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.
Eventbrite has axed him, too.
There is also the fact that many women (young girls especially) are socialized to Be Nice and Play Along and Be A Sport and Be Deferential To Men Because Male Attention Is Validating. It’s especially true in relaxed social settings, where light flirtation and banter are expected. So that when Peacocking Fivehead Dude “short circuits” things at the nightclub by crashing right through a woman’s boundaries, it’s extra hard to put that fence back up and say “get off my lawn” retroactively to someone who’s already standing on the front porch. It feels inconsistent somehow, like you’re being a prude and a party-killer if you walk the interaction back to a more formal level.
It takes a certain level of clarity to recognize what’s happening and nip it in the bud. When I was in my teens and twenties, I was often pretty slow to recognize crap like this at bars, because I was primed to be Fun!Girl! and by the time I did recognize it, backing out meant doing an abrupt 180 from my initial “let’s give him the benefit of the doubt” round of giggling and smiling. You can imagine how well that went over.
Men aren’t socialized the same way so I’d guess they’d be less likely to be slow off the blocks reacting appropriately to insults, negs, and physical violations.
Also: $2000 a pop to be told that it’s OK to choke strangers? Really??? They’d be better off saving their money for bail.
@cassandrakitty
Kind of OT but Japanese kids at least think that’s hilarious. They often shout things like “hamburger” or “This is a pen” at me randomly when I’m out walking around. Again shows that these douchebags still cling to ridiculous childish behaviours that they should have long-ago outgrown.
Another random point, but simply in my own experience (anecdata, I know) I’ve found that in inter-cultural/bilingual heterosexual couples it’s almost always the woman who learns the man’s native language and not the other way around. All of my Japanese woman friends married to American/British guys speak great English and the guys speak lousy Japanese and my Japanese husband can’t really speak English at all either. I wonder id anyone has ever done a study on that sort of thing?
Sorry to get OT but these thing were just kind of swirling around in my head.
And from a child that’s either excusable or adorable, depending how you look at it and the child’s tone of voice/body language. From an adult, no.
Also, how to put this? I don’t really do the female socialization, “must be nice because it’s very important that men approve of me” thing and never have (thanks, parents!) and yet! I am still aware that a. it’s expected that I will do that, and therefore not doing so may result in anger and retaliation from men, b. most men are bigger and stronger than me, and c. I can’t rely on random strangers to back me up when I assert my boundaries, therefore d. refusing to play along is a risk to my safety. Because, again, women aren’t idiots, and given that we have a lifetime of experience dealing with men who piss all over our boundaries we do tend to have thought how to respond to this kind of thing through, certainly more thoroughly than Advice Man has.
Oh thanks, bewilderness, I am so happy to know that, good for them.
In my very early 20s I was with a man nearly 30, the tortured playwright type, very poetic and deep (!). We took off on a trip across the country from New England to CA in a VW bus and that’s when the abuse began. He had me isolated and completely dependent on him. We were on the road for 3 months and I probably had conversations with 6-7 other people during that time. he would lock me out of the bus, once he left me on the side of the road in the redwood forest and drove away, god knows why. No never meant no, ever. I finally got away after a month in California when my father dies. I just never went back. I was so young and so terrified, so ashamed at that I had gotten myself into, it took a long time to tell my family.
I almost never talk about it, it was so long ago, but this subject has had me thinking about it all day. I guess I know this is a safe place. Thanks.
@POM: Ha ha, no worries. I’m always game to discuss politics, I just thought “Some Jerk’s Theory of Everything, Vol. 1” would be a little off-topic. (For what it’s worth, I included that line because morality is often the club used to justify restrictions on abortion and gay marriage. I don’t like to tell people that they’re wrong about what’s good and evil, but I’ll sure as hell tell ’em why their thoughts about my naughty bits shouldn’t matter to the legal system.)
(Hugs zennurse)
Seattle venue canceled!!!!!
Off topic, but they’re already projecting that governor Mark Dayton won. That’s one of the elections I’ve been working my ass off on, so I’m pretty excited!
Going to the Democrat’s party and drinking and celebrating!
@Mewens
“Off topic” is not rigidly enforced here. For example, this kind of thing is always on topic:
http://imgur.com/Um5uV4V
Abortion was originally outlawed for health reasons. Prior to the advent of germ theory and doctor’s washing their hands, surgical abortion was quite risky, and medical abortions were limited to the stuff you find now (like pennyroyal) and weren’t very safe either. That’s a manifestation of public morality: women should not be subject to dangerous procedures.
Today the safety equation is flipped, and abortion is far safer than childbirth, but the morality question is still there.
It’s hard to define the law without resorting to collective morality. Of course not every person in the society is going to agree with every point of morality in the law, but that doesn’t matter. The law is an emergent property of public morality. When case law disagrees with the collective opinion of what the law should be, you find the law ignored (as with church/state separation, especially in schools), circumvented (as in the case of racially-motivated voter caging), and/or circumscribed (as in the case of abortion).
The way to stop this is not more laws, but changing the public morality. Only when the public morality changes will the law meaningfully change.
Ok, so isn’t this Julien d-waffle supposed to come to San Francisco this weekend? Can we get info on where the hotels are? Time for another round of cancellations. I’m ready to start dialing! BTW, my Christmas wish is that this guy never gets a visa to visit Japan or anywhere in the region again.
.thanks cassandrakitty.
It looks like the word is out in Australia, Jenn Li and Anon are looking for help with Japanese speakers.
What’s the venue? Maybe we should set the local Facebook and Twitter army on his creepy ass.
Any, it might not be him doing the one in SF, there are a whole bunch of them and dates overlap. Julien may be the most arrogant and public but the company itself should be targeted as well. One mountain at a time.
Anonymous California might get the ball rolling, they are having events in LA, too.
@WWTH W00t!! Congrats! Enjoy the celebration.
I’m watching the election results closely here…it’s a statistical dead heat between the current idiot Tea Party governor (who, on Election Eve, made an inappropriate suicide joke about a member of the press) and Maine’s first openly gay congressman. I don’t think we can survive another four years of LePage.
Also the usual set of referendums. I swear, the state could just xerox the same ballot year after year:
1. Bears
2. Casinos
3. Marijuana
4. Bond issue to try to lure smart people to the state with high-tech jobs
5. Bond issue something something lobster fishermen something something
6. Local bond issue to fix 90,000 potholes from last winter
I’m sorry Aby, autocorrect on a tablet and up at O dark thirty today.
Buttercup, that suicide remark was awful! I am not following too closely, makes my depression more depressing but I did read that and was appalled. People just don’t get it unless they’ve been touched.
@ Magpie – Thanks! I have bookmarked your link. Now, I just have to convince Mr.Grump that it would be good for the grumpettes to see more of the world!
@ Shaun – Well, crap! Hugs, if you want them. Hope the beer didn’t ruin your clothes.
Jenn Li to be interviewed on SBS The Feed in Australia. Aussies, is that nationwide, have no idea?
zennurse, it is awful and I couldn’t believe he said that the day before the election. It was an appalling display of arrogance and insensitivity. He has a history of bullying the press (he once threatened to punch a PBS reporter) and making disparaging comments about women and minorities. Basically, he’s a GG troll in a suit.
I’m deeply sorry for everything you’ve been through, and for having to encounter horrible remarks like that. Sending internet hugs and baskets of ragdoll kittens your way.
Brain bleach, if this posts properly:
http://36.media.tumblr.com/e66ed242ed0bb21eeda7f0ff7dd3e963/tumblr_n2lu9yOJBg1qljj91o1_1280.jpg
Is the Jeffy at RSd the same Jeffy who rides around San Francisco in his rape van meeting women at ChaChaCha’s? I read about him today, what a sleaze, it has to be him.
RSD “instructors” have regions but Julien is ‘worldwide’. There are 11 of these creeps.
Policy of Madness sez:
Earlier this week I watched a white guy speed walk out of a US grocery without paying for the armload of stuff he was carrying. The clerk did say something, but not even half-heartedly, and certainly didn’t try to stop him. She told me the store doesn’t even care. The way she said it made it sound like this was an extremely frequent occurrence.
It’s probably not a cultural difference but employees not getting paid enough to deal with that shit and a matter of cost of enforcement to the company. The latter of which goes up for Japanese companies/people trying to punish American law breakers. That, at least, is an acknowledged problem in Japan (especially when it comes to military personnel). But enforcing rules against the powerful (or those with powerful backing) is a problem for everyone in general.
Also, ever seen those hidden camera videos where white people (in the US) pretend to steal a bike or a car and strangers ignore or help them—even when they admit they’re stealing!—but when a black person pretends to do the same they get challenged or have the cops called on them? Whites can get away with all sorts of shit anywhere if they try.
~*~*~*~*~
suzurinrin sez:
Good for you. If I get a teaching job in Japan, I’ll be doing the same. But I’ll add in to be wary of white women, too, because gender parity in abuse and fetishizing is going the completely wrong way.
A bit late, but hugs to zennurse, if you want them. I’m very glad you got away! And, please try not to feel ashamed or guilty! You were just going on a great adventure, he was (and is) the one who should feel ashamed!
@Policy of Madness
I can’t tell if that cat is trying to communicate “fuck you, hairless monkey” or “I love you more than tuna-flavored catnip.”