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.
I’ve likely been ninja’d a million times by now, but holy shit, Kevin. Google Robert Pickton for an awesome example of cops taking assault, kidnapping and murder seriously. /sarcasm
The guy who followed me down the street when I was about 15, middle of the day, with his penis out, grabbing me and trying to drag me into an alleyway? When the cops had him in the back of the cruiser, one of them told me “You can press charges, but this guy is known to us and he has a mental disability so nothing will happen.” At least she seemed frustrated about it. They drove him home.
Also, my husband’s father was a cop. Who beat the crap out of his wife. Chased her with his gun. Urinated on her. Who was, of course, defended by all of his cop buddies and the force in general and suffered no repercussions in court, or in his job. (Also – abandoned his kids and had to be chased down for child support when they divorced) Husband got pulled over for a traffic violation over a decade later, and the cop happened to know his father: “Yeah, your mother is a crazy bitch!” the cop says as he writes the ticket. Yeah, required to take assault seriously my ass. OUR ethical duty to report? Are you fucking kidding.
Note: husband’s mother remarried, an RCMP officer, who is an awesome person, and I’ve known other very awesome people who were also good cops. I don’t hate cops. But they are not paragons of virtue simply because they are cops; too often, quite the opposite.
Sorry, I kinda necro’d that – it just made me see red. Blanc actually getting his Aus. visa pulled has made me happy!
Team (gluten-free) Pancake all the way!
Looks like they have a local criminal assault instructor. http://puamore.com/dating-coaches/alexander-rsd/
Yeah, we’re not lacking in abusive pieces of shit here, or their defenders. It was really surprising that scumbag got his visa cancelled.
Tracy – just to make it worse, if Kevin K (now banned) is who I think he is, he’s also busy saying USians deserve what’s going to happen to them with the Repugnants taking over both houses, because all those USians didn’t do enough to stop them getting in. So either there are two blokes with the same initials who just lurve victim blaming, or there’s one who’s being a major PoS.
No, you’re right to point that out.
On the other hand… Not reporting assault is kinda like not voting. It often seems futile, but if we all come to that conclusion it’s a self-fulfilling thing. So even if it sucks, we gotta do it if at all we can.
Which doesn’t give the damn ‘you deserve it if you don’t report’ assholes, tho.
Except that voting doesn’t sometimes result in a trial in which you will be asked to prove that you aren’t a slut who wanted whatever happened to you.
Again, the individual who’s been assaulted is the one who’s best situated to figure out whether or not reporting makes sense in their specific circumstances.
Not to mention that voting is fucking compulsory here because not all countries are the US.
He lives right on the beach because that’s where flotsam and jetsam washes up..
You know the freaky deep sea fish that washed up on the California coast a while back that nobody had seen one of in years? That was his cousin.
As far as I can see, these guys are just grifters — a slightly different subspecies from Paul Elam. There are guys with more money than brains, who want to be told how to get any woman they want without having to establish a relationship or even be nice to her, and here are these guys with a phony psychobabble shtick to fleece them. I wonder — is it worse to be nasty clever or nasty stupid?
Somebody suggested that some of the photos looked staged, and it hit me: of course they’re probably staged — these guys aren’t going to take a chance of doing something that might get them prosecuted for assault. This is just a con. Now that RSD has been brought out into the light of day, it will probably go out of business. Either the “instructors” will set up a new racket, or they’ll go into another line of con. Look for Julian five years from now, and he’ll be promoting “make a million in real estate” or “make $87 an hour working from home” or “settling your back taxes” scams. That’s what this kind of … well, I was going to call him a reptile, but I like reptiles.
Grumpy,
I hope they are staged. That would be so much better than them being real.
To be honest, I’m not sure it’s that much better if the women participated “voluntarily” out of economic need.
How’s this scumbag not in jail?
omg, I remember Socialkenny! I think we had an argument about black women, white women, the comparative fertility rates thereof in the US, etc, and I brought up birth control (…seemed germane to me!) whereupon he seemed really flummoxed.
it was super weird.
@ceebarks: I pity any one so far out of the loop that they don’t recognize that fertility rates in modern industrial nations mainly reflect access to and social approval for birth control rather than anything biological.
@GrumpyOldMan Agreed! I really had no idea anyone was still confused on that point, but I’ve run into a couple since, now that this level of ignorance is on my radar. Suddenly it seems like they are EVERYWHERE. lol “It’s because contracepting women urinate minute traces of hormones when they’re on BC, the water gets recycled, and now we’re all sterile!”
(Please, please tell me no one is actually relying on hormonal residue in the public water supply as a contraceptive method.)
Or flouridation or microwaves or radiation from laptop computers…
#ceebarks: No one? Well, there was that idiot millionaire who was suggesting holding an aspirin tablet between your knees as a foolproof method …
The real problem is that people believe what they read on the internet — it seems to bypass any kind of reality-check. You get a rumor like the birth control hormones in the water supply started and enough people will believe it …dogg only knows how many, or how much it will be embellished along its journey.
I would be shocked to find that Julien Blanc has bedded more beautiful women than Mr. Futrelle, but I suppose the only real measure would be a field study where their wits are matched and we determine once and for all whether the Julien choking/aggressive approach method or the porcine Futrelle feminist obsequiousness method is superior. I think it is only fair if Mr. Futrelle picks the venue – which I assume will be a place where he finds some degree of comfort and therefore would consist of some sort of basement with comic abundant book paraphernalia and Mountain Dew.
I feel like a lot of people misunderstood that comment. He wasn’t suggesting there was any medical benefit to putting an aspirin between one’s knees; it was just a florid way of saying “keep your legs closed”.
So what you’re saying, Alec Leamus, is that it is perfectly acceptable to assault women as long as it gets a man laid?
… and here I was thinking that “The ends justify the means” was something only cartoon villains said, when the writers were desperately trying to make up a “my villain started out trying to do righteous things” arc at the last minute…
#1: “I’m writing a blog; this isn’t a competition.”
#2: “You’re just jealous because I’m winning!”
#1: “YOU’RE CHOKING PEOPLE.”
These dolts never seem to get that not all men are as insecure as they are, so attacks on their “notch count” aren’t even really attacks.
And while I’m not a man, I think I speak for most of them when I say that not being a rapist is its own reward. If you would sell your soul to up your notch count, I almost feel sorry for you (except I don’t really feel sorry for rapists).