read that as furry alpha butt.
Ewwww.
Yeah, that IT Crowd episode goes back and forth and back and forth.
@Kitthehserf
Who is the kitteh in your new gravatar? S/he’s so pwiddy!
I can’t photoshop haha. I can put pencil to paper but not use computers… Generally I draw a lot more “life-like” – so I was challenging myself with the cartoonish aspect and manga is a lot harder in my opinion than american cartoon style. Trying to do dark/more detailed work too, but I suspect I have to get better at the basics before I can try that… Although apparently I can whip up Chibi art of my mental self in about 20 mins. I seem to have picked that up pretty well…
Since people are now talking chibis and were talking FMA earlier, have you seen the chibis from the video that came with the theme son? They’re adorable.
Oh god yeah, how did I forget about that. I was also torn because like you say, it wasn’t actively hateful or disgusted and it was portrayed as a good thing he was open-minded… but it was still “tee hee, she’s an attractive woman but she likes MAN stuff”, culminating in the fight scene, plus how she keeps doing the melodramatic “I’m a WOMAN!” thing… made me super uncomfortable. *sigh*
Stupid memory of fail.
@lowquacks – that’s Maddie. I’m sure she agrees about being pwiddy! 🙂
I don’t know what chibi is, but OMG clean lines! That’s something I never managed.
dancers
Kitteh, that’s a lot more like what I usually draw. I’ve been trying to ink stuff lately so I’ve been working hard on trying to make the lines cleaner, especially since I want to eventually do really detailed ink work.
I’m even more impressed, then! You’ve got really clean lines there. Have you any of your usual work that you’d like to show?
Yea, let me find my other sketchbook.
You folks have some fine skills. I’d draw more if I had more inspiration, but I think I’ve run dry or something. >_> I haven’t drawn anything seriously (as in, anything that isn’t doodling or other mundane stuff) since the age of 14.
It gets like that, doesn’t it? I can go for years without drawing, or writing, or sewing – I very rarely do all at the same time, and since my first scanner died years ago and I couldn’t scan drawings, I got into the photo composites by default. The pics are so much more satisfying than my drawings ever were. Right now my writing’s getting verrrry dried up, but I’m knitting.
Here Kitteh. Uh, link is a bit NSFW… and fair warning, I draw mostly depressing things. This one is called starvation of the soul, so yea…
I write a lot. I’ve written prolly 20,000+ pages in the last decade. It’s pretty much my go-to creative outlet. Drawing is next when I can’t think of anything that isn’t going to be horrible to write. I also make felt dolls, when I’m not interested in drawing or writing. Those are fun.
That’s a great picture, SittieKitty – it makes me think of how someone with anorexia might see themselves, alongside what their body’s become, as well as the soul-starvation idea (which it conveys very well).
I did a whole book years back, but painted myself into a plot corner in the second half and never got out, lol. It wouldn’t have been publishable – not cohesive, very episodic, and since the whole point of it was to create an alternative history with a happy ending, there wasn’t going to be anything like a huge drama between the principals (lovers, one real, one imaginary).
More recently I started memoirs with Louis and got bogged there, too – disinclined to write about my very boring earthly past, and no idea about writing for themes or suchlike. Disinclined to any writing that seems like work, too.
I’m seeing a pattern here … 😛
🙂 I liked the idea that you can decide which side to see, which person is being presented and how much you lose when you start to suppress yourself… Think I’m going to finish it up and post it to DeviantArt (What else is there to do this early in the morning but finally make an account!)
I’ve got over 30 stories (I think they average 200ish pages, with about 2 dozen other shorter 10-25 page ones) and I think that maybe 4-5 of them are “completed” in some sort of fashion – and not completed in a cohesive manner enough that it would be publishable. I’ve gotten stuck on one of them, for the same reason – contemporary life is hard to make interesting! It’s been a source of frustration for me. I finally figured out what to do for another one, but it’s this one story I keep circling back to that I simply can’t get working for me…
What time is it in your neck of the woods, SittieKitty? It’s 8pm here.
6am. I’ve been up all night. Not really that uncommon for me, but frustrating since I’m not really tired, just kinda …blank. Hard to make my brain work on the art. Although I do think I’m getting a better face down, so that’s a plus. On the other hand, I keep getting distracted by the idea of my cream coloured walls upstairs, I really want to paint all over them.
For what it’s worth, I do agree that the episode of The IT Crowd we’re talking about *tried* to make the joke more on Douglas than anything, but I think they failed a lot of the time. To me, the “manly” hobbies came across as them joking that she wasn’t really a woman, although I’m not sure that was what they intended. And the fight at the end was just way sketchy because of how much violence trans* people really do face. IIRC she does sort of start it by slapping him, but then he hauls off and punches her. I think the fight was also trying to be a joke on Douglas and what a terrible person he is, but a)I wasn’t sure that they’d show him fighting a cis woman like that; and b)I wasn’t sure that most viewers would see it as a joke on Douglas rather than a joke about beating up someone who is “really” a man (in their eyes).
The only part of that story that actually worked in my opinion was the bit where you’re all surprised because she comes out to Douglas and he’s cool with it, and then you find out later that actually he’s just as stupid and terrible as ever because it’s pretty clear there that his reaction to finding out that she’s trans* is ridiculous. I did actually laugh at that, but then it veered right back into problem territory.
It’s been a few years since I’ve seen it but I still remember it clearly (I think, anyway), and until we started talking about it and I started thinking more about it, all I could remember was the fail.
I think Heartiste means “[threats of] violence, abandonment, shame, ostracism” are the mate retention strategy. If he meant -actual- violence & abandonment then the comment doesn’t make much sense. Abandoning someone is exactly the opposite of training them; if you’re truly abandoning it cannot be part of a training exercise or that is not abandonment, just threatening or pretending at it.
… But who knows. It’s not like the rest of his shit makes any more sense to me. Twitter is shit for expressing ideas for reasons like this. Hope people are aware how shitty they sound in 20 words or less.
AK, yeah, that was a good analysis.
@Faint Praise
But the whole point is that the threat be credible. When I threaten to turn my cat into a hat and catburgers, she can safely ignore me, because she knows I would never do that. (Hypothesis 2: she doesn’t understand English.)
And in order to make a threat credible you have to do what you threaten once in a while. Abusers are very capable of temporary abandonment and only hitting “a little”. Until they aren’t, natch.