Free speech must be defended, but not Julien Blanc’s incitement to violence against women

Sarah Ditum

Pick-up artist Julien Blanc has been denied permission to enter the UK, where he planned to run a series of seminars sharing his “seduction” techniques. For some commenters, Blanc’s case is a free speech issue: unpleasant as his rhetoric is (and everyone seems to agree that his unstinting use of the word “bitch” and crass insistence that anyone with “a fat girlfriend” has failed at life is unpleasant), the government has no business limiting his ability to promulgate. But the issue with Blanc is not one of speech, but of acts. The line where freedom of expression runs out should be a hard and clear one: free speech ends where direct incitement to personal violence begins, and Blanc crosses that line with ease.

In his videos, he prescribes techniques such as “the choke opener” and “just grabbing girls’ heads … head on the dick” for men approaching women – in other words, he instructs his audience to commit acts of violence on women. On his website, he promises to teach his subscribers “how to overcome every single objection she might have when you’re pulling her to sooth her mind, and fuck you the same night”. It’s a prospectus (he calls it the “Pimp Method”) where consent is not even up for discussion.  “There is no such thing as rejection because it’s never over,” he says in one video.

There is a word for refusing to accept “no” as an answer to your sexual proposition: the word is rape.

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She is right.  Incitement to violence is not normally given free speech protection.