Good news, everyone! Futurama reference aside, this actually is good news: Julien Blanc, the creepy PUA who taches men how to “pick up” women by assaulting and gaslighting them, has been barred entry into the UK.
Here’s Newsweek with some of the details:
Controversial California ‘pick-up artist’ Julien Blanc has been denied entry to the UK, after a petition to prevent him hosting dating seminars in the country branding them “misogynistic”, amassed over 120,000 signatures.
The UK home secretary, Theresa May, has banned Blanc from entering the country on the grounds that his activities are “not conducive to the public good”, as the self-described “dating guru” was preparing to visit the UK in February as part of a world tour.
For more, see TheGuardian, The Telegraph, and The Daily Mail.
And watch the video above; it’s an interview he gave on CNN. The combination of his self-pity and his complete lack of self-awareness is astounding. Apparently he wants us to think that he’s a misunderstood dogooder who’s just trying to help socially awkward men find their future wives.
“I’m not going to be happy to feel like I’m the most hated man in the world,” he tells the interviewer. “I’m overwhelmed by the way people are responding.”
That I don’t doubt.
He also tells the interviewer that the pictures of him choking women were “a horrible attempt at humor. They were also taken out of context, in a way.”
Watch his body language as he says that last bit; he seems to deflate partway through, presumably realizing that no one is going to buy this obvious bullshit. But he rallies and keeps going, trying to excuse his behavior by saying “you can make anything look bad in a picture.”
These were, of course, pictures he proudly posted on Twitter with the hashtag #ChokingGirlsAllAroundTheWorld.
He now says he’s “reevaluating” the stuff he puts out. He might want to reevaluate his soul.
Check out the #TakeDownJulienBlanc hashtag on Twitter for the latest; there are still more countries he needs to be kept out of.
“Common sense” = antiquated right-wing bullshit. A former premier of Ontario claimed to be running on just such a platform. He destroyed our social safety net, and it has yet to be repaired. That was two decades ago. So you’ll have to parden me if I get deeply skeptical of anyone using THAT phrase as cover for their Dustbins-of-History crap.
Good. The Brazilian government also announced that they will deny his entry here, where he’s scheduled to speak in 2015 (it seems he hasn’t applied for a visa yet). Not surprising after a petition with over 400,000 signatures.
“Are you sorry you or are you sorry you got caught?”
“No, I’m extremely sorry. Like, I feel horrible. I’m not going to be happy to feel like I’m the most hated man in the world.”
Translation: “I’m sorry I got caught and now everyone is mad at me.”
Speaking of what happens when you put weirdos on an uninhabited island, the documentary The Galapagos Affair is on Netflix. It’s well worth watching, even if it really has nothing to do with the subject at hand. Basically we find out that if they let a season of Survivor go on for five years we’d probably end up with somewhere between zero and five people murdered.
Getting the wrong end of the stick for the term “gender policing” and applying it to the critics, rather than the book, could be a cunning troll, but that’s attributing to creativity what could be explained by ignorance. In the reviewer’s mind, “gender police” are “people who complain about things I like doing because something something something gender, I dunno, I’d stopped listening by then”.
Whenever somebody claims their opinions are common sense it usually turns out those opinions are offensive, bigoted and unsupported by evidence. Such as “women are naturally suited to humanities but not science” or “black people are inherently violent.”
Anyway, I too would like to know what context Blanc and his apologists want to say choking someone you just met or walking up to a woman and shoving her face towards your dick is appropriate.
Seriously guys, don’t shove a woman’s face in the direction of your dick. This isn’t just true of strangers. Don’t do this to women you’re fooling around with either. That’s such a huge turn-off.
The issue I have with people saying something is “taken out of context” is that they almost never seem willing to provide the context in which whatever they said or did is not as horrible as it’s being made out to be. You can’t in good faith just say “out of context” and expect people to just agree with you.
@sunny – “out of context” has become cargo-cult sophistry (like so many things). It’s said by a lot of idiots who don’t understand the concept of context and how it can affect meaning, but who know it’s a criticism used against many of their own stupid arguments and they know it works. Like so, so many things, they consider the phrase to be a magic incantation or card to play in an argument that “works” somehow. Bonus points if they whine that it’s “unfair” that it works for some people (though valid), but not for them (though not valid).
Removing context has done some terrible things, though; recall what James O’Keefe did to ACORN.
@David
Yes, I found it very disturbing to find such a book being recommended as learning material.
On the other hand:
It seems the company wasn’t really interested in keeping it. Phew.
“Out of context” gets used interchangeably with “my remarks were blown way out of proportion”, to deflect blame by implying the victims are being too sensitive. In Julien Blanc’s mind, he didn’t intend any harm, so he couldn’t possibly have been doing wrong. If people are offended, hey, that’s on them. It’s a smarmy weasel tactic.
I’m sure he genuinely didn’t believe he was harming anybody…women are just props/objects for acquisition, so they can’t have feelings. It’s the socially awkward men we need to worry about. We have to get them around the bases AT ALL COSTS!! It is the most pressing social problem of our generation!
Depressingly, that’s probably the “context” he’s referring to.
There is no possibly legitimate definition of “balanced” that can derive from the assertion of the existence of “the gender police”. It’s like basing your proposed post-industrial economic model on the fact that Spongebob Squarepants is a real person.
Yes, let’s keep things in the proper context, shall we? The context in which Julien Blanc was filming himself grabbing women by the throat and shoving random women’s head towards his crotch was that he was doing this under hashtags like #chokinggirlsaroundtheworld, and where he had a Twitter feed repeatedly making rape jokes and making jokes about abusing women, and where he sought to benefit financially by teaching behaviors and attitudes like this to other men.
However in further sleazeball news from the UK a radio DJ has issued a non-apology about his remarks regarding women complaining about rapist Ched Evans.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-30125682
@schwadervivre, Ending Victimisation & Blame have done a good takedown of the original program. http://everydayvictimblaming.com/responses-to-media/nick-conrad/
Anyone in the UK, please complain to OfCom about this appalling segment, if you’d like to help.
@wwth:
That’s exactly it, isn’t it? To these folks, the mere concept that their opinion isn’t in the majority never occurs to them. They simply cannot fathom even the possibility being on the losing side of history, which explains all that bombastic “we will fight them on the beaches” language.
I’m personally looking forward to the day that they realize their impotent blustering means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. Or at least, my children’s children’s children seeing it happen…
…It may take awhile.
Wow. That Nick Conrad thing. He pretty much just repeated every rape myth out there.
It’s so discouraging. It’s not like these myths haven’t been debunked, time and again, for years now. And still people believe in them and do things, like, say, broadcast them over the radio. But there is no such thing as rape culture.
Conrad basically said, “I don’t understand what consent is.” Really? Then maybe, just maybe, you should learn what consent is Mr. Conrad.
@weirwoodtreehugger
I have noticed this in the use of the term “realism”. As in:
“I’m not racist, I’m a race realist!”
“I’m not a misogynist, I’m a gender realist!”
“I’m not an oppressive capitalist pig with class privilege, I’m an economy realist!”
“I’m not homophobic, I’m just being realistic about the biological imperatives granted to us by evolution/God/destiny/that guy on TV, and also gay people are icky except the kinds of lesbians you see in porn aimed at straight men cause that’s totally hawt!”
etc.
Not surprisingly, all people describing themselves as something-something-realists have been straight white men well above the poverty treshold.
@sparky – yep. It’s “I don’t understand the concept of consent, but let me give you my opinions about rape anyway”. As in, “math baffles me, but let me do your taxes”. Um, no, sit down, and let the adults talk.
@ titianblue, already done. Mind you given the complaints I have made to both the BBC and OfCom about editorial standards, prejudice and racism I suspect I might need to change my name and location to Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells! (UK joke for those not in the UK)
“He might want to reevaluate his soul.”
Oh, David, David… Like all decent people, you make a mistake of assuming that sleazebags like Blanc have souls.
May God bless yours for such warm-heartedness.
Anorchonist,
I’ve noticed that one too. It’s like they think using authoritative and confident sounding words somehow makes them correct and will trick everyone else into thinking they’re correct.
@weir – it does, though, unfortunately. The entire pundit / talk radio / sunday chat show industry is premised on it. People like Limbaugh and O’Reilly literally don’t know anything, but have audiences of millions and personal fortunes based on their one skill: pretending that they do by projecting “confidence”. It can’t be overstated the degree to which idiots respond to authoritarianism.
God, the whole “acting all authorative and confident while not actually knowing shit” shit is so fricking annoying. I remember the first time I personally had the misfortune of running into such people and being like:
“Dude, if you don’t know, it’s okay to say that you don’t know. Haven’t you considered the harm you can cause by feigning confidence in a matter that you don’t really understand?”
And then I realize they don’t care if what they say has any basis in fact; appearances are all that matter. As long as they can lie with confidence and an authorative tone, truth is secondary to these people.
Which is just one of the many reasons the whole manuresphere is so full of shit. Because they’re exactly like this.
The people who automatically defer to “respect mah authoritay!” types get so confused when they encounter people who don’t do so. You see it in all kind of contexts, first disbelief that it’s really happening, then confusion, then attempts to force the non-compliant person to knuckle under and accept the person in question as actually having authority over them.