Judith Reisman
Judith Ann Reisman is an American conservative author, best known for her criticism and condemnation of the work and legacy of Alfred Kinsey. She has been referred to as the "founder of the modern anti-Kinsey movement". Her commentary is currently featured by the conservative WorldNetDaily and the Christian magazine Salvo. She holds a Ph.D. in communications from Case Western Reserve University, and is a visiting professor of law at Liberty University.
Advocating for children
For AlterNet, journalist Max Blumenthal has documented how Reisman's daughter's molestation set Reisman on the path of researching Kinsey's activities. Following the sexual assault, the accused boy and his family slipped out of the country, while her daughter lapsed into a deep depression. Fifteen years later, she died from a brain aneurysm, which Reisman suspected was linked to the earlier trauma.Children in the Kinsey reports
Over the following years, her accusations against Kinsey became increasingly serious. She said that he was a fraud who had employed and relied on pedophiles for his research, and she went on to claim that Kinsey himself had sexually abused children. This allegation drew a response from Kinsey biographer James H. Jones, who wrote that unless new evidence to the contrary becomes available, Reisman's claims that Kinsey may have witnessed or personally participated in child molestation under the guise of scientific research all had to be considered groundless.Due to such ideas, she was "ostracized by mainstream academia".
Prior to the release of the 2004 film Kinsey, Reisman and Laura Schlessinger attempted to place an advertisement "alleging Kinsey was a pervert and a pedophile".
The Southern Poverty Law Center has called Reisman a "conspiracy theorist" and a promoter of "sexual pseudoscience" in regards to her views on Kinsey. John Bancroft stated:
Reisman's campaign against Kinsey was described by Morton Hunt as follows: "To use smear tactics, methods of intimidation, and political trickery to achieve what one considers a moral end, is to live by the principle that the end justifies the means."
Diederik F. Janssen has reviewed her book Sexual Sabotage: How One Mad Scientist Unleashed a Plague of Corruption and Contagion on America from a postmodern perspective. First, he notes about her book: "This takes the unseemly shape of a paranoid sermon on American decency held together by acerbic ad hominems, a tapestry of slippery slope arguments, a string of unwholesome linkages, and a litany of medieval, Victorian, and McCarthyian diagnostics." Then he considers that Reisman plays truth games precisely because Kinsey had invited sexologists to play truth games. Janssen sees her fault in "exactly the scientific cover-up of moral dilemmas she accuses her nemesis Kinsey of. To maximize this argument: what needs criticism, on behalf of children, is scientism, not moralism." He notes that if taboos need "scientific approval, their days may be numbered."
Images of children, crime and violence
In 1983, the United States Department of Justice was headed by social conservatives, including Alfred S. Regnery in the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Reisman had given a talk on a Washington, D.C. radio program and on CNN's Crossfire about the "connections between sex education, sex educators, and the pornography industry" which was heard by a member of the DOJ, and Reisman was asked to discuss her views in person, which "struck a common chord... especially those opposed to sex education in the schools." She was then invited to apply for a grant, which was approved without competition for the amount of $798,531, to undertake a "study at American University to determine whether Playboy, Hustler and other more explicit materials are linked to violence by juveniles." The allocation came under criticism as the grant was approved despite a staff memo from Pamela Swain, a director of research, evaluation and program development, in which she claimed that the study could be accomplished for $60,000.By 1986, Reisman concluded her investigation of "372 issues of Playboy, 184 issues of Penthouse and 125 issues of Hustler" that found "2,016 cartoons that included children apparently under the age of 17 and 3,988 other pictures, photographs and drawings that depict infants or youths," the details of which were collected into "a three-volume report running to 1,600 pages" titled "Images of Children, Crime and Violence in Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler." The report drew contemporary criticism in regards to its cost and quality. Sex crime researcher Avedon Carol commented that the report was a "scientific disaster, riddled with researcher bias and baseless assumptions." The American University, where Reisman's study had been academically based, refused to publish the completed work, citing concerns by an independent academic auditor. Criminologist Robert Figlio of the University of Pennsylvania stated "The term child used in the aggregate sense in this report is so inclusive and general as to be meaningless." Loretta Haroian stated about the report "vigilantism: paranoid, pseudoscientific hyperbole with a thinly veiled, hidden agenda."
Author Susan Trento chronicled additional complexities surrounding the episode. Initially, Reisman was targeted by some as a proxy to attack Regnery. The nature of Reisman's grant work and the concurrent Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, which would author the Meese Report in 1986, caused anxiety in the pornography industry. Fears began to come to fruition when 7-Eleven stores stopped selling Playboy and Penthouse, in part citing Reisman's work. Trento writes that the public relations firm headed by Robert Keith Gray was hired by Playboy and Penthouse "to discredit Meese's Pornography Commission" specifically as well as others that threatened their business, presumably including Reisman. "Whatever the merits of her research," Trento wrote, when support from the OJJDP was needed most, its leadership backed away from Reisman leaving her project to fail and leaving Reisman feeling "bitter" and "helpless" after "spending years developing an expertise and doing what she thought was an excellent job in the public interest."
In 2017, Reisman became involved in a group called Investigating YouTube's examination of societal degeneracy pertaining to pedophilia in video content. Specifically, she voiced her concern about the disturbing content in YouTube videos targeted at children, involving suggestive imagery and violence while using popular children's figures such as Frozen's Elsa and Spider-Man.
Allegations of homosexual recruitment of children
Reisman has claimed that the homosexuals employ recruitment techniques that rival those of the United States Marine Corps. Reisman cited "a clear avenue for the recruitment of children" by homosexuals in her public support of Oregon Ballot Measure 9. In 1994, Reisman spoke at a conference of Christian leaders in Colorado Springs, saying that homosexual "recruitment is loud; it is clear; it is everywhere." She estimated the homosexual population at the time to be 1-2%, but she predicted at least 20% "of the young population will be moving into homosexual activity" as a result of recruitment.Erototoxins
Reisman has postulated a physical mechanism to account for the dangers she ascribes to pornography: when viewed, an addictive mixture of chemicals which she has dubbed "erototoxins", floods the brain, causing harmful influences to it. Reisman hopes that MRI studies will prove porn-induced physical brain damage and predicts lawsuits against publishers and distributors of pornography similar to those against Big Tobacco, which resulted in the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. Further, if pornography can "subvert cognition", then "these toxic media should be legally outlawed, as is all other toxic waste, and eliminated from our societal structure." Finally, individuals who have suffered brain damage from "pornography are no longer expressing 'free speech' and, for their own good, shouldn't be protected under the First Amendment."Endorphins are substances produced by the brain as a result of various things including sexual arousal, physical exercise, strong pain, laughter, etc. They cause pleasurable sensations and are somewhat addictive; drugs like morphine attach to the same receptors as endorphins. However, endorphins do not fit Reisman's definition of erototoxins, as many things cause them to be released, not only pornography.
The 2002-2011 Proceedings of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences state about her public statements about erototoxins: "facts stood in the way of her opinion and testimony."
Homosexuals and Nazism
Reisman has said that she believes that a homosexual movement in Germany gave rise to the Nazi Party and the Holocaust. She endorses The Pink Swastika, which elaborates on this view and has compared modern youth groups for homosexuals to the Hitler Youth.Mapplethorpe exhibition obscenity trial
During the 1990 obscenity trial of Dennis Barrie, then director of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, for displaying controversial photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, Reisman was called as the only expert witness for the prosecution. In the previous year, Reisman had authored an editorial in The Washington Times entitled "Promoting Child Abuse as Art" which "accused Mapplethorpe of being both a Nazi and a child molester". The defense argued that she was not qualified as an art expert, but the judge allowed her to testify as a rebuttal witness. Among her credentials as a media specialist she listed: "preparation of educational videotapes and slide presentations for the Smithsonian Institution as well as having worked for Scholastic magazine, created audio-visual segments for television's Captain Kangaroo show, and did research for Attorney General Edwin Meese's commission on pornography and for the conservative American Family Association." During her testimony, Reisman did not discuss the sexually explicit content of Mapplethorpe's work, but rather she argued that the five photographs were not works of art because they either did not display a human face, or, in the case of Self-Portrait, the face "... displayed no discernible emotion" and absent emotion, the placement of the photographs in a museum implied that the activities displayed were appropriate. During cross-examination by the defense on her views of homosexuality, Reisman testified that "anal sodomy is traumatically dysfunctional and is definitely associated with AIDS." She also claimed that the pictures of nude children legitimized pedophilia. The defense emphasized that Reisman's experience with art was limited to her work as a songwriter.Barrie and the Center were acquitted of all charges by the jury.