Judith Reisman

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Dr. Judith A. Reisman (b. Judith Ann Gelernter, 1935, Newark, New Jersey – April 9, 2021) was a pseudoscientist best known for her erotophobic critiques of Alfred Kinsey's work and her unconventional theorizing. She held a Ph.D. in communications from Case Western Reserve University, and was a visiting professor of law at Liberty University.

Reisman was president of the Institute for Media Education, an organization she founded for herself. She was listed in Who's Who in Science & Engineering.

Basic tenets of her lobbying efforts included allegations that:

• a) Dr. Kinsey's science was fraudulent and in some cases criminal
• b) Children were sexually molested for the data that Kinsey gathered
• c) An entire sex education industry grew out of Kinsey's deceptive data

Reisman said "establishment media" was attempting to "recruit" children into homosexuality. Since the late 1980s, she has extensively criticized Kinsey and the Kinsey Reports. Her publications have been frequently distributed by conservative organizations. Reisman says sexology is not really a science but a cover for pro-homosexual/pedophile campaigners to obtain funding.

In A Personal Odyssey to the Truth, Reisman says that in 1966 her 10 year old daughter was molested by a trusted family friend who had been reading his father's pornography.

In 2017, Reisman became involved in a group called Investigating YouTube. 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.

Criticism of Alfred Kinsey's work

Criticisms of Kinsey and his followers are seen to have revolved around the application of positivist/empiricist approach to human sexuality, but as Janssen later elaborates, Reisman's criticisms are equally, if not more prone to sweeping truth-claims. Reisman's manipulations are generally dismissed out-of-hand, or ignored among scholars of sexuality. Here, we deconstruct a few of them.

In the book Kinsey, Sex and Fraud: Indoctrination of the People, Judith Reisman argues that Kinsey employed an unrepresentative proportion of prison inmates and pedophiles to obtain data about child sexual behavior. Reisman suggests that parts of the elaborate descriptions that Kinsey et al. obtained from inmates and sex offenders of the children's sexual behavior ("gasping, eyes staring", "groaning, sobbing, or more violent cries, sometimes with an abundance of tears") are evidence that the children were tortured against their will. The documentary The Children of Table 34, produced by the conservative Family Research Council, purports to tell the story of Dr. Reisman's discovery of Dr. Alfred Kinsey's systematic sexual abuse of 317 male children. This claim is denied by the Kinsey Institute, who point out that the diaries containing these quotes were written long before the research was started, and that Reisman has had access to the material showing this. Their FAQ does contain an admission that the data from this table were sourced from one sexually active pedophile.

Bitter taste in the mouth: Reisman during happier times, as a singer-songwriter on the Cap'n Kangaroo Show in the 60s. The gig came to an end, Reisman claims, when her "thoughtful tunes" proved to be no match for cartoon violence in capturing the attention of children.

Children in the Kinsey reports

Reisman's accusations against Kinsey became increasingly serious and far-fetched as time went on. She said that he was a "fraud" who had employed and relied on pedophiles for his research, and claimed that Kinsey himself had 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 should be considered groundless. Due to such ideas, her citation value fell considerably, something her supporters describe as "[ostracism] by mainstream academia".

Prior to the release of the 2004 film Kinsey, Reisman and the socially regressive TV personality "Dr. Laura" attempted to place an advertisement "alleging Kinsey was a pervert and a pedophile".

The SPLC has described Reisman as a "conspiracy theorist" and a promoter of "sexual pseudoscience" in regard to her views on Kinsey. John Bancroft stated:

Reisman's campaign against Kinsey was described by Morton Hunt (1999) 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." (P. 209.)

Diederik F. Janssen has reviewed Reisman's 2010 book Sexual Sabotage: How One Mad Scientist Unleashed a Plague of Corruption and Contagion on America from a postmodern perspective. First, he says of 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 ("Nazi serial pedophiles"), and a litany of medieval, Victorian, and McCarthyian diagnostics ("plague," "sexual psychopaths," "sexual deviancy," "perversions")." 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 (medical) approval, their days may be numbered."

Reisman lambasted SCOTUS for trusting Kinsey's legacy (sexology): "[...] on June 26, 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court enshrined Kinsey's fraudulent data as the revolutionary moral law of our land [...] a duplicitous sexual deviant was the primary source used by the United States Supreme Court as their 'science' authority in Lawrence v. Texas."

About Gay Marriage she wrote to SCOTUS: "this Court should not permit the institution of marriage to become the latest victim of the Kinseyan model of American society." She also wrote to the Court that mainstream sexology is "an ideology built upon the sexual abuse of infants and children, and the libeling of the 'Greatest Generation'." Her opponents, however, make the argument that, pedophiles had the most to lose (not win) from the sexual revolution.

Selective quotation, exaggeration, and outright lies are time-honored tactics of the Right. Judith Reisman has long circulated the calumny that Alfred Kinsey conducted sexual experiments on infants at his institute; she offers no substantiation.

The FBI could not find any felony committed by Kinsey. In the years following the death of Kinsey, as well as Senator McCarthy and his anticommunist crusade with it, Kinsey's research only grew in public esteem and became increasingly accepted in academia in the years after his death, during which he was established as the American "father of sexology".

Litigation against the Kinsey Institute

In 1991, Reisman, with an attorney from the Rutherford Institute, sued the Kinsey Institute, its then director June Reinisch, and Indiana University, for defamation of character as well as intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress regarding alleged attempts to censor her book Kinsey, Sex and Fraud. She also alleged "slander," which she said occurred in a statement given by the Institution in response to Reisman's assertion in Kinsey, Sex, and Fraud: Indoctrination of the People that Kinsey's research involved illegal experimentation on several hundred children. The case was ultimately dismissed with prejudice in 1994. Reisman's attorney withdrew from the case, and Reisman was barred from re-filing.

Activism against MAPs

Reisman's work repeatedly attempted to link homosexuals, academics, pornography and the establishment media to MAPs and their organizations, but later in her career, she also attempted to document the movement from the inside. Reisman, thus became an opponent of what she saw as attempts to normalize pedophilia.

Jacob Breslow's article details her attempts to "expose" B4U-ACT in 2011.

Activism against homosexuality

In Crafting "Gay" Children, Reisman argues that homosexuals are trying to recruit children through schools and the mainstream media, attempts to link homosexuality with pedophilia, accuses Kinsey of abnormal sexual practices, and attributes his early death to excessive "self-abuse" (masturbation). She alleges that the only correct response to homosexuality is “recovery" such as the "therapy" offered by the International Healing Foundation. Based on the links she sees between homosexuality and pedophilia, she states:

And, as there is, on the evidence, a definite connection between homosexuality and the myriad pathologies, including pedophilia, schools and youth organizations should be legally liable for allowing bi/homosexuals any authority or influence over children. This is a sure way to severely limit traffic in child pornography and prostitution.

Reisman argued that the normalization of homosexuality is intended to normalize adult-minor sex, as far as this was historically the main form of recorded homosexual relationship.

Activism against pornography

Reisman often used references to the "child" in obscuring unsupportable statements about pornography in general:

"For our purposes we address only pictorial pornography. Pictorial pornography is defined as the display of intimate “private” space conduct in risky public space. Commonly such images of females such as strippers, nude models, prostitutes consciously “provoke” and “arouse” lust in tandem with unconscious emotions of shame, fear and anger toward the displayed “female” gender (and often children) absent empathy or pity.

That children and illiterates instantly decode pornographic images proves that these stimuli subvert the cognitive tasks of (free) speech. Since viewers are untaught that right brain (emotion) pornographic images overwhelm left brain (cognition) such brain changes are non consensual.

Pictorial pornography publicly and falsely displays women (and increasingly children) as primates in estrus—“in heat” or “rut,” in semi nude or nude animal postures of mating solicitation. These displays trigger discourteous, disordered, and debasing attitudes and even conduct toward both sexual performers and proximate female and/or child victims.

Pornographic, endogenously produced lust, fear, shame and anger release; testosterone (brain steroid), sex-aggression endorphins (morphine like chemicals) oxytocin (bonding) nor epinephrine (adrenaline), glucose; dopamine, serotonin; phenylethylamine, etc.; an endogenous polydrug “high” mislabeled by the viewer as simple “sexual arousal” to displayed women, children, men, boys and/or animals, etc. Such confused states of lust with anger, fear and shame results in harassment, sex assault, rape, incest and the like."

Further controversy

Judith Reisman in her later years

Dr. Reisman's work has been criticized by a number of organizations. Reisman was in the early 1980s given a grant for $734,371 by the US Department of Justice to make a content analysis of Images of Children, Crime, and Violence in Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler. Reisman used the grant to confirm her conclusion of "Kinsey's role in child sexual abuse and the link to children appearing in mainstream pornography..."

According to the study findings, each issue of Hustler averaged 14.1 children and pseudo-children alongside 47 images of crime and violence: 52 percent of child photos were sexually explicit and most cartooned children were sexually violated, particularly in the long running Chester the Molester comic. She also says that in 1978, Hustler published photographs of naked children as young as three-years of age alongside an article, "Children, Sex, and Society", advocating an end to Age of Consent laws, calling for acceptance of Adult-Child sex, and legalization of incest.

The work which Reisman produced was later denied publication by the American University, where the study was based, after their independent academic auditor reported on it. Dr Robert Figlio of the University of Pennsylvania told AU that, 'The term child used in the aggregate sense in this report is so inclusive and general as to be meaningless.' Figlio told the press, 'I wondered what kind of mind would consider the love scene from Romeo and Juliet to be child porn' (p.116, )"

The anonymous person who commissioned the study later said of it: "...[i]t was a scientific disaster, riddled with researcher bias and baseless assumptions."

A review of Reisman's book Kinsey, Sex and Fraud called it "at best an inflated political pamphlet" (p.91, ). The reviewer further noted that the arguments in the book were based on "innuendo, distortion, and selective representation of decontextualised 'facts' ".

Dr. Loretta Haroian, the co-chair of the plenary session of Child and Adolescent Sexuality at the 1984 World Congress of Sexology, an expert on childhood sexuality, criticizes Reisman's work:

"This is not science, it's vigilantism: paranoid, pseudoscientific hyperbole with a thinly veiled hidden agenda. This kind of thing doesn't help children at all. ... Reisman's study demonstrates gross negligence and, while she seems to have spent a lot of time collecting her data, her conclusions, based on the data, are completely unwarranted. The experts Reisman cites are, in fact, not experts at all but simply people who have chosen to adopt some misinformed, Disneyland conception of childhood that she has. These people are little more than censors hiding behind Christ and children."

Erototoxin - A novel concept

For more detail, see Wikipedia

Reisman coined the term Erototoxins to describe the relationship between certain forms of pornography and the function of the brain. She lists these "erototoxins" as testosterone, adrenaline, oxytocin, glucose, dopamine, serotonin, and phenylethylamine. Dr. Reisman claims that Erototoxins are addictive psychoactive neurochemicals, and exposure to them contributes to an increase in serial murder, rape, child molestation, and erectile dysfunction. No scientific literature from the last 30 years could be found that includes the term "erototoxin".

Death

The circumstances of Reisman's ultimate demise in 2021 are described as "murky", after the ailing pornography crusader was found dead at her office table. Some of her allies have pinned her death on a Covid-19 vaccine adverse reaction. In the wake of her passing, the conservative New American website claimed that it was forced to disable the comment section of Reisman's article "because haters, devoid of any sense of decency, targeted it to post a stream of vile and disgusting attacks." It is likely she had many sworn enemies among both gay men and MAPs at the time of her death.

Additional quotes

"All porn are (sic) Erototoxic because the brain converts sexual images into an endogenous drug ‘high’ via the reward system, pouring a supranormal drug cocktail similar to cocaine throughout the brain/body."

"Erototoxins turn what could have been normal, decent humans into vile and deformed molesters,"

"Some people will withstand pornographic conditioning due to their genetic inheritance (perhaps) but more likely due to strong moral absolutes. However, even those moral absolutes can be exploited and violated by exposure to these erototoxins we call pornography."

References

• The Lancet, 'Really, Dr Kinsey?' (Book Reviews, Vol. 337: March 2, 1991, p. 547)
• The Lancet, (Vol. 350(9094): March 20, 1997, p1862)
• A.C. Kinsey, W.B. Pomeroy, C.E. Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, (Philadelphia, PA: W.B. Saunders, 1948)
• A.C. Kinsey, W.B. Pomeroy, C.E. Martin, P.H. Gebhard, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, (Philadelphia, PA: W.B. Saunders, 1953)
• Martin Duberman, "Kinsey's Urethra". The Nation, November 3, 1997, pp. 40-43. Online Version.

External links

• Her Kinsey Obsession - Critical article with historical background.
• Judith A. Reisman home page

• Discussion of sports figures in Playboy and other accusations it being marketed at children
• The Playmate Data Sheet Catholic Church's Reliance Upon Kinsey Pseudoscience in John Jay Report - Fearmongering over Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler Magazines. Alleges inclusion of childhood photos of playmates sexualizes the girls, critical of cartoons depicting boys interested in older women, etc.

• Sex on the brain, The Guardian (July 14, 2005)
• The Rainbow Alliance on Reisman