Judith Reisman

Judith Reisman

Judith A. Reisman (b. Judith Ann Gelernter, 1935, Newark, New Jersey) is best known for her criticism of sexual viewpoints and sex education that she argues are based on Alfred Kinsey's work.

Reisman is president of the Institute for Media Education, is listed in Who's Who in Science & Engineering, and holds both a M.A. and a Ph.D. in Communications from Case Western Reserve University.

Basic tenets of her lobbying efforts include 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
• d) The Kinsey-engineered Model Penal Code resulted in reducing penalties for sex offenses, such as rape and molestation, thus putting women and children at increased risk ([1], [2]).

Reisman says "establishment media" is attempting to "recruit" children into homosexuality ([3]). 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 ([4]).

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 ([5]).

Criticism of Alfred Kinsey's work

In the book Kinsey, Sex and Fraud: Indoctrination of the People, Judith Reisman, Edward W. Eichel, J. Gordon Muir and John Court argue that Kinsey employed an unrepresentative proportion of prison inmates and pedophiles to obtain data about child sexual behavior.

This was not a novel accusation, however. A 1948 American Statistical Association report entitled Statistical Problems of the Kinsey Report on Sexual Behavior in the Human Male concluded similarly. Kinsey's colleague Abraham Maslow also pointed out the bias inherent in people volunteering information.

Reisman's novel contribution is the suggestion 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") is 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. See Kinsey Reports.

Based on claims about Alfred Kinsey's personal sexual conduct, Reisman concludes that Kinsey deliberately promoted a pro-sexual agenda which has since dominated American schools and media. This, she argues, led to a massive increase in sexual diseases, and a public that was convinced that homosexual and pedophile sexual behavior are harmless.

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.

Activism against pornography

Dr. Reisman's criticism of the ease of access to online sexual images along with that of others such as ([6]) Dr. Douglas Weiss, Dr. James Dobson, and ([7]) Gary Smalley has led to the introduction of Internet filters designed to protect children from sexual images.

Reisman often uses 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."[8]

Controversy

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, )" Reisman has implied that the reason her work was not published was due to the Kinsey Institute ([9]).

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

Dr. Reisman filed a lawsuit against the Kinsey Institute for "defamation of character" and "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 ([10]) Reisman's attorney withdrew from the case, and the case was eventually "dismissed with prejudice" from the court. Reisman was barred from re-filing ([11]).

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' ".

Reisman holds a Ph.D. in Communications, though some critics maintain she is not qualified in her claim to be a scientist ([12]). Other critics recognize her work as a contribution to the study of media ecology.

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

Reisman coined the term Erototoxins to describe the relationship between certain forms of pornography and the function of the brain. 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 ([13]).

What is expressed by Dr. Reisman's term "erototoxin," is an extension of the social concerns expressed by the renowned media ecology scholar, educator, and writer Marshall McLuhan; McLuhan taught and wrote extensively of the potentially dangerous effect of certain media images especially upon immature minds. The effect of media upon a culture's thinking and behavior was the heart and essence of his area of study which he referred to as media ecology.

No scientific literature from the last 30 years could be found that includes the term (e.g., [14]) "erototoxin". This suggests that either scientists are not looking for and studying erototoxins, that they are referring to them by other names or that the theory is simply wrong. This absence of evidence casts doubt on the reliability of Dr. Reisman's November 2004 testimony before the U. S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation ([15]).

Miscellaneous

Since August 27, 2005 Reisman's official site (http://www.drjudithreisman.com]), links from the front page and from the reference page to the anti-globalist site of Henry Makow - ([16]).

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

• Judith A Reisman home page
• Homosexual Urban Legends
• Kinsey Truth Coalition
• Media Ecology Association
• Sex on the brain, The Guardian (July 14, 2005)