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.
This isn’t true in every case, but I think that a lot of the time part of the reason men get like this is because they are raised by their parents to believe they can do no wrong. These parents constantly excuse their sons assholish behavior and that even extends to rape. I’d bet many of the mothers of PUAs would look at the things their sons say about women and agree with him.
Parents have to combat the toxic masculinity in our culture by teaching their sons to respect women and their consent and not solve problems with violence. Unfortunately many parents are not willing or able to.
Why is this person not in jail for assault?
This too is why I don’t date. You never know who might be one of his students….but saying that is misandry apparently.
Master of the Boot: While the impulse is very comprehensible, it definitely should be kept in check. For one thing, no matter how carefully you phrase it, the desire to see one of his victims do something violent to him entails within it a small, inescapable element that he will HAVE another victim.
What I’d really like to see, preferably on U.S. soil, is essentially a sting operation. He’s not subtle, and doesn’t really come across as very bright in a lot of ways, as well. So it shouldn’t be too difficult, if a police dept could be convinced to send out a plainclothes cop or two to follow him around on his next tour stop. Just watch and wait, and if (most likely when) he does the grab-and-shove routine, step in immediately and ask the victim if she’d like to press charges–at that point, it’s just a matter of crossing fingers and hoping she says yes.
There’s a risk of cardiac arrest up to an hour after choking of any severity. He could easily kill someone. Why is it up to a lone feminist activist to do the job the police should be doing?
Sorry, for off-topic, but I really want to share:
English speaking folks might be amused to learn, that, according to one Latvian traditionalist, I`ve been arguing with since yesterday, thinks that USA and GB are now The Radical Liberal Paradise, because (and I`m translating what he wrote): “In USA and in Western Europe the radical liberals have gone so far that now priests face prison if refuse to bless marriage between same-sex couples”.
After several times I demanded some evidence (“I don`t have to prove anything, go look for evidence yourself”), he finally provided me with this link: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/05/american-preacher-arreste_n_3549537.html
Yeah. When I pointed out, that that link is unrelated to his initial statement, he at first performed a little “victory dance” for me getting angry in the face of the Truth (yeah…), and then generously provided another link: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/10/20/city-threatens-to-arrest-ministers-who-refuse-to-perform-same-sex-weddings/
Well, at least this is related. Now I`m wasting my time and energy to explain him how this is not “prison or blessing” for the priests, as they can choose not to work in a for-profit business. Yeah, some people.
Ladies, here’s a tip. If a man ever does this little “pick up move” to you, you can counter it with one of your own. I suggest a knee to the groin — HARD — and the fiercest bite to the offending hand. And then scream for the POLICE!
That’s the ticket.
BTW and FWIW: If I ever see any PUA try this “pick up move” in my presence, I will “white knight” so fast your head will spin. Probably with a choke hold until the asshole passes out — so that I can call the POLICE.
So grateful that my 11 year old loves Jiu Jitsu. Choke holds and how to avoid them counter them are a big part of that martial art. .. on another note, I’m following the twitter and now he’s moved the talk to the St Kilda’s pier. …Marriott still hasn’t cancelled his talk…
Effective, like embezzlement is an effective way to make money.
When I studied abroad in Japan, the university I was studying at held a special orientation meeting for the female exchange students to tell them to tell the university and report it to the police if anyone groped/flashed/etc’ed them because gropers CAN AND DO face jail time if caught.
I don’t bring this up to say anything about how things are in Japan, but more talk about my own background. We needed to be told that, because honestly in my home country and many countries around the world, there aren’t enough people saying “Yes, report scum that harasses you or sexual assaults to the police because that is a crime and they should be punished under the law.” What he is doing is assault and sexual assault and I hope he gets reported to the police and put in jail so he and all his awful followers can learn that what they’re doing is wrong.
I did want to bring up my background studying Japan though, because even though I’m white, having studied Japanese culture and studied abroad in Japan makes me more sensitive to when gross white dudes take their grossness to other countries and use shock to get away with being horrible people.
Unfortunately, Kevin, a lot of people are blind-sided by this kind of move.
I know I would not be expecting anyone to grab my neck in a bar, and I would not have the presence of mind to do anything about it.
And as someone who has been held by the neck like this for some considerable minutes (by a “friend” at school, I forget why), it’s impossible to know that fighting it won’t just cause him to increase his grip and actually throttle you to death. Men like this are likely to escalate.
Please DO be the one to intervene if you ever witness something like this, though. That part is very important and a Good Thing To Do.
If you want to hear a rad story where kick-ass fight moves worked: My mum was once in a bar, saw that a drunk guy had been roaming around, trying to kiss/ grope all the women. When she caught him out of the corner of her eye, stumbling in her direction, she handed her drink to her friend, turned around, threw him to the floor with a judo move, and picked up her drink again and carried on with her conversation in one flawless motion of awesomeness.
But again, she saw him coming and had already planned her move in her head before he reached her. It didn’t stop him trying to paw all over her again a few minutes later, though. These assholes just will not be deterred.
The more I read about PUA, the more I realize that too many of its practitioners are literally repackaging abuse tactics and calling it pick-up.
“I’m afraid to leave him, because he is so hot and cold and implies that something terrible will happen to me if I don’t do everything he says.” – Abused woman.
“Alternate ignoring her and showering her with affection. Use Dread Game to make her afraid to leave you. Grab her neck and force her head to your crotch.” – Panty dropping masculinity.
To the folks asking ‘why isn’t this guy in jail’, it’s simple. He relies on the situation to ensure that there is next to no probability that a police officer will get involved. The women are, I suspect, not given release forms to sign; they may not even realize they are being recorded specifically by an ally of his. So they figure it’s going to be a he-she said situation if they do call a cop, who probably couldn’t track down the guy based on just her description, and they don’t realize that he’s used the assault in an online video.
Another acceptable ‘comeuppance’ wish would be that one of the women already targeted, hopefully in a safe place now, learns about the video and uses that as the basis of a complaint. Even here, though, we have to not say the women SHOULD do this if they learn of the videos–this guy obviously has a lot of followers, and I have no doubt that harassment would fall on any woman who does file a complaint, on top of the usual shit women in gender-based assaults have to deal with from cops and so forth. So while I would cheer one of his victims on if she fought that fight, saying she should do so is more than I have the right to do.
Knowing that I share the same planet than this slime bag makes me want to go full vigilante on his ass. And I really do condemn vigilantism…
I just hope than one day he will face a person who knows how to fight back and will make him think twice about harassing women.
@freemage — video recording your crime does not absolve you from it. It’s freaking evidence. All it takes is one woman assaulted like this (yes, the crime of assault) who sees herself in the video, file a report, get the asshole arrested.
The fact that there are multiple examples shows he’s a serial offender. Judges don’t like serial offenders.
This this, so much this. A teacher at my high school routinely made inappropriate comments to girl students, even touching them sometimes. He once gave me a shoulder massage and refused to stop, telling me I was “tense” even as I told him repeatedly to stop touching me. But I never reported him because he was tenured, he’d been at the school for forever and been a creep for forever and we girls all honestly believed that the system wouldn’t stick up for us. We had no one to protect us or support us. I wish I had gone to the school administration, but even now, I’m not sure they would have given him more than a slap on the wrist.
I love how these pathetic troglobites think they’ve stumbled upon some kind of illuminati “secret” of picking girls up, by sexually assaulting them.
“Hey guys, I just realized: To keep girls from saying ‘no,’ just don’t ask them! I’m a genius!”
No, you’re not a genius, you’re a sexual predator. Congratulations.
Kevin K: it just shows how much these guys believe that what they’re doing is acceptable, that they’re willing to record themselves committing an offence and expect no consequences. Think of the Stuebenville rapists too – they filmed themselves raping that girl AND released it on social media too! Like wtf dudes?! Are you that fucked up in the ethics department that yout publish this shit for laughs and admiration?!
Unfortunately, that doesn’t always help. Remember Rehtaeh’s case – the photographic evidence only resulted in her being bullied into suicide, the rapists never faced justice and probably never will.
The thing is … I’m not sure he’s wrong about women in Japan just kind of putting up with that from a white man. Two of my friends taught English in Japan and they both told me all these stories about how Japanese people just often totally fail to react when a white person does something outlandish. I don’t really have an explanation for it. There’s obviously something cultural about it, but I have no idea what that might be. That he’s taking advantage of this to assault women is not surprising in the slightest, but I have little doubt that he’s able to get away with it over and over.
These are the lies men tell one another to build the myths that society runs on.
It is infuriating. Women are saying no, we don’t like that, and men are saying yes we do and we are liars. The news media even brings men, PUAs, on their shows to tell women that we do like street harassment and we are liars if we say we don’t.
One of the most important lessons we teach in unarmed defensive tactics is the highly underrated pinch. Practice it. Practice practice practice.
These are indeed the techniques Jian Gomeshi practiced and called consensual beedeessemm. Assault and battery.
Link to eventbrite says “this event currently unavailable”
Success in stopping it or subterfuge.
I vote subterfuge.
Mras keep complaining that women can put any man into jail by saying so but there are videos like this around and this guy is not in jail…yet
Austin venue canceled. Yay.