This is an excerpt of a post that I wrote featured today on BlogHer:
How Women of Twitter Took Down Revolting Pick-Up Artist Julien Blanc
“Use emotional and economic abuse.”
Deploy “coercion and threats.”
Choke her.
“Grab [her] and yell ‘Pikachu’ and put her head on your dick.”
These are—verbatim—some of the lessons Julien Blanc might have taught in Los Angeles, before the #TakeDownJulienBlanc hashtag on Twitter.
Blanc, a self-described dating coach for Real Social Dynamics (RSD), travels the globe promising to unlock the secrets of the “dating game.” On Thursday, Real Social Dynamics planned to host a workshop in Los Angeles, part of a series that Blanc ran in Australia before the Twitter outcry led to the revoke of his Australian visa.
Socially awkward men spend between $500 and $3000 to attend Blanc’s workshops, which promise romantic and sexual success. What Blanc really teaches attendees is a system of latent misogyny—called “pick-up artistry,” or PUA—which labels women as “targets” and ranks our worth based on appearance and sexual willingness.
Pick-up artists like Blanc consider female non-consent a minor inconvenience in the pursuit of sex.
