Heartiste – real name James Wiedmann – is a proudly racist, woman-hating “pickup artist” guru known for advocating manipulative and often quite abusive “game” techniques to give men the upper hand in relationships and in the dating market. These run the gamut from emotional abuse – what he calls “dread game,” an elaborate portfolio of gaslighting ploys to keep women feeling insecure and off-balance – to straightforward physical abuse – slapping women “when necessary” to assert “alpha male” dominance.
Now he’s suggesting that wannabe lotharios borrow some tips on how to “game” women from the Duluth Power and Control Wheel, a widely used violence intervention tool designed to fight abuse, not provide a blueprint for it.
The Duluth Wheel highlights some of the most prevalent kinds of abusive behavior. Heartiste mines its descriptions of abuse for dating tips, claiming to find in it “a few curious nuggets of anti-feminist truth about relationships and how to keep them going.”
In his recent post, Heartiste goes through some of the descriptions of abusive behavior on the Duluth Wheel – and recasts them as handy tools for would-be “alpha males.”
“make her feel bad and guilty” — reframing.
“play mind games” — that’s one way to provoke a vaginal gusher.
“smash things” — occasional bursts of anger, when justified, are cues of sexy male dominance and they do turn on women. …
“threaten to leave her” — dread game. …
“take her money” — aka make a woman feel like she’s invested in you. she’ll try harder to make it work.
“be the one to define men’s and women’s roles” — chicks dig a leader. and they also dig benevolently sexist men! …
“treat her like a servant” — 50 Shades of Gray has sold millions of copies. To women.
His followers are, if anything, even more enthusiastic about adopting these abusive tactics to their dating life.
“[T]hanks for the road map,” writes dog king. “[A] handy chart for aspiring alphas,” notes Laguna Beach Fogey, also an occasional commenter on The Spearhead. “Much Thanks CH,” adds Ang Aamer. “It’s posts like these that turn the Femi-Matrix Vag monologues into decipherable ideas we can use.”
One commenter calling himself maldek offers a personal testimonial, claiming to have used the tactics on the Duluth Wheel to keep his wife of 20 years on her toes:
This is a female wishlist indeed.
Take it word by word.Most of the listed items are things I do on a regular base. I mean it. And for more than 20 years it is working. Wife is looking top 5% in her age group, 3 kids, good life.
IT DOES WORK!
PS: That is 200% true for the darker parts of this list, you know the points those white knights would want to burn you on stake for. These are magic.
A commenter by the name of J Fisc seconds this endorsement.
This is an instruction manual for how to keep your woman happy. My marriage was doing pretty shitty until I said ‘Fuck it’ and started acting ‘abusive’. At least half the things on this list I do regularly and she eats its up.
One reader calling himself zaltyskaralius explains a favorite technique he (allegedly) uses to anger and excite the women – sorry, girls — in his life:
In the theme of brilliant game moves that bring the moist looks of indignation from girls, one of my old friends: The “Touchdown”:
When a girl says something (incredibly) stupid, interrupt and ask her if she knows what “touchdown” means.
Ignore her lack of football knowledge, shake your head and proceed to tell her that it has another meaning, as you put your hand on her shoulder with a grin on your face. Ask her if she has ever heard of Down’s syndrome. Tell her that it’s a tradition in your friend circle, that once someone says something not-so-very-smart, you proceed to do a “Touch-Down”. If she doesn’t get it, do another “touchdown”.
Congratulations, you just got a “pass this shit-test and collect tingles” card for the particular girl. From that moment on, anytime she says anything you dislike or throws a shit test at you, all you will have to do is simply place your hand on her shoulder and give her a knowing look, every so often muttering “touchdown” under your breath. No effort, no thinking, just a little touch.
Great move for AMOG [Alpha Male of the Group] friends as well. Great move for everyone in the know.
Luckily I think the chance that he’s actually used this “great move” on anyone outside of his own imagination is roughly zero.
Heartiste seems to think that the Duluth Wheel was conjured up by some Social Justice Warrior on Twitter. Only one of his commenters – at least only one that I noticed – admits to knowing where it really comes from.
“They made me memorize that graphic in a class i had to take because a broad said i hit her,” writes monster221.
Needless to say, he seems not to have learned anything from that class, noting that the experience convinced him
that i should act however i want and let them come and go. … Lifes great when its onyour terms, fuck anybody who tells you how to handle your shit.
Somehow I suspect that the “broad” who says he hit her was telling the truth.
Michelle – lizards with hats and ‘taches are already a thing on the internet (but of course):
http://th00.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/i/2012/359/a/4/sir_lizard_by_karatechick13-d5p6ph0.jpg
LOL to seeing Gorn as your Sims pic. Is it going up in the same house that has a certain other person’s picture in it? That could become The House of Somewhat Springsteen Related Stuff at this rate. (Speaking of Sims, any progress on possibly doing one based on you-know-who?)
Cassie’s Major Domo
Now that’s just cruel. Baldrick might be a dumbass, but he’d never keep company with JohnTheOtter!
(Okay, not “might be,” is.)
Thread: the thing that always gets me with the notion that abused children invariably become abusers, or are even likely to do so (apart from the “what a load of BS” thing) is that the person closest to me, who was abused as a child, and in a position to do whatever he wanted to his own family … didn’t. Someone whose society would have turned a blind eye even more than ours does, someone literally at the pinnacle of his society … was capable of not repeating that behaviour.
So fuck the idea that it’s inevitable or that people have no agency and no choice in passing on the abuse.
I’ve found the same thing to be true. I picked up the preemptive handshake trick in college when I realized that some people keep trying to hug me even after I told them that I didn’t like hugging people whom I’d just met or who were just my acquaintances. I don’t like making physical contact–or even being in noticeably close proximity–with anyone who isn’t a partner, friend, close relative, or otherwise emotionally close to me, and even then, I’m pretty reserved with anyone towards whom I don’t have any romantic or sexual feelings. Huggings fine, and so is doing stuff like sitting close together or accidentally touching, but anything else is just too much of an invasion of my personal bubble. I used to think that I was weird and in the wrong for wanting to maintain personal space, but I knew that having it violated, even accidentally or non-maliciously, upset me a lot and made me shudder, so I started just explaining it to people if they asked why I was being physically reserved (or “cold,” as one guy who was wondering why I didn’t basically grind against him while hugging him put it). Then a couple of them started trying to make me feel weird for feeling that way, so I stopped being sorry about it and developed the handshake method.
@ Michelle…My mom actually…realized she was taking her frustrations out on me and roped herself in later on. Unfortunately, by then I had a personality-of-sorts in my head who was modeled on the person my mom was. That personality was and is a very disturbed 7-year-old who was convinced that if I killed myself, she could take over and do everything exactly right.
So for the last…30-some odd years, the voice in my head telling me off and on that I was horrible, worthless, and needed to kill myself…well, I figured out she was a bad copy of my mom.
The kid seems to have gotten the idea that death is a bit more global than just me(the front) dying now, which is a big relief. Also that we’re not perfect and that is ok.
…I think me telling my mom all that would hurt her a lot…and I don’t feel a need to do that, I guess. If it had JUST been mom doing that, I would not have fractured. Making me multiple inside was a group effort.
fibinachi
If you go to the Duluth Wheels website, they have a pretty good explanation for that. http://www.theduluthmodel.org/training/wheels.html
Briefly put, there are significant differences between violence perpetrated by men and women and in the social/cultural background that does and doesn’t support it.
This extract is the most relevant that I could find.
Domestic violence isn’t gender neutral, so what would be the point of implying it is? It’s like those *cough* studies *cough* that treat a woman raising her voice and a man hitting her as equal expressions of violence.
Just a quick look-around the ‘net….
I did not realize that ” battery” is defined as a pattern of deliberate physical and psychological violence designed to control the partner…
I maintain the physical violence is optional, the same control result can be achieved psychologically.
Men are far more likely to do it to women than vice versa, as in 90% of battery fits that pattern.
Men are more likely to seriously injure their partner during physical abuse.
…I would like to see research about battering women in heterosexual relationships. Not saying that sarcastically, and I mean battering in the sense given above.
I’m not finding it right now, anybody got links?
blahlistic, they’re pretty hard to come by. The best one I found a few weeks ago seems to have vanished from my bookmarks. The reason good studies with the emphasis you’re looking for are so hard to find is that most studies and reports are based on the Conflict Tactics Scale. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_tactics_scale
And that’s bloody useless because there’s really not a lot of “conflict” in many abusive relationships. As kittehs said above, using tools like the CTS means that you can finish up with men and women being equally “violent” when he’s punched her and caused a swollen black eye and she’s pushed him away when he tries to hit her again.
This summary gives an overview of the problem. http://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/intimate-partner-violence/pages/measuring.aspx
The fucking CTS is one of the greatest gifts ever bestowed upon abusive men. It encourages muddying of the waters between instigation and self-defence, and also disregards patterns of behaviour. I hope it ends up in the same dusty alcove of ridiculously baseless assessment frameworks as phrenology.
I’m not talking about lovers, I’m talking about salespeople and coworkers and relatives.
I’m also not a teenager? I don’t think you meant to address me like one, but it kind of came off that way. I’m in my 40s, just FYI.
The more I read this site, the more I’m convinced that all the seeming distinctions between MRA vs. PUA just boil down to “same shit, different toilet”. Both hold hateful, dysfunctional mental images of women, and both are playing abusive games on them. The only difference that I can see is that the one is openly trying to dick lots of women into letting him screw them, while the other is seething in (apparent) silence at home, taking it out on just one (or two, if there’s a mistress, and Bog help her!) at a time, while offering all kinds of plausibly deniable justifications for their abuses. One looks to Biotwoof™ for ideas on how to manipulate and abuse; the other inverts feminism, and claims HE is the oppressed party in a sexist, broken system (the better to scam female sympathies?). But both are male supremacists, just the same. And both are definitely hucksters.
Kind of like the “difference” between the American Nazi Party/American Renaissance types and the KKK. Or “race realists” vs. “white separatists”. Or…you get the idea. They can call themselves whatever they like, too, but it all boils down to “we really, irrationally hate the Jews, the Mexicans, and the knee-grows!” And the white wimminz. They don’t hold us in high esteem either, since they think those racial/ethnic out-groups all are out to rape and/or seduce us away from them, and that we are so physically, mentally and morally weak that we “need” their “protection” to keep us “pure” from all those marauders. Hence, all those guns.
All the NOPE. Most women actually married (for the first time, anyway) in their twenties, even in medieval times. It was only aristocrats’ daughters who were married off so young, mainly because power-hungry elitist fathers were forging land and property alliances, and so had to deliver an intact heir-producing package to seal the deal. Hence, cloistered girls being married off to men whom Anatole France charitably characterized as “pirates”. But those marriages were of convenience, so they were “binding” only in a legal sense.
As for me, I hold no lasting attachment to the boy I loved (from a distance) between ages 13 and 18. Other than the fact that he occasionally, randomly shows up in my dreams at night, just hanging out and elaborately ignoring me. I’ve made a vow to confront him the next time he does that, though, and tell him to get the hell out of my head if he’s not going to say anything to me, because it’s really tiresome to have to dream about someone I no longer care for after all this time. So far, the vow seems to have worked; I haven’t dreamt of him once since I made it. Yay!
And the first guy I slept with? Well, I was in my twenties at the time, and nope, I’m not attached to him anymore, either (except perhaps as an example of a series of relationship mistakes I intend never to repeat). In fact, after he broke it off, I got back in the saddle before HE did. And made sure he knew it, too. He wasn’t happy about that.
I guess I’m doing this “lifelong bond” thing wrong, eh?
Ugh, I’m not a big touching fan, except with a very limited number of people, and even then, I’m weird about it. Like, my brother got birthday pats with the cat (she was surprisingly okay with having her paw used as a poking stick), cuz I wasn’t doing physical contact stuff, but playing pass-the-cat can be a full contact sport (not for the cat, except when played as a way to remove her claws from someone!). Pecunium though? I could probably fall asleep on him and we’re definitely not romantically involved, he’s just very comfortable. Basically clung to R to get down off Sleeping Giant yesterday after I broke my goddamned pinkie toe (I’ll be good by Tuesday, not the first toe I’ve broken) — normally I’d have been horribly embarrassed, but really, having broken my toe on the trail that small children were running on, after damned near rock climbing up he blue trail…fuck it, I have no pride left.
Point here, right, how touchy I am depends on the situation and person, not even my relationship to the person, just the person in general — I’ve relatives I’d prefer never to touch, and a grandfather I keep threatening with hot pink nail polish if he doesn’t leave his nails alone, friends I’ve never met in person and would prolly be all awkward around (hi guys!), and friends I use as a pillow. I suspect this one isn’t me being weird but part of the human condition.
The part where I’d rather touch animals, fuzzy or not, than people…well, I suspect most people would prefer to hug a person than a python. Me? Can’t wait to meet the snake my brother co-owns with his best-friend (my mother has banned pets that can survive outside water, lest they trap her in the bathroom [long story])
I’m rambling again, I’m gonna blame the fact that walking still hurts so I’m kinda stuck in bed. View’s great though, wish I could see into Puff’s tank, but I can see into the others, so it works.
Regarding the issue of touching, I am absolutely guilty of being an over-hugger. It mostly happens when I am drunk, but it happens, and for a while I never considered that other people might have a problem with being hugged by someone harmless. It is only recently that I have started worrying about how this could affect people negatively, so I am trying to stop doing it. It was mostly a reaction to feeling powerless in the face of someone’s drunk-sadness or drunk-confession and my drunkbrain thought ‘I must give comfort! Hug is comfort! I must give hug!’ But sometimes these were relative strangers, and I have no idea how this made them feel.
The thing is that I used to not be able to hug people. I was friends with someone for 6 whole months before I hugged her for the first time. I was sort of able to break through it, so now I am totally fine with someone going in for an introduction hug (unless they are creepy). But I still remember how I would freeze or flinch when people tried to hug me unexpectedly back in the old days.
Great post! I reblogged it.
With freinds I am touchy. Male friends that is. But I normally ask for an hug if I initiate it, or don’t object when people I like hug me. Cos giving good hug is totally different from sex. It’s about comfort and safety and…why do I only feel ok being hugged by a man ? Good point.I did hug a female friend once. She had just confessed to being bi and obviously expected me to hate her. So I hugged her cos, how could I not ?
“I think all you have to do to commit misandry is be a feeeeemallllle and not have sex with them. Everything else you do is just gravy.”
Ok, but I said “I hate all men” when I woke up, and I plan to continue, just in case.
Oh, wow! I read the dread game nonsense, and it turns out my ex wasn’t a swinehunt, like my Nana said, he was actually a proto-PUA! Funny thing, I’ve been with MrGrump for twenty years, now, and the only remnant of the ex in my life is my insistence on unlisted phone number!
Serious question. How is whatever the Canadian version of the Department of Homeland Security is called not on him for this? No, it most likely won’t come to fruition but people have been arrested for way less.
Canada has sanctions against Iran http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/iran/sanctions/index.aspx?lang=eng and worries about the possibility of them obtaining nukes http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/iran/nuclear-nucleaire/index.aspx?lang=eng
How is this not illegal?
That John the Other feels perfectly safe raising money to give Iran a nuclear weapon is such a glaring example of white and Christian* privilege isn’t it? If someone with brown or black skin, especially if that person was a Muslim did this he would be in prison so fast. The media would call him a terrorist.
* I don’t know what his religious views are but white people who have a name that doesn’t sound Jewish are given passing Christian privilege in many situations no matter what their beliefs actually are. This being one of them.
@mildlymagnificent
Ah, yeah. Thanks. I was expressing myself a little poorly – I know why the model is the way it is, and I actually think that’s fine as a model. It works for what it does, and I agree with it.
It’s just that “it clearly seems to say that only men commit violence” is one of the easiest criticisms of it to make, if one pays attention for a picto-second… but instead you have dudes who look at it, and decide: “Abuse? Hey! That’s a good thing we should do more of!”. It’s not horrifying (to me) because it screams “we should abuse people”, it’s horrifying to me because I was not aware I lived in a world where people could be that stupid.
@WWTH
The Canadian agency that would be concerned is the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Since John the Other, with his final statement, essentially asked for someone connected to Iranian Intelligence or a terrorist cell to contact him, I think the CSIS at least has JoT on a watch list of some kind. Perhaps the sheer stupidity of JoT’s idea is what has kept them from actually taking action: i.e. “Not a credible threat.” He hasn’t started the actual Kickstarter yet, but should he actually do that, then I think the CSIS will shut it down and come a’ knocking.
“Wait! It was satire!”
[Thrown by suited guys into black van.]
The thing is, I could completely envision Stephen Colbert reading out John The Other’s statements and getting huge laughs from it. It’s fantastic satire of the sheer stupidity of the warmongering mentality colliding with crowdsourcing mania.
Except that John The Other actually wants to do this, and therefore it isn’t satire. But I want to see that Colbert sketch version that makes it satire.
Wouldn’t JtO’s ramblings actually be a matter for CSec? Just thinking that because he’s talking about it on the internet, but I willing cede my meagre understanding of the Canadian intelligence community to people who actually know what they’re talking about. I don’t thinks it’s actually illegal to talk about this stuff in Canada, but I’m pretty sure talking about it will get your phone bugged, and your landlord (or neighbours) will probably get a visit from guys in dark suits who will ask them if you do anything weird.
RE: ryeash
I had a therapist actually tell me I should feel bad for my abusive stepfather because he was abused. That was the last she ever saw of me.
Yup. My mother was molested too. In my opinion, that she knew full well what she was sending us into only makes her behavior that less forgivable.
RE: lacerta viridis
“do they really go out and say this shit to people in real life,
Yes. Yes they do. Also, now seems a good time to recommend Something Terrible.
RE: Bina
I guess I’m doing this “lifelong bond” thing wrong, eh?
You and me both. Our grandfather seems to have been the first person to molest us, and I can promise you, Kid HAAAAATES him. We all refused to cry at his funeral, and she seems to appreciate it. Our rapist was the first to rape me personally, and I hated his guts from the start. Yeah, we were totally “bound” to those guys, all right. Totally.
RE: Argenti
Ugh, I’m not a big touching fan, except with a very limited number of people, and even then, I’m weird about it.
Same. Basically, I am okay with touching most of my system members, and that’s about it. Everyone else? Handshake or less, please. And OMFG do not fucking hug me. Last time someone “surprised” me with a hug and tried to pick me up, I screeched, thrashed, and kicked. (He put me down instantly.)
@LBT
That comic choked me up a bit. My abuse at the hands of my stepfather was physical and mental. The sexual abuse came later, by different people. But I think that is what started my obsession with superhero/vigilante stories. And video games, where you can be a strong somebody-else and take down evil. At its worst, it’s all escapism. But it saw me through many a rough period. If I could go to a different world where I could be strong or where the abusers were served justice, I could make it through another day. And another. And another…