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Who is Julien Blanc?

A U.S dating coach and pickup artist who teaches his pickup system Pimp to men around the world. Or in the words of The Guardian’sLindy West:“He’s currently touring the globe leading expensive seminars and “bootcamps” in which he teaches sad sacks how to violate women’s boundaries through persistence, psychological abuse or outright sexual violence.”

Why is he in this blog?

Because…

- On September 8th 2014, he posted a video on hisYoutube channel called White male fucks Asian women in Tokyo (and the beautiful methods to it). The video has been taken down, but reportedly showed Blanc giving a talk to a room of men where he claimed that, when it concerns women in Tokyo; “If you’re a white male, you can do what you want,”. He then continued to describe himself on a visit to the Japanese capital grabbing women and shoving their faces in his crotch. The video included footage of Blanc actually doing this.

- One of his pickup tactics involves choking women and he is the author of the hashtag #ChokingGirlsAroundTheWorld. He has used this hashtag to post pictures of himself choking women from different countries.

- He is the author of the following tweets:

There seems to be this common misconception that misogyny in Western society is a thing of the past. If we encounter it, it’s because of a few old guys with a bad sense of humor. And when these old guys die, we’ll all live together in a gender equal society.

But that’s not the situation here.

Julien Blanc is 26 years old. And he’s white, and he’s not Muslim, and he’s educated and he’s from a Western “modern” country. You don’t have any excuses left! Misogyny is a real thing.

What’s worse, young men around the world are PAYING to hear what he has to say. I’m sorry, but we still live in a world where gender inequality is a problem.

There are solutions to this problem though. As his methods have caused a lot of controversy and protests, Julien Blanc has now been denied entry to several countries and has had events cancelled in others. Denying him a visa makes a statement and raises awareness, but we need another solution to the problem:

“Some of the behaviour Blanc demonstrates in his videos amounts to sexual harassment and sexual assault. More broadly this is part of a culture that makes light of assault, that tells victims they will not be taken seriously. We need a social conversation about why this type of ‘advice’ is commercially viable.”

-Sarah Green from the End Violence Against Women coalition