A Compendium of hurl-worthy comments and experiences from the readers of Heartless Bitches International

• THIS video

• "est", and its spinoffs started by egos who spun off from est to found their own little empires: Landmark, Lifespring, Insight? You've gotta be floored by classes that claim to teach you that *you* are responsible; *you* are in charge of your life. How do they accomplish this? By having you sit for long hours on a hard seat, listening to an ego who absolutely rules the show, telling people to clap like trained seals when someone speaks --- and telling you when you may, and when you may not, go to the restroom.

• When me and my boyfriend are at the store and we meet one of his (usually male) friends, and this friend proceeds to ignore me even if I say hello, like just because I'm his girlfriend I should be regarded as an accessory;

• People who watch a video of a woman being raped or assaulted, while laughing and making sexist jokes about it.

• Men who tolerate and protect incompetence in other men. I worked as an aircraft mechanic around a young dud I nicknamed "Butthead". He made more than his fair share of dumb mistakes, and was a loud bigmouth. The manager really liked him, called him "my buddy" There were plenty of decent, competent mechanics; the manager could have made a better choice of favorites than this loser. One day he left the magnetos on after working an a small airplane. This can make it very easy to start- if you are under the propeller, "prop strike" can slice you if you aren't lucky enough to get away with merely being clubbed at high speed. I was the one who worked on it next. Because it is such a highly-stressed and therefore unusual and unexpected safety violation, I didn't see it immediately, but did find it before any accident occurred. Later on, Sacramento International Jet Center hired this jerk! Dodging a manslaughter charge by luck must make him employable! When I expressed exactly what any HBI member would feel about that, a man joked, "Well, at least you know he won't leave the mags on!" All laypersons now know why: it has nothing to do with him growing a brain. Turbine jet aircraft do not have mags.

• The fact that sex for single women has finally become acceptable in the USA - but apparently only if they squeeze out a baby.

• Movies like "Juno" and "Waitress".

• All women who inspired my rant, "You're not a bitch - you're an asshole!" I have a women's studies degree. I am not degree-slinging -- slinging, hell, I'm *throwing* the damn thing away! Petty, dishonest, scheming, jealous, lousy drivers, hateful, small-minded, shortsighted, lying, passive-aggressive - or just plain stupid - women: I am no longer defending them or their rights. Rights are supposed to be earned with responsibilities. What's worse is that many of them are reproducing.

  Some of these women become social workers or psychologists. When you're "helping" people who are more fucked up than you are, it's so conveniently easy to forget that you are too!

  Women who disdain those of us who *don't* want to get together to talk about husbands and kids. A start-up group of women advertised on my local Craigslist. When I emailed of my interest, and briefly answered the reasonable request to tell a bit about myself, I mentioned dining out, drinking, sports, and conversation that was "not* about husbands and children. She answered, "We get together for support and talk about our husbands, children, pets, houses, families, etc. There is more to life than hanging out." The ASSumptions in this are too many to shoot down one by one, so I will say this: Yes, there is more to life than hanging out. It's a BIG-ASSumption that I don't do way more than that. There is more to life than mutual breeder yammering societies, too. We should learn from men - hanging out is a companionable, fun thing to do. It doesn't mean there is no conversation! (Not with me around, anyway, heh.) More likely it means that there is no kvetching about nothing but one's family and offspring. And this: whether it is to brag or to bellyache, there is WAY more to life than yapping about one's husband and precious brats.

• People who discourage you to boost their own egotism. It SOUNDS like advice to be cautious, but if it is incongruent with your abilities, performance, and other advice, it's really about keeping themselves one-up by keeping you down. Here's an example: I was taking flying lessons, and was scared of stalls. I asked an engineer co-worker who was a pilot, and he said, "Well, you may have to admit that you had a good run, but you're just not cut out for it, and give it up". He knew NOTHING about my performance, conscientiousness, how I thought and handled myself situationally, or anything else. I went and learned spins to get more used to handling this situation. (Piss on you, Dave.) Definitely use others' sound advice to be cautious, but know the difference. Know yourself, know good advice from bad, and know genuinely concerned people from egotistical assholes.

• Women who simper up to men but are hostile to women. (I won't mince words. They are not merely catty and bitchy; they are full of hatred and jealousy and they are hostile.) They pick and choose women: they will judge by appearance and deem some women old/fat/unattractive/whatever enough not to be a threat, and judge others to be single/attractive/intelligent/whatever enough to be a threat. This has NOTHING to do with the other women's character; it has only to do with the judgments born of this woman's hatred and jealousy.

• Men who don't care if women are simpering up to them and being hostile to other women, as long as their own precious feelings are are coddled. Men who are as oblivious as rocks to the personal dynamics going on around them... as long as their own precious feelings are coddled. Thank Goddesses there are a few men who are not like that.

• Calling some anti-abortion activists "pro-life" even when they support capital punishment, euthanasia, and war makes me want to puke. There is a big difference between being against abortion and being consistently pro-life. It's obvious that the main concern of many anti-abortionists is not the sanctity of human life, but instead winning some political or social victory. That, or they are blindly following moral rhetoric and never considered the chasm between being anti-abortion while ignoring or even supporting other policies of death.

• People that insist on calling themselves "fur parents" or "fur grandparents" when they decide not to have kids. I get the not having kids part but why in the hell would you put a animal on the same level as something you despise or don’t want?

• People that choose to make a choice that goes against the norm, but when someone else also makes a choice that is somewhat similar to theirs they fly off the handle and say that the other person is ripping off or trivializing their feelings or whatever large decision they had to go through to make their choice.

• People that insist on and proclaim that they can’t stand something or someone but refuse to shut up about them or the object. I mean seriously I know you hate something and will never do such a thing or say such a thing, but still if you are on a message board talking about not doing or having such a thing in your life, then why do you insist on talking about it in every topic?

• Reverse extremist-the people(mainly women) that choose to be childfree, I understand that choice and don’t knock it at all. But if you are childfree, why aren’t you doing everything in your power to stay that way? I mean I don’t understand why people that are desperate for kids will go all over the world to have them. But for the people that are so extremely against having them they refuse to do a bit of travelling to just get a tubal litigation and never have to worry about having kids ever or at all on a permanent basis.

• People that feel its their God given right to pray for you and say things like "forgive them for they know not what they do". HELLO, I was there when I did the crap, God was there too, so why in the hell are you trying to save me? Oh wait I see now you aren’t trying to save me, you are just trying to rub it in because you see me as a sinner and because you know what? a few lines from the bible and you think you are so much better than me. HA!

• White guys in chat rooms who insist on asking if I have ever been with a white guy because I am black or insist on asking what I look like. A) I came to the chat room to CHAT about things that have nothing to do with how wide spread my dating selection is on guys and B) to not audition for someone’s cyber fantasy.

• People who refuse to take honest advice and then when they get messed over in a relationship, come back to you and say, "YOU ruined my relationship or YOU MADE ME, do this or that". For one, I didn’t make you do jack, and for two you didn’t even follow my advice in the first place and yet you insist on berating me?

• People who are self righteous enough to tell me I should be ashamed of myself for talking to married men period, but yet and still they are the other woman that actually married the man that left his wife for her. Yes that makes so much sense.

• People that agree with you on every freaking thing that you say, because they are afraid of having their own minds and pissing you off. They rather be mindless yes people for the sake of keeping the peace.

• People that over dramatize every little event to point where everyone doesn't ever wish to invite that person out anywhere, and the drama king or queen doesn't have a freaking clue as to why no one wants to be around them. Or even worse calls their friends flaky instead of looking at themselves and realizing they are driving people up the wall.

• People who are not adult enough to actually address the person they have a problem with, instead whispering or saying such things like "other" people should do this or that or "some" people should do this or that. Grow a pair and directly address the person you have a problem with.

• Health-food companies whose nutrition labels say "Servings: 2" on their paper soup cups. These small cups are one very small serving. Not even the dumbest broad is going to say, "I'm saving money. I brought one of those soup cups for lunch, and I'm going to split it with Patty." I even emailed one of the companies about this, and they replied that they are making it easy for people with diabetes and other health problems to count their nutritional intake. Pure, concentrated bullshit! (For real bullshit, just add hot water.) They are counting on stupid or unobservant people to think that the entire cup contains only 130 calories and 4 grams of fat, instead of the true amount which is twice that. Dishonest assholes.

• Women who think that being single mommies gives them special entitlement. A woman was asked by her neighborhood association to clean up the graffiti according to association rules. Her emailed reply was an argument for mandatory sterilization: screaming capital letters, misspellings, multiple exclamation points, sarcasm... and that was only the grammar! The content was Gee, my son was going to do it but he had to go off to college, and when the doorbell rang I thought it would be people offering to clean up the graffiti like good neighbors helping a single mother of four, but NOOOOO, it was the gestapo wanting me to actually follow the rules and clean it up myself, thanks for nothing! Tragically, these are the kind of people who will never read Nancy Friday writing about "the glorification of mommyhood". And these are precisely the ones we don't need breeding. Their offspring have a good chance of being as self-centered and illiterate as they are. Squeezing out children does not entitle them to shirk their own responsibility and foist it on others. Even more tragically, she probably fancies herself a heartless bitch, rather than simply a brainless one.

• People who discourage you to boost their own egotism. It SOUNDS like advice to be cautious, but if it is incongruent with your abilities, performance, and other advice, it's really about keeping themselves one-up by keeping you down. Here's an example: I was taking flying lessons, and was scared of stalls. I asked an engineer co-worker who was a pilot, and he said, "Well, you may have to admit that you had a good run, but you're just not cut out for it, and give it up". He knew NOTHING about my performance, conscientiousness, how I thought and handled myself situationally, or anything else. I went and learned spins to get more used to handling this situation. (Piss on you, Dave.) Definitely use others' sound advice to be cautious, but know the difference. Know yourself, know good advice from bad, and know genuinely concerned people from egotistical assholes.

• Women who simper up to men but are hostile to women. (I won't mince words. They are not merely catty and bitchy; they are full of hatred and jealousy and they are hostile.) They pick and choose women: they will judge by appearance and deem some women old/fat/unattractive/whatever enough not to be a threat, and judge others to be single/attractive/intelligent/whatever enough to be a threat. Or perhaps other women who will squeal about boyfriends or croon about their grandchildren/children together are judged unthreatening, and someone who does not is judged threatening. This has NOTHING to do with the other women's character; it has only to do with the judgments born of this woman's hatred and jealousy. It does not require the women she hates to have done anything to provoke her. In fact, some of her friends she deems "good" may be hypocritical gossips or liars, and the women she hates may have more integrity than she ever thought about having. "But hey, she can't hate women; look at her women friends!" This is WOMEN doing this. Many of them fancy themselves heartless bitches, rather than simply hateful, jealous, brainless ones.

  Example: I brought a sliced pineapple into work and the supervisor put it on his desk for anyone to enjoy, a common practice for shared snacks. One woman cooed, "How niiiiiice....." He said, "Val brought it." "Oh", in the most disgusted tone possible. If something is nice, it's nice whether a man you simper up to did it, or a woman you are jealous of did it. That kind of reaction was infantile.

• Men who dn't care if women are simpering up to them and being hostile to women, as long as their own precious feelings are are coddled. Men who are as oblivious as rocks to the personal dynamics going on around them... as long as their own precious feelings are coddled. Thank Goddesses there are a few men who are not like that.

• Men who tolerate and protect incompetence in other men. I worked as an aircraft mechanic around a young dud I nicknamed "Butthead". One day he left the magnetos on after working an a small airplane. This can make it very easy to start- if you are under the propeller, "prop strike" can slice you if you aren't lucky enough to get away with merely being clubbed at high speed. I was the one who worked on it next. Because it is such a highly-stressed and therefore fairly rare safety violation, I didn't see it immediately, but did find it quickly before any accident occurred. Later on, Sacramento International Jet Center hired this jerk! Dodging a manslaughter charge by luck must make him employable! When I expressed exactly what any HBI member would feel about that, a man said, "Well, at least you know he won't leave the mags on!" All laypersons now know why: it has nothing to do with him growing a brain. Turbine jet aircraft do not have mags.

• Has anyone besides me noticed that sex for single women has finally become acceptable in the USA - but only if they squeeze out a baby?

• Movies like "Juno" and "Waitress".

• All women who inspired my rant, "You're not a bitch - you're an asshole!". I have a women's studies degree. I am not degree-slinging -- slinging, hell, I'm *throwing* the damn thing away! Petty, dishonest, scheming, jealous, lousy drivers, hateful, small-minded, shortsighted, lying, passive-aggressive - or just plain stupid - women: I am no longer defending them or their rights. Rights are supposed to be earned with responsibilities. What's worse is that many of them are reproducing.

  Sometimes some of these women become social workers or psychologists, and when you're "helping" people who are more fucked up than you are, it is so conveniently easy to forget that you are too!

• Illiteracy due to laziness and incompetence! Illiteracy becoming so popular that it becomes acceptable. That people use excuses such as "language is dynamic and ever-changing, not static", or "I don't think exact spelling is important". (The first three words of that sentence are closer to the truth.) They are disregarding that dynamic change came from new uses, language influx and new lifestyles, not incompetent people covering up their own shortcomings by deprecating competent people, as if competence were the vice. What used to show up in my third grade spelling tests now shows up in universities and newspapers, and elsewhere, written by people who should know better.

Copyright© Heartless Bitches International (heartless-bitches.com) 2008, All Rights Reserved

Pause your cursor over each link below for a more detailed description

Want to link to HBI?

  Want to know when we update? Subscribe to our "What's New" RSS Feed

(What is an RSS Feed?)

Get SharpReader - our favorite RSS aggregator - it's free!

If you don't have a Newsreader, you can subscribe to updates via email: