Julien Blanc, also known as RSD Julien, is a self-described “executive dating coach” seemingly without a conscience. In expensive seminars held in hotels around the world the Real Social Dynamics instructor teaches men to “Make Girls BEG To Sleep With You After SHORT-CIRCUITING Their Emotional And Logical Mind,” as his breathless promo material puts it.
What this means in practice? Manipulation, mind-fuckery and in some cases outright physical assault — none of which he makes any attempts to hide.
Indeed, a video Julien himself put out in September showed the “dating” guru working his particular magic on unsuspecting Japanese women — by putting them in headlocks and/or pushing their heads to his crotch.
In footage from one of his recent workshops, he told a roomful of hopeful creeps that in Tokyo,
if you’re a white male, you can do what you want. … I’m just romping through the streets,just grabbing girls’ heads, just like, head, pfft on the dick.
After discovering a video featuring some of this footage — the one I’ve embedded at the top of this page — feminist activist Jennifer Li set up a petition on Change.org urging the Como Melbourne hotel, and other hotels hosting Real Social Dynamics seminars, to boot Julian and his comrades, charging them with “[making] a living by teaching men how to violate women through physical and emotional abuse.”
Li also started up the hashtag #TakeDownJulienBlanc in order to spread the news and organize opposition to Julien’s seminars.
It worked. The video featuring Julien’s abusive tactics went viral, racking up a quarter million pageviews on YouTube, and the petition quickly garnered nearly fifteen thousand signatures.
And the Como Melbourne hotel listened:
Following an objective review, we are in the process of advising Real Social Dynamics of our decision not to proceed as their event venue.
— The Como Melbourne (@ComoMelbourne) November 4, 2014
[UPDATE: RSD quickly rescheduled the event at a different location.]
Li and the other #TakeDownJulienBlanc organizers are now aiming their sights on hotels hosting other RSD events in Seattle and Austin, Texas. Anonymous has also gotten into the action.
It’s easy to see why the #TakeDownJulienBlanc campaign has spread so quickly. Pickup artists are a sleazy, manipulative and generally pretty amoral bunch But “RSD Julien” takes PUA creepiness to a whole new level, teaching his acolytes a form of “pickup artistry” that bears a strong resemblance to domestic abuse.
In his promo material, he boasts that his approach is
Offensive, It’s Inappropriate, It’s Emotionally Scarring, BUT IT’S DAMN EFFECTIVE
He tries to pass this off as a joke, but it’s really not; his techniques are clearly abusive.
I pointed out some of his bizarre gaslighting tricks in a post last year. But if anything he seems to have gotten worse since then.
Indeed, Julien recently Tweeted a picture of the Duluth Power and Control wheel, a tool used by anti-DV activists to highlight abusive behavior, declaring it to be a handy “checklist” of techniques to use to “MakeHerStay.” (Another sleazeball pickup guru I’ve written about a lot, Heartiste, also claims to have found inspiration in the Duluth wheel.)
And then there’s what Julien calls the “Choke Opener,” which he has documented in a series of pics showing him with his hand around the throats of assorted women, all of which he’s helpfully tagged with #ChokingGirlsAroundTheWorld.
As Julien sees it, these, er, pickup techniques enable men to, as he declares in all-caps on his site, to
DEVELOP PANTY-DROPPING MASCULINITY WITH THIS ROCK-SOLID STRUCTURE TO SELF-GENERATE THE POWERFUL EMOTIONS GIRLS CRAVE
Well, he’s generated some powerful emotions, all right, though I don’t think anger and disgust were the ones he was going for.
Because apparently some guys hear about the groping problem on Japanese mass transit and think those jerks just aren’t going far enough.
At least none of the guys in the bar would have done any physical shite like the PUA dude advocates. That’s one good thing about regulars – they have your back if anything starts turning odd or nasty.
I’m still gawping at the bits where he grabs women’s heads and pushes them towards his crotch, tbh. I’ve met some assholes in my time, but really? Who raised this person? I’m not surprised people are freezing rather than pushing him away, they’re too busy trying to figure out WTF just happened to formulate a response other than “what’s wrong with you?”
How is that not sexual assault? It’s already assault before he puts their head there, forcing their head into his groin surely adds the sexual dimension to the crime?
Does the man not have a living mother, aunts, sisters? How on earth would he feel if someone did this to them?
How the hell is physically manhandling someone, in a way that causes them acute embarassment to say nothing of any physical injuries they may receive (neck damage, bruising) without their consent not assault?
From a basic rules of social engagement perspective (how to act in clubs subsection) it’s like he just hopped up on one of the chairs and took a dump right in the middle of the table. Again, WTF?
And then took the turd and rolled it in glitter.
And sold it to another equally horrible person for $2000.
I am reminded of this song. For some reason, I really liked OutKast:
Thank you! I was given a piece of super new agey prog rock to review and it’s making me want to take a nap.
The thing that’s still leaving me slackjawed in wonder? The fact that he’s not the only one of these jerks.
There are More. Than. Ten. men travelling the world, taking money from other men to advise-encourage-tell-demonstrate these approaches.
Week after week. Month after month. City after city.
@POM:
Sorry about the delay between replies. I work in a newsroom (yes, most of us _also_ think it’s terribly quaint), and our first exchange was during a lull between election results.
Anyway, I think we actually agree on the culture having to change when laws are underpoliced. I tend to write in ellipticals (I know, it’s a horrible habit, and especially terrible when working in a newsroom), but it’s part of what I meant by condemning the society, not merely its laws or jurisprudence.
As for the public morality – I think we’re talking about a number of things. I’ll try to break down my thoughts on all the things I think we’re discussing.
First: I’m not a fan of talking about “good” and “evil” regarding laws for a few reasons; the first being that we all have our various ways of framing discussions, but our individual moral frames are particularly loaded. I find my conversations are usually more fruitful when I don’t mention good or evil. (That’s a bit of a semantic dodge, I know.) Another is that, while your definition of what’s good and what’s evil might be precise and measured, I find that most of us have some arbitrary expectations for the terms. In my experience, when one opens the door to moral authority, one’s opening the door to a whole network of jumbled and unordered thinking.
Second, and this might be my relativist streak speaking, but I’m not comfortable with talking about the public good and public morality interchangeably. I get that they’re related ideas, and that they’re likely inseparable at some level. (If we view the “there oughta be a law …” declaration as a form of moral outrage, then all laws _must_ begin with a kernel of morality.) But for me, the fact that we all have different moral frames poses a huge problem – it means that any given proposal must either match multiple frames (which is a political process, of course, even when it’s a trivial one) or it must transcend frames. I know that transcending moral frames is a little bit more of semantic play – creating a “neutral” framework merely substitutes individual sense of good with collective sense of good, and it’d be reactionary to boot – but I find rule of law to be preferable to rule by another individual’s conscience. (I guess the end result of my definition of rule of law would be indistinguishable from the end result of changing society to the broadest definition of good, though. More semantics on my end, possibly.)
@mildlymagnificent
Who all associate with each other because they at least have a relationship via the company – so a conspiracy charge would also stick.
Under the US, wouldn’t this act also apply: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_Act
Their seminars surely meet the definition of racketeering?
I am extremely happy to see these events getting closed down. Part of me is also counting down until some MRA starts calling it a doxxing and harassment campaign–you know, because “Aha, see, SJW’s do it, too.”
Of course, this only even sort of makes sense when one completely ignores that this campaign is simply contacting the venues saying, “Uh, have you actually *seen* this company’s videos,” instead of threatening, “We will kill people if you let [person] speak”, or sticking dead squirrels in said person’s mailbox, etc.
But I am almost willing to bet money that spaces like 8chan will be more than happy to overlook said discrepancies to twist it into a story of persecution and SJW hypocrisy. (This should not be a deterrent in the slightest, of course! I’m just already imagining the faint echoes of PUA whining.)
Someone wrote a blog post about this for a Tokyo-based expat blog and what do you know, the comments were full of dudes whining about how it’s not all white men and also Japanese men harass women too so wah, stop making me feel bad.
Guess what, guys? If your reaction to this is “this is making me, as a white man, feel bad, and also other men do it too” then you are indeed part of the problem.
@duckbunny: Once my rapist was done raping me, he asked me, in a soft, vulnerable tone: “Please tell me I didn’t rape you. I don’t want to have raped you.” He was still on top of me. It messed with my head for over a decade.
I have enough damned trouble trying to convince my female students here (in Japan) that they deserve better than a life of obedient housewifery WITHOUT human shitstains like this trying to profit from their low assertiveness.
One of the downsides of having such a cooperative society is that there’s not always someone there to put an asshole in their place. Considerate people yield, sometimes to the point of anxiety, and inconsiderate people get free fucking reign. I see it every day, even in office body language.
But even in a more assertion-dense population like the States, plenty of people of all genders have yet to reject the belief that women’s bodies are public property and that only unapologetic and invasive men are desirable.
Thank goodness people are fighting back, though. Good ol’ St. Kilda hippies. 😀
@girlscientist That’s so awful, I’m sorry. Of all the people he could ask for that kind of reassurance, and after what he’d just done to YOU.
It’s not remotely the same, but it reminds me of a black woman who told me she often had to comfort her white friends when they realized how awful racism was and broke down crying.
I’m going to echo earlier comments about how fantasies of non-martial artist women taking on harassers with a sassy knee to the nuts can lead to punches in the face. In fact, I learned that decades ago when a scrappy punk rock girl I was friends with was groped by a dude at a concert, responded by shoving him and cursing him out, and got punched in the face for that response. Nothing happened to the guy, of course, because the mostly male crowd didn’t do jack shit and guys who grope and punch women kind of always get away with it.
Let’s not pretend that there aren’t innumerable Blancs out there getting away with this behavior their entire adult lives and let’s really not pretend that a real solution is asking young women to physically assault men.
That said, I’m all for encouraging young women, all women in fact, to take Krav Maga classes.
Oh yeah, there’s a fun example. The last man who touched me inappropriately at a concert? Was the bouncer.
But yeah, I’m sure kneeing him in the nuts would have worked out great, I should totally have tried that.
All women who are physically up to it, have any access to any sort of classes, have the money for classes … There are an awful lot of us who don’t fit all or any of those categories.
What a fucking vile piece of disgusting garbage.
I apologize for not having something a little more relevant or interesting to say, but the fact that this scumfuck makes _money_ off of this shit is beyond disgusting. I don’t think “vile” even does this justice. Repugnant? Revolting? Strong terms that still feel kind of pale in describing this f’n mess.
That sneaky sneaky Julien pulled down his choking pics. That’s why I made screenshots! I put one in the post.
My younger self was more scrappy than I am today, and took on a couple of battles that in a way I shouldn’t have but in a way I’m glad I did. What I’ve learned from it is that without help from the upper powers, assholes will likely get extremely aggressive until their challenger is subdued, and then continue to beat down on said person until everyone else knows what will happen if they stand up for themselves (or others).
You can’t fight blind aggression with assertion because it won’t work, and if you use aggression against aggression the asshole will a) escalate, if they know they’re more powerful than you or b) use your aggression against you and complain to the higher powers.
My point is that assholes get stopped by only two things a) mass bystander intervention, as in A LOT of people have to demonstrate that their behaviour is not acceptable or b) intervention from authorities, be it management, police, bouncers, or simply someone bigger and stronger than them.
The question is how do we make this happen. Several social cultures place importance on “not making a scene” and people are always afraid to be the first to stand up to a bully in case nobody else joins them. And we already know the corruption and favouritism that can exist within authorities.
@kitteh
I think self-defense classes are better than “kick him in the jimmy” advice, but, yes, they’re not a social solution, aren’t for everyone and don’t turn you into Batgirl who dishes out vigilante justice against abusive men.
@Cassandra
“Groping” was probably to light a word, he shoved his hand down her pants and grabbed her crotch. She stopped going anywhere near a mosh pit, or enthusiastic crowds at shows in general, after that incident.