Pictured: Julien Blanc, left, and Owen Cook at a seminar in California. (via Instagram)
Pop Goes The News — Eighteen months after coming under fire in several countries around the world — including Canada — Real Social Dynamics (RSD) continues to stage its controversial seminars on how to pick up women.
The company is running a “bootcamp” in Montreal this weekend and has others scheduled for Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, and Calgary before the end of summer.
RSD co-founder Owen Cook — who uses the name Tyler — made headlines in late 2014 after a video surfaced online in which he appears to describe a sexual assault.
The undated video, recorded at one of RSD’s bootcamps in the U.S., was subsequently removed from YouTube.
In it, Cook is heard telling a group of men about a woman who spent the night with him.
“It was in the morning, she was taking a shower, and I didn’t think she wanted to have sex again. But I just threw her on the bed,” he said.
Cook said he had sex with the woman whom he described as “just totally not in the mood.”
He admitted: “I’m like ‘I’ll just make this quick because she doesn’t even want it.’”
The comments by Cook — who has not been charged with a criminal act — added fuel to public campaigns to shut down RSD events.
Cook, 36, was born and raised in Ottawa and co-founded RSD in 2002.
In a video online, Cook recommends men grab and speak firmly to women in bars. In other videos, he refers to a woman as a “bitch,” uses a gay slur, and refers to his son as “an accident.”
BELOW: Watch RSD “executive coach” Madison, who conducts workshops and seminars in Canada.
Most of the controversy around RSD, though, has focused on its star “executive coach” Julien Blanc, a Swiss citizen who tours the globe teaching men how to pick up women using emotional tricks and physical force.
He also came under fire for a series of misogynistic tweets and for blog posts and videos with titles like Intense Self-Amusement Tactics That Will Let You Choke Girls For Fun and Make Her Obey: How To Never Give Her A Chance To Say No.
Blanc tweeted a chart used by support groups to identify signs of domestic abuse and commented: “May as well be a checklist… #HowToMakeHerStay”.
The hashtag #KeepJulienBlancOutOfCanada was used on Twitter and petitions posted by Canadian actress Maria Del Mar and broadcaster Kate Wheeler collected a combined 156,000 signatures.
The Canadian government took notice and promised to look at tools to ban Blanc from entering the country. Then-Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander called Blanc’s material “completely counter to Canadian values and common decency.”
In November 2014, Blanc apologized during an interview on CNN.
“I 100-per-cent take responsibility and I apologize 100 per cent for it,” he said. “I’m extremely sorry. I feel horrible. I’m overwhelmed by the way people are responding.
“It was a horrible attempt at humour and, unfortunately, a lot of it also just got put out of context.”
(Cook has said Blanc was “trying to be inflammatory.”)
The furor forced RSD to temporary limit its seminars to live streams. A rep explained: “There will not be an actual in-person event for the time being until we are 100% sure that our instructors are not in harms way.”
Today, it’s business as usual for the company.
RSD has 20 bootcamps scheduled in various Canadian cities in 2016 and 2017. The locations are divulged only to registrants who pay $2,000 to attend. (RSD is holding a free 3-hour workshop in Montreal on May 19.)
(Previous seminars have been held at a Holiday Inn Select and a Best Western in Montreal; the University of Toronto’s 89 Chestnut Residence and Conference Centre; and at a Best Western hotel in Vancouver).
The Canadian events appear to be hosted by “Madison.”
It is not known if Blanc is scheduled to attend any of the Canadian events. On his social media accounts there is no evidence that he has been in the country in the past year.
No one from RSD was available for comment.
Blanc was barred from entering Australia in January. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton called his message “repugnant.”
There have also been campaigns to keep Blanc out of the UK, Korea and Japan. RSD has bootcamps scheduled this year throughout Europe, Australia and Latin America.
