Heartless Bitches International is a humorous women's website. It was started as a joke in 1996 by Ottawa, Canada software developer "Natalie P", satirizing the stereotype that all assertive, strong women are "heartless bitches". It is now a repository of thousands of articles, primarily dealing with the expectations and stereotypes that society tries to enforce on men and women, the problems they cause, and how to overcome them.

The website particularly rejects sappiness and women who are excessively emotional. Heartless Bitches International claims it does not celebrate being insensitive, manipulative

Psychological manipulation

Psychological manipulation is a type of social influence that aims to change the perception or behavior of others through underhanded, deceptive, or even abusive tactics. By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at the other's expense, such methods could be considered exploitative,...

, selfish, cruel, or man-hating; it celebrates the positive qualities in people, like assertiveness, self-reliance, and an unwillingness to be a martyr, which lead to them being stereotyped as a "heartless bitch". Apart from admiring these qualities, Heartless Bitches International does not have a party line or rigid set of beliefs, preferring its members to be open-minded and to trust themselves enough to make their own judgments. The website uses "bitch" to mean the backronym

Backronym

A backronym or bacronym is a phrase constructed purposely, such that an acronym can be formed to a specific desired word. Backronyms may be invented with serious or humorous intent, or may be a type of false or folk etymology....

 "Being In Total Control Honey".

It was one of the earlier websites catering specifically towards women at a time when the World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

 was largely a male domain. It was nominated for a Webby Award in 2002 in the humor category. In 2001 it had over 6,500 members and about 65,000 page views per week.

Regular columns

The majority of HBI's content is user-submitted, but there are a number of regular writers and columns:

• Bitchitorial — An editorial
  Editorial
  An opinion piece is an article, published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about the subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals.-Editorials:...
  
   written by Natalie, who also runs the site and gets most of the mail.
• Weak of the Week — JadeSyren, the site's "bitch-bouncer", riffs off the rejected membership applications for the enjoyment of all. The rejected application is presented in full with Jade's commentary in bold.
• WomanRant — Political commentary by freelance writer Heather Wokusch, who has her own website at heatherwokusch.com
• I'M NOT BITTER — A personal column by The Morrigan.
• Out of Compliance — Essays on geek
  Geek
  The word geek is a slang term, with different meanings ranging from "a computer expert or enthusiast" to "a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid or disgusting acts", with a general pejorative meaning of "a peculiar or otherwise dislikable person, esp[ecially] one who is perceived to...
  
   culture by Marguerite Nightingale.
• Dear Fuckin' Bon — An advice column by Bonnie Persson-John, who died in August 2003.

User-submitted

The majority of the articles on Heartless Bitches International are submitted by the readers, and are archived under the heading "Deal With It!"

• Rants — Self-explanatatory.
• Collected Quotes — An archive of Heartless Bitches International's "quote of the week". The quotes all somehow relate the Heartless Bitch philosophy. The Quote of the Week is displayed on the site's index page, and changes every update.
• The Manipulator Files — Articles about avoiding and dealing with manipulative relationships, written from personal experience. Also contains a list of "Red Flags" to help identify manipulators before they do too much damage.
• Nice Guys? BLEAH — The biggest 'self saucing' section; It attacks the beliefs of men who think they ("nice guy
  Nice guy
  Nice guy is a term in the general public discourse and in popular culture describing an adult or teenage male with friendly yet unassertive personality traits in the context of a relationship with a woman. A typical nice guy is perceived to put the needs of others before his own, avoids...
  
  s") deserve female attention because they act "nicely" - not out of the goodness of their hearts or because they care, but because they want something in return - and then spend their time whining about the "fact" that women only want to date jerks. As the site says:

The section is updated very frequently because of the large amount of mail received from "Nice Guys" who feel they are misunderstood, as well as people who have had to deal with them.

• Sappy Site of the Week — Marlene ("the queen of mean") profiles a laughably sappy / stupid / usually both website. Similar to Something Awful
  Something Awful
  Something Awful, often abbreviated to SA, is a comedy website housing a variety of content, including blog entries, forums, feature articles, digitally edited pictures, and humorous media reviews. It was created by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka in 1999 as a largely personal website, but as it grew, so...
  
  's "Awful Link of the Day".
• Pukefest — Another long and frequently updated section, Pukefest is where readers chime in with lists of things that make them want to puke. It's received and sorted by Natalie.
• MaleBag — Comments from male readers divided into "Signs of Intelligent Life", "Free Time at the Psychiatric Hospital" and "They JUST DON'T GET IT". There's also general comments from both men and women.
• Unclassified Comments — Reader mail, positive and negative, some with commentary, some without.

Pop culture

Examples of Heartless Bitchiness in popular culture.

• Honorary Heartless Bitches — Examples of women who upheld the Heartless Bitches ideals throughout history, such as over-70s women's rights crusaders The Raging Grannies or the Iceni warrior-queen Boudica
  Boudica
  Boudica , also known as Boadicea and known in Welsh as "Buddug" was queen of the British Iceni tribe who led an uprising against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire....
  
  .
• Adult books — Books with Heartless Bitch-style themes and characters for adults.
• Children's books — Books for children with strong female role models, a lack of princesses needing rescuing, and messages about getting off your ass and doing something instead of waiting for things to somehow work out right in the end.
• Movies — Movies with Heartless Bitch-style themes and characters.

Membership

HBI also has a membership section. Applying for membership requires an essay on why the applicant is a Heartless Bitch. Applications deemed particularly bad are publicly ridiculed in the Weak of the Week section.

• Member Section — Sections for members and prospective members. Despite the majority of the site being from a female perspective, both men and women can become members.
• Real Life Members, Exemplary Members — A list of the members, with an autobiographical paragraph describing them and a personal "one-liner".
• BitchBoard — The website's BBS
  Bulletin board system
  A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging...
  
  .