Writing about abhorrent misogyny pretty much every day of every week can get a tad depressing. So I’m glad to have some actual good news to report. Good news, at least, for non-misogynists.
The #TakeDownJulienBlanc campaign has taken off internationally, and the “pickup artist” who advocates choking women as a clever “opener” has been kicked out of Australia, his visa revoked.
In an op-ed in The Independent yesterday, self-described “Aggressive Chinese Girl” Jenn Li explained why she started the #TakeDownJulienBlanc campaign and what it has accomplished so far:
Julien Blanc, a “dating advice” consultant working for Real Social Dynamics (RSD), travels around the world teaching men how to manipulate, and in some cases, sexually assault women. …
In Blanc’s videos his treatment of women is – to put it lightly – horrifying. There are videos of him going up to women, clasping their throats, while putting his finger on his lips, saying “shhh”. For reasons beyond me, he has decided to document this abuse by labelling the videos of him doing this with his own hashtag: #ChokingGirlsAroundtheWorld. …
When talking about how to “seduce” a Japanese woman, he is quoted as saying: “Just grab her… To take the pressure off, yell Pikachu or Pokemon or Tamagotchi or something”. He is obsessed with degrading Japanese women, and abusing his white male privilege. “…
By perpetuating the idea that Asian women are a “free for all” for predatory men, he is encouraging other pathetic men to abuse them. …
When I first started the campaign, I had almost no strategy; I just threw things and hoped they stuck. I called the Japanese Embassy, reported him, wrote to the press, did the hashtag thing, and started a petition on change.org.
I’m now targeting venues who are hosting his events. The campaign is still in its early stages, but something has seemed to have stuck. We have been able to shut down events in Melbourne, Brisbane, Austin, and Seattle, and Eventbrite have stopped hosting his events.
In Melbourne, as I noted a couple of days ago, Li and her supporters convinced the hotel hosting his event to boot him. Blanc ended up having to host the event on a boat, and sent an assistant along to conduct the “seminar” in his place. Locals organized a protest and the event itself was shut down. Not long afterwards, local authorities reported that they had revoked Blanc’s visa. He’s now left the country.
Li’s next goal? To shut down Blanc’s scheduled seminars in Japan in two weeks.
RSD founder Owen Cook, aka “Tyler Durden,” has posted a weird, rambling “non response” to the controversy on his website, a strange mixture of apology, defiance and self-justification. After announcing that “we’re not NOT responding. :),” he basically throws Blanc under the bus:
I think Julien’s video was absolutely stupid. It was totally out of context and he posted it to get shock, not realizing the full outcome. I’m sorry about the video. I would have taken it down if I’d seen it, but don’t monitor all social media postings.
I watched Julien’s entire Free Tour from that event today, and he talks about not degrading women and how he’s just kidding around. The full infield clips have the girls laughing and asking him to kiss them and things like that. He deliberately left this out of the video to make it inflammatory. Again I don’t approve that behaviour and frankly neither does he, he was an idiot to post that.
Then he complains that #TakeDownJulienBlanc supporters are
deliberately taking things out of context. … I see fake twitter accounts claiming to be Julien, or videos from me with sarcasm that are cut to say insane things I’m not saying, and that have context when you watch the whole thing. They know they’re doing this and think it’s funny, so there’s not a lot of dialogue to be had.
So I’m not NOT talking… it’s just that there’s nobody to talk to. 🙂 I’ve apologized in other threads and condemned the behaviour. From there it is what it is.
He follows up with a weirdly self-aggrandizing spiel:
All I care about is my ability to do good in the world. RSD has been a cool vehicle to do that. If it isn’t a viable vehicle anymore, I’ll continue to do good. The people who watch our stuff honestly have no idea what it’s like to be a shy guy trying to learn to meet girls, or the pain it causes. They have no context for why we teach guys what we teach, after years of trying different things to see what works.
It doesn’t matter. I’ll always do amazing work and make the world better. As long as I can do that, I’m happy. The vehicle is just a temporary form that has to be discarded like anything else, whether tomorrow or in 50 years. As long as I’m alive I’ll keep finding new vehicles to do good things.
It seems like SJW’s cause a lot of trouble for good men as well as bad. I think it’s important people find out about them. I think the mainstream media does a lot of messed up things as well. I’ve honestly felt guilty for not addressing these issues for a while now, but was too busy teaching “pick up” which I’m sure people sensed I did more out of obligation to the community that helped me, than it being my main focus.
So regardless of what happens, I’ll continue to do good. I’ve spent days working on RSD related stuff, no different than before. I personally expect RSD to be fine. My life is basically the same as it ever was, not really different. I’ve been planning on building something new for a long time, and have a lot of things in the works with it even before this, so if it’s not fine I’ll do other things.
I suspect the plain English translation of all that is: CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAP I THINK WE’RE SCREWED.
As far as I know, Blanc himself hasn’t offered any response to any of this yet — aside from quietly taking down Tweets featuring pictures of him choking women.
For the latest on all this, check out the #TakeDownJulienBlanc hashtag on Twitter, and follow Li herself at @JennLi123.
You can also sign a petition to Take Down Julien Blanc and RSD’s Seminars and Web content. Last I checked, the Change.org petition had garnered more than 30,000 signatures. There’s another one directed at the Japanese government here.
For more on the campaign against Blanc, see:
Julien Blanc, the ‘female attraction’ expert, glorifies sexual violence. The fewer seminars he holds, the better, by Somayya Ismailjee at TheGuardian.com.
Julien Blanc, self-described pick-up artist who promotes choking women, leaves Australia and has visa cancelled, at ABC.net.au.
Australian Government Deports Notorious “Pick-Up Artist” Julien Blanc, by Mark Di Stefano at Buzzfeed.
It’s not that they can’t read the women’s discomfort so much as that they don’t care, IMO. It’s very common for men to say “you love it” and similar things during street harassment, or rape, and if you look at the facial expression, body language, and so on, they don’t mean that they actually think the woman loves whatever they’re doing, it’s just an expression of dominance. They could just as easily say “fuck you, bitch” and mean exactly the same thing, it’s just that trying to force a woman to pretend she doesn’t hate what you’re doing gives that extra little thrill of domination/degradation.
This whole “shy guy” thing as an excuse just leaves me baffled. My husband (of 45 years) was so shy when we first met that he could barely use a telephone, and yet he got up the nerve to ask me out. I’m sure it caused him great anxiety, but he didn’t shove my head into his crotch or put a choke-hold on me. He just asked if I’d like to go with him to see his buddy in an auto race and I said “sure.” If I’d said no, he’d have been disappointed, but I doubt if it would have triggered misogynistic rage. Almost all of us have been turned down at one time or another, whether for friendship, romance, sex, or whatever, and yet it doesn’t turn us into complete assholes. What is it with these guys?
@M Trembley
Oh, the hardcore PUAs and other manosphere dudes will definitely double down. Hopefully the feedback that most people find their ideas appalling will steer away a few people who’re on the fence, but the ones who’ve committed to to misogyny as a philosophy are beyond redemption. I’m not expecting them to change, just enjoying seeing their noses rubbed in the mess they worked so hard to create.
IMO, the “shy guy” thing is just an excuse, a red herring. These aren’t genuinely shy guys in emotional pain. These are entitled guys furious that they are not gettting their “fair share” of “hot babes” and looking to have their bigoted abuser biases confirmed. They’re paying all that money to be told that they are right, that they have the right to abuse women and that lots of other men will support them in doing it. /pukes
The ‘shy guy’ defence is total BS. Lots of people (probably most people IMHO) have varying degrees of social anxiety in various social settings. This is not about shy guys meeting teh laydeeeez. This is about entitled guys abusing ladies.
I have another take on finding romance (as opposed to harassing/abusing people). This is one of my favourite love songs of all time. Note on of the early verses toasts “the boys who said ‘no'”.
Harassment does not equal romance, d00ds!
For starters, what actual shy guy is going to walk up to a female stranger and start choking her? Seriously. I call BS. It’s like the “oh but he’s socially awkward” excuse – a quick silencing technique to make women feel guilty for complaining.
Oooh, waves at Grumpyoldnurse. Great minds …
cassandrakitty:
This doesn’t sound weird at all – in fact, I am in complete agreement with you. For me, this really marks how much cultural space feminism has managed to claim in the past few years. I started taking an active interest in feminism around five years ago and back then, it really felt like a niche subject area, confined to its own corner of blogosphere and rarely making a blip in mainstream media. Five years ago, no one would have ever heard of Julien Blanc, because a hashtag like #TakeDownJulienBlanc would never have gained any traction outside dedicated feminist circles, and the story certainly wouldn’t have received coverage from The Guardian or ABC. Blanc would have continued assaulting women with impunity and there would have been very little feminists or anyone else could do about it. But today, thanks to the actions of one feminist activist, a serial sexual predator was banned from an entire country. Australia stood up and said “Nope. This bullshit is not welcome within our borders. Get the hell out.” That is HUGE.
BTW I found the best delusional RSD customer ever in the comments on the Guardian article. Behold!
He’s the vagina whisperer! Or, you know, not.
Shy people avoid others, they don’t assault people…duh.
I think this “seduction” thing is a red herring. That man simply want to go around assaulting helpless young women, picking targets carefully.
@cassandrakitty
Oh, I totally agree with you on that. To be completely honest, I almost take a sadistic pleasure in watching these guys try to worm their way out of the mess they put themselves into.
Problem is, the hardcore misogynists seem to double down not just in their words or beliefs but also their actions. In Gamergate’s case, the death and rape threats escalated until they reached the point of bomb threats at USU. In the case of PUAs, I can definitely see the “moderates” leaving the boat (haha!), but I’m also worried about what methods the hardcores will invent next to keep on harassing women without being called out.
Or maybe I’m just paranoid. 😛
“But today, thanks to the actions of one feminist activist, a serial sexual predator was banned from an entire country. Australia stood up and said “Nope. This bullshit is not welcome within our borders. Get the hell out.” That is HUGE.”
I agree, cassandrakitty and tinyorc. Excellent news.
@ titianblue – This is probably TMI, but I have had a major girl crush on Ella Fitzgerald since the first moment I heard her sing one note. This song is so relevant here, because it’s so very wise, and I wish the PUA’s would just listen to it and maybe learn something.
@ cassandrakitty – ‘vagina whisperer’ GLAHG I just choked on my tongue!
Fuck you.
As a painfully shy introvert, fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you to oblivion.
Yeah, being shy hurts, being lonely hurts. It doesn’t hurt as much as being sexually assaulted, or choked by some random asshole.
I’m scared that people will think of me as a creep, and it doesn’t help that guys like you are actively encouraging shy people to be creepy boundary-ignoring harassers, abusers and rapists.
My shyness is my own issue, to be worked out with therapy, not solved through aggrieved entitlement to others affections. That’s the path of the violent shits like Rogers, Sodini and Lépine.
Want to make the world a better place Julien? SHUT. THE FUCK. UP.
I don’t think anything other than legal consequences is going to stop the hardcore misogynists, and the current attention being paid to this stuff helps there too, because a society that a.knows these people exist and b. has reached a general consensus that their behavior is unacceptable is a society that’s much more likely to take legal action against them when they do appalling things. These are baby steps at this point, but we can’t get to a stage where there are consequences for what are, let’s be honest, hate crimes against women until society acknowledges that that’s what’s actually happening.
O RLY? Then why don’t you give examples showing exactly what you mean by that? Could it be because what you just said there means NOTHING? Of course it could.
Fuckass.
Truly proud of my home city of Melbourne for rallying to this campaign and helping to stop this toxic creature from getting anywhere else in Australia! It still makes my skin crawl to think of him anywhere near the opera house though. Ugh!
To be honest, it’s quite thrilling that anything was done. The attitude towards misogyny in Australia is often very poor. We have no separate minister for women in the Federal Government – that role has been subsumed into the Prime Minister’s portfolio. We also have fewer female ministers in our Federal Cabinet than Afghanistan does.
It’s people like our Chief Commissioner of Police in Victoria, Ken Lay, who through continually bringing the issues of violence against women and children to the fore, have done the most to affect community attitudes. News of Julien Blanc’s visit “broke” in Melbourne a couple of days after Ken Lay and other Australian police chiefs talked about “vulgar and violent” attitudes to women being partly responsible for violence against women and children.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/nov/03/culture-of-hostility-to-women-leads-to-domestic-violence-say-police-chiefs
Just quietly, Ken Lay is seven kinds of awesome. Here’s the statement he made about Julien Blanc’s departure:
http://www.vicpolicenews.com.au/cops-and-bloggers/4914-ccp-ken-lay-comments-on-a-pickup-artist.html
And one other piece from CCP Lay – for the hell of it:
http://www.vicpolicenews.com.au/blogs/93-oursay/1302-ccp-ken-lay-on-family-violence.html
All of you calling BS on the “shy guy” thing, I believe you are 100% correct. Many things in life are painful, and we have to deal with them as best we can. But the PUAs don’t really care about the pain of others–they simply feel entitled, and when they don’t get what they want, in their minds it justifies horrible actions. I wasn’t seeing why the “shy guy” defense was being used but now I think I get it. Thanks. (Or not!)
@grumpyoldnurse, there can be no argument: Ella Fitzgerald is glorious.
Thanks for that Ella Fitzgerald song, grumpyoldnurse! Excellent.
@Bina: I think he’s trying to imply that he and Julien are “good” men, and they’re being smeared unfairly, but he’s ignoring the fact that good men don’t abuse and assault people. Either that, or he’s got this ridiculous notion that abuse and assault should be considered things that good people do on a regular basis…
BTW, I don’t think he was actually deported, but his visa was definitely cancelled. I got the impression he left of his own accord. Could be wrong.
Jenn Li is a hero. What a wonderful, courageous young woman.
Oh, I see, it was all a joke, that choking of ladies! I don’t know about you guys but boy am I relieved!!!!
On another note, is there any grounds for Japanese police to lay charges? I mean, there’s video evidence of him assaulting women…
Thanks for the links scalyllama! Ken Lay sounds pretty awesome!