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.
RE: ryeash
Yup. For us, the escapism was fantasy novels, but Something Terrible chokes me up too, because it so succinctly describes what it feels like to see yourself as a ticking time bomb.
@LBT
I loved fantasy novels, but I had to hide them often. My stepdad was very “religious” and saw them as satanic. I once caught a beating for ordering a Palmistry book through Scholastic, once for a book called Dark Angel that was the second or third in some trilogy I was reading, and once for The Dark Half by Stephen King. My mom got me into King, and my uncle had loaned me the book. None of that apparently affected the fact that I was a “satan-worshipper”. People use religion for such despicable things. I was twelve when I decided it just wasn’t for me. I asked a youth leader how even an entire liftime–birth to death–of sin warranted an eternity of torture. I was told not to ask anymore questions. I found that a rather unsatisfactory answer and figured if no one could plug up the hole I’d poked in their rhetoric, I was out.
Am I the only one who reads “dread game” not in the sense of “the game to make her dread your leaving” but more like Dread Pirate Roberts?
No, you are not alone in this, kittehserf.
Well, in all fairness, Wesley did play some dread game on Buttercup…
thebewilderness – oh, good!
grumpyoldnurse – yeah, Wesley was a right little shit, really. I’d prefer Inigo any day, even if it did mean soaking his head every so often.
Mmmmm, Inigo…. what, sorry, what were you saying?
Actually, I might go for Fezzic. He was just so damned sweet!
CSEC and CSIS don’t have enforcement powers as far as I know, it would be handed off to the RCMP or the local force. Not that I expect Kickstarter would actually let it go anywhere.
As for hugging etc, I have very severe PTSD so the only people who are allowed to touch me are my wife and immediate family. Personal space is very important to me and most people seem to be aware of that and leave me be.
Looking like a stereotypical biker probably helps.
RE: 50 Shades of Grey
The book is complete shit and I was too bored by it to do more than skim read it, twice..But I did read most of it, and from what I read, I think it’s a bit misrepresented.
First off, the misters are right; Ana absolutely enjoys herself in her interactions with Grey. She’s all shuddering currents of electricity when he touches her, swooning fantasies of kissing when he grabs her and saves her from falling into traffic, cliche descriptions of the pleasurable sensations of sex, multiple orgasms, and just about every trope you can find in an erotic (fan)fiction.* Is there conflict? Yes, and to be fair, fiction needs conflict to be interesting. This is doubly so for erotic fiction, which otherwise could end up sounding like an instruction manual for assembling furniture from IKEA. “Insert the penisTab A into the vagina**Tab B and screw down tightly. Turn over, and repeate steps 1-4 an additional 3 times. You are now finished assembling your product.”
But whether Ana was enjoying herself isn’t the issue.
Here’s the thing; yes, Grey was controlling, but through the magic of fiction, he wasn’t controlling in ways that Ana disliked, or at least found intolerable, until the very end. (She gets more sexually excited than annoyed by his controlling ways). By the end of the book, he finally pushes her too far, and she LEAVES HIM. So yeah, good example of how women “like” to be slaves, misters.
Her fantantasy is in much the same group as the fantasy where a man is overcome by his desire, but through only his instinct knows, and dutifully performs, exactly what the woman wants. Or much the same vein as how consensual rape play is not the same as being raped. It may have the illusion of male control, but in the end it’s not, because the man is (invisibly) being subject to the woman’s needs and desires the entire time.
I’m not saying that ALL of 50 Shades of Grey is workable in the real world. How could one avoid crossing someone else’s boundaries for control/etc. without discussing them first? However, in the context of magical fiction, the behaviors in the book are not abusive. How do I know? Because she enjoys them. They turn her on. Until the end, the actions never fully cross from pleasure to pain, and everything’s consensual. That’s not what abuse is; abuse is causing pain, not pleasure. It’s about the situation as a whole, it’s not completely about specific actions.
The argument that the book normalizes extreme behaviors and is unrealistic could be made about nearly any type of porn. Seriously, what is it about these misters and their confusion of porn with reality? I swear, 90% of the behaviors I hear the misters say that women frequently do (ie. hypergamy) are things that I only see happen in mainstream porn. This book isn’t the exception.
*Part of the reason why I was so underwhelmed by the book was because it read so much like a poorly written lemon from fanfiction.net, which I have already read plenty of. So I looked it up and the book started out as… an erotic Twilight fanfiction. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA I laughed for hours.
**Given that I’m talking about erotic fanfiction I should probably call the vagina “the mound of soft supple petals”, no? Although I have to give FSoG credit that it’s generally not quite that bad, most of them are.
Ahhh, Inigo all the way! Especially the book Inigo. The sword wizard. So awesome! I had a t-shirt that had a picture of Inigo and a couple quotes. One was “You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you”. Then my best friend and I played shotglass checkers with pomegranate pucker, and it got a lovely red stain. She said she’d get it out, and that’s the last I saw of it 🙁
Thanks for the clarification, dudeinthewoods! (regarding CSIS and CSEC, I mean)
Not just women —
These Alpha Males are just as contemptuous and abusive towards Omega Males as they are towards women. I know because I grew up a High School Omega Male, and it wasn’t pleasant. (Including threats of gang rape behind the backstop. And I’m in regular contact with another Omega Male who had it worse — the abuse he got in high school is still an open wound, 20+ years after-the-fact. The guy is one of the hottest raw fiction-writing talents I’ve ever run across, but he’s been so shattered he requires constant encouragement to use that talent.)
These Alpha Males(TM) will stomp on the face of ANYONE who isn’t an Alpha Male in their speshul little clique. They have never left High School, they will never leave High School, and they will NEVER let any of the rest of us leave High School.
Y’all know that the beautiful Inigo features on the famed Complete Manboobz Dictionary of MRA-English and English-MRA, don’t you?
@ HUG: my condolences on having to go through that. I survived high school too, I was extremely obese.
RE: ryeash
I loved fantasy novels, but I had to hide them often.
Your story, of all things, reminded me of an Indian movie my roommates just watched last night called Oh My God! which had one of the best premises for a story I’d ever seen: an atheist sues God. (Or rather, the gods, since part of the suit requires him to decide whether the Islamic God or Hindu gods are responsible.) Krishna comes on a motorcycle to assist him in his lawsuit, and it’s kind of amazing.
What does he sue God/the gods for?
(I would watch this just for Krishna on a bike.)
(I would watch this just for Krishna on a bike.)
Try this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimanarama
Have fun.
I love this already.
RE: cassandrakitty
What does he sue God/the gods for?
Destroying his shop. The insurance company refuses to pay, calling it “an act of God.” Dude decides well then, he’s going to make the gurus pay for the property damage! It’s kind of amazing. (Though note, I was in and out the whole time, so missed it.)
Also, quoth my sis Miranda: “Krishna on the bike is well worth it. The actor is VERY VERY PRETTY.”
RE: Phoenician
I actually read that, but only remember hating it, and being disappointed in my own hate. I seem to recall LOATHING the protagonist dude.
Woha, apparently I skipped this post earlier… I’m just gonna say
And
@strivingally, you are destroying my grand dream of becoming a retrophrenologist.
I want that job too, Shaun!
@Kittehserf – Sorry, I’ve been offline for two days.
In answer to your questions Re: Louis in the Sims – No, I don’t have a sim for him, yet. I’m just not up to the task, myself. My sims never look real, so I just pretty much stick with the standard faces. I did, however, post a picture and put out a request for someone else to do it.
My Sim, Ebil Ladybrainz, did paint some lovely “Boss-themed” pictures, including the lovely one I used as a basis for the Sim request. They are hanging in her dorm room.
Unfortunately, the apocalypse just hit, and she had to run away, with only a couple of items, so she left them behind. But once she can paint again, she’ll have some more cool pictures decorating her house.
I have the story posted at my website. Yay! Part of my story is actually a shout-out to We Hunted the Mammoth.com, since she’s a blooming feminist, and all. She won the Lavender Menace SJW Seal of Approval!
@blahlistic – Oh, my goodness! I’m so sorry you had to deal with that. Thank goodness she realized that killing you would kill herself, as well.
Good for you for not causing unnecessary pain. But, man, a group effort? I hope you are well away from ALL of them, now.
@blahlistic – If battery includes gas lighting, then you know women are quite capable of doing it to men. As to studies, I don’t know of any, but then, I haven’t even bothered to look it up. I’m basing my “women are capable of gas lighting” statement purely on my own experiences, and observations of people I know.