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.
Yeah, cops do not always take violence against women seriously despite what MRAs say. In the US, a lot of states have thousands of rape kits nobody has gotten around to processing. I remember reading that the justice department had to investigate the DC police because they were sending away rape victims. In Florida, the police pressured Jameis Winston’s victim into not pressing charges because football is more important than women. There have also been several cases of police officers sexually assaulting and raping female suspects, drivers that have been pulled over and even DV victims who called the police for help.
It’s easy for white men to trust the police and say “just call the cops” to crime victims because as the most privileged group, cops don’t generally hassle straight white cis men and usually listen to them. But that’s not true for women, POC and LGBTQ people.
Or poor people. Rich dude owning several slum properties is not a crime, but living in one of them is treated as one.
Kevin.
How many times do people have to explain this before you stop telling everyone else what to do?
That too. See also, people who protest against the crimes of the rich.
I think we all remember this.
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/203/420/UCDavis_pepperspray.jpg?1321852699
The cop’s punishment for casually pepper spraying non-violent protesters? Paid leave for his psychological distress IIRC.
The police are first and foremost there to uphold the status quo and protect the privilege and property of the powerful classes. Helping the occasional crime victim simply lends the institution a veneer of credibility. Maybe that sounds incredibly cynical, but the older I get the more cynical I become.
@Katz
What’s your alternative? Whine about it? That’s going to change the dynamic — not.
Cops are required to take assault seriously. It’s their JOB. Call them. File a report. If you don’t, you’re abdicating the field to the assaulter. He just got away with a crime. Makes it so much easier for him to re-offend.
Sorry, it’s a citizen’s responsibility and ethical duty to report a crime. “Everyone else” includes me — I don’t get off, either.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/brutereason/2013/10/06/stop-telling-harassment-and-assault-survivors-to-go-to-the-police/
Oh my fucking god, you didn’t just…fuck you did.
Fuck you. Fuck you with a cactus. Fuck you with a chainsaw. And go fuck yourself with a poison ivy vine.
Cops don’t fucking care. They give zero fucks. We have tried, we have told you this, you keep saying the same goddamn thing over and over and fucking over again. Go fuck yourself sideways with a bus.
And we’re “whining”?!? Can someone fucking ban the fucking troll?
@weirdtreehugger.
That’s the old “false equivalency fallacy”. Because an asshole cop behaved badly, therefore you’re not going to report a CRIME? Why? Because you’ll get pepper sprayed?
WAKE UP! Listen to what you’re saying. You’re practically wallowing in victimhood. Stop it.
The reason to report a crime is to make life uncomfortable for the criminal. Even if they don’t get prosecuted, you’ve still stood up to the criminal and made his life miserable. And it’s likely he has a boss he has to explain things to. And neighbors who want to know what happened and why his name was in the paper. And on and on.
Report. Report. Report.
http://feministing.com/2014/04/11/stop-telling-survivors-they-must-report-to-the-police/
KEVIN K IS HARASSING US!
There, reported. Are you happy now?
Yeah, gonna follow Kevin K’s advice and report … to the mods.
Seriously this triggery victim blaming privilege blind abusive asshat needs to be gone. I got no nice to deal with him and his shit today or any day in the future.
And Kevin? Go fuck yourself backwards with an ice pick.
I tried explaining this to a person who was arguing that Trayvon Martin should’ve called the cops to report being followed.
Ladies, ladies! Your first responsibility is to make sure that Kevin doesn’t feel uncomfortable about the unfairness of life! Why can’t any of you see that???
http://thecurrentconscience.com/blog/2012/02/21/stop-saying-calm-down-and-crazy/
“You need to go to the police when a crime happens, it’s their JOB to catch the criminal!”
“But what if the police don’t listen to you, and in fact sometimes turn on you?”
“… it’s their JOB!”
Kevin, first go fuck yourself for your splaining and your “wallowing in victimhood” line, but second you need to realize that even the police are people. Flawed, flawed people in a profession with systematic bias towards minorities and women.
Wanna ask what you’re supposed to do if you can’t trust the cops? Welcome to the conversation minorities and women have been having practically since police existed. Sit down and listen.
I never said I personally wouldn’t report an assault or rape. I’m saying that “just call the cops” isn’t a solution because they don’t fucking care. They just don’t. Have you read and comprehended anything people have been saying to you? For marginalized classes, cops are as likely to be victimizers as they are protectors.
Oh, fuck off. You need to WAKE UP if you think people don’t have legitimate reasons to mistrust the police and are just playing the victim card for funsies.
And how uncomfortable reporting a sex crime makes the victim doesn’t matter to you at all? Have you never heard about the fact that many victims feel like they’ve been violated all over again by the system? Do you not realize that the victim gets put on trial too? Her behavior and appearance at the time of the crime are scrutinized, her past sex life evaluated, there’s hand wringing over the poor rapists life being ruined, if the rapist/abuser is well known or respected she will be accused of trying to get famous by ruining his life. Does any of that sound easy or fun to you? Yes, criminals should be held accountable for their crimes by the legal system, but rape culture does everything to discourage it. You should be telling people in power to change that, not mansplaining to women what we should do if we are victimized. If everybody reported every sexual assault, that still wouldn’t be enough to get rid of rape culture.
Fuck off. Fuck off. Fuck off.
I just went back a few pages to refresh my memory, and yes, it was Kevin K who told women to just kick a man in the nuts and that will resolve any assault that might be happening. He even prefaced it with the phrase, “Ladies, here’s a tip.” Because kicking a guy in the balls when he grabs you is something no woman has ever heard or thought of before, and this “helpful tip” was completely new information.
Kevin, you need to stop it. There are more choices than call the police or whine. You are being an ass and you need to stop it.
Trigger warning.
http://viralwomen.com/post/texas_police_officer_caught_on_video_go_ahead_call_the_cops_they_cant_unrape_you
Ninjad by a kazillion peeps.
Content warning violence against minority women
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2775904/Young-woman-reported-terrifying-abuse-three-elderly-Muslim-women-Melbourne-train-launch-Twitter-campaign-dismissive-police-took-action.html
thebewilderness, honestly at this point we can’t have too many people telling Kevin to fuck off and fuck himself sideways with a corkscrew. Please continue.
Trigger warning.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2013/08/23/i-am-a-false-rape-allegation-statistic/
As a former LEO, Kevin, I can assure you that you are not just wrong but dead wrong. In some countries when a woman reports a crime she is arrested. In the US, to varying degrees in different states they listen and nod their heads and when you get your copy of the police report you cannot effing believe your eyes because what they wrote down was all about how you looked and acted and practically noting about the perp. You would almost think you had beaten yourself bloody.
You are just flat wrong, Kevin, and the fact that you refuse to accept that you are not the authority on womens lives makes you an effing troll.