This is for the people who are positive that there is no real overlap between feminist anti-porn activism and the religious right crusades, okay.
Here is a roundup on some anti-Playboy activism as detailed by the website "I'm Not A Feminist, But..." Mostly it is talking about the work of a group called Sheffield Fems.
The group produced a leaflet which highlighted the fact that the Playboy bunny is a symbol of pornography, and that this symbol is used to glamorise pornography and to sexualise young girls by linking them with an industry which is based on the degradation and sexual objectification of women. The leaflet exposed Playboy’s blasé attitude to rape and abuse, pointing out that in a society with high rates of rape and domestic violence this is not the kind of attitude we should be promoting, least of all to children.
So far, so good.
The leafleting campaign was followed up with letters which were sent to the Head Offices of these three retailers. The letters detailed a number of the points set out in the leaflet and also included statistics taken from Dr Judith Reisman’s study of Playboy which revealed a huge back catalogue of sexualised images of children in the magazine. Sheffield Fems asked that, in the light of this evidence, retailers removed from sale all Playboy branded items aimed at children.
Dr. Judith Reisman. Okay.
An admittedly biased but rather thorough examination of Miz Reisman's life and times here (damn bunch of preverts, always trying to defend themselves) at Miss Poppy Dixon's:
Beginning in the 1970s Judith Reisman made it her personal crusade to discredit Alfred Kinsey. Her career on the Captain Kangaroo show ended badly when the free-agent singer-songwriter ran headlong into modern market research and the crushing competition of "the fast-action and increasing violence of cartoons on other stations." Retreating under the cover of artistic integrity she then turned to academia, and a career in communications and media analysis. The fact that children's minds wandered during her self-described music videos had to be about something other than the quality of her performance, and she was going to find out what it was.
The move from television celebrity to academia was not an easy one for Reisman. Seemingly intimidated by her university professor husband's colleagues, she reinvented herself as a doctor of communications, expert on pornography, and token Jewish friend of the American radical religious Right. [ 2 ]
Reisman has written extensively of her opinions of Dr. Kinsey. One of her books on Kinsey is self-published (by her now defunct Institute for Media Education).The second Kinsey book, and another on pornography are published by Huntington House Books. Huntington House, along with its subsidiary Vital Issues Press, will publish almost any book on "conservative issues, politically incorrect exposés, christian apologetics, cults/occult, evangelism, family issues, anti-globalist issues" and "patriotism/survivalism" as it says in its appeal to prospective authors.
BUT ISN'T THE TRUTH REALLY JUST BEAUTIFUL LIES?
The specious online-only Journal of Human Sexuality, sponsored by Leadership U (Campus Crusade for Christ), has published her essay, Kinsey and the Homosexual Revolution. The bulk of this tirade is comprised of 31 complex and leading questions, questions designed to prejudice the reader, questions like "...what if all of Kinsey's work was fraudulent, or worse?", and "...could not some American scientists teach pederasts and pedophiles techniques for sexually abusing children for 'science'?", and "Was Kinsey himself a closet homosexual, pedophile or pederast?"
The answer to these questions is "no," which is why they're posed as questions and not as statements. Though Dr. Reisman includes tables and footnotes, she offers no proof or support for the innuendo she directs at Kinsey. In fact, her "research methods" could call her own background into question...
As to those methods:
In the early 1980s "the US Justice Department had given Reisman a grant for $734,371 to study pictures in Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler." [ 3 ] 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..." [ 4 ] Dr. Reisman pored over thousands of pages of pornographic literature. She felt herself persecuted at every turn and complained of a conspiracy to derail her efforts, going so far as to blame the Kinsey Institute for her inability to get published by a legitimate publishing house. [ 5 ]
And to an extent, she was persecuted, though not for the reasons she assumed. The Reagan-appointee who had commissioned the study, Alfred Regnery (the head of a conservative publishing house), admitted he had been wrong to do so. Avedon Carol writes:
It was a scientific disaster, riddled with researcher bias and baseless assumptions. The American University (AU), where Reisman's study had been academically based, actually refused to publish it when she released it, 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'. (Carol, 1994, p.116) [6]
Dr Loretta Haroian, the cochair of the plenary session of Child and Adolescent Sexuality at the 1984 World Congress of Sexology, an expert on childhood sexuality, was quoted as saying of Reisman,
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. ... Her [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." (Carol, 1994, p.116). [7
***
Well, maybe they really are out to get her, Poppy Dixon, and all the rest of them.
So let's go straight to the horse's...mouth. Here is her website.
She is a Concerned Woman, certainly. She's concerned about porn addiction, fer sher: she's also concerned about schools making our kids gay.
("If I give her the wool, will she"...o never mind).
I don't really have the time or energy to go through all her articles and references--but! say-hey! speaking of references! look who she links to!
yes! This guy! Yeah, I remember that guy! Beware of the feminists! Many are lesbians! All Porn Is Gay! And oh yeah, the Illuminati run everything; and the Zionist conspiracy, and just maybe UFO's. No, really. Good times, man.
I mean, we all know about six degrees of separation, lord knows, but...
Seriously, I'm sure the Sheffield Fems mean well, as do the Not a Feminist But folks (on edit: oh, are they the same? NAFB links to both in her profile) Just so we're all clear, though:
The letters detailed a number of the points set out in the leaflet and also included statistics taken from Dr Judith Reisman’s study of Playboy which revealed a huge back catalogue of sexualised images of children in the magazine. Sheffield Fems asked that, in the light of this evidence, retailers removed from sale all Playboy branded items aimed at children.
This is who you're rolling around in bed with. This is one of the people you're relying on for statistics and other information for your campaigns. A homophobic woman who's been heralded as a darling of the Religious Right (specifically the American Family Association; links to insane misogynistic frootbats (where she appears to have maybe gotten some of her ideas about the evils of Hugh Hefner and/or gay folk, or more likely vice versa); has had her "scientific methods" debunked by a number of sources including the Reagan appointee who first commissioned her Playboy study; and was kicked out of Captain Kangaroo.
Just so we're clear.
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39 comments:
This is precisely the problem of aligning yourself with sodding right-wing religious crusaders. They don't get a damn about women just that sex is dirty and obscene. It was same with Dworkin and MacKinnon. Strange bedfellows indeed!
You know, people have complained about (for example) Susie Bright articles for Playboy and interviews with Larry Flynt publications. and I mean, Flynt's a mixed bag at best, and they have printed some seriously vile and misogynistic (and racist) shit, no doubt. and Hugh Hefner's not exactly leading us to the Promised Land...
...but given a choice between those dudes (yeah, even Larry) and Donald Wildmon, I'm goin' with Larry. i'd at least rather take on institutionalized misogyny in what still passes for a democracy than in a theocracy, thank YOU.
not to mention oh yeah, as a queer chick, Flynt and co. may want to exploit and misprepresent me; but Wildmon and co. want me annihilated.
so.
Belledame: I agree wholeheartedly.
The religious right, as we know, lie and lie and lie. They are utterly reactionary and oppressive to the core. In the UK we had Mary Whitehouse and her crusaders who successfully brought a prosecution against Gay Times for publishing a poem about gay sexual fantasy regarding christ. And she tried to get the play "Romans in Britain" banned.
They really make me heave, the whole lot of them.
This is why my hackles rise so much when even a moderately popular blogger writes shit like "Please Fantasize Responsibly," or suggests that we all zealously phone the feds everytime we get a nasty search string in the sitemeter (more boneheaded than anything else, that idea, but that whole mentality)...in the name of *feminism.*
and people seem to be on board with it, or at least don't see a problem with it. or...who knows.
it boggles me. listen, be anti-porn all you want; i agree a lot of what's out there is rather nasty; and sure, if you have real evidence that real women (i love how "women and children" are always lumped together, p.s.) are being exploited and want out, by all means, activism. tell your own stories. call out abuse. find the commonalities. build community. yes.
but this, this...
this kind of crusading, button-pushing, free speech and civil rights be damned, full speed ahead shit is fucked up. Seriously.
I hate it when people do this, so I apologize, but I do want to make a plug for the essay that changed my mind about pornography and feminism. Laura Kipnis's "(Male) Desire and (Female) Disgust: Reading Hustler." It appears in the new 3rd edition of The Critical Tradition, and it originally appeared in the 1992 issue of Critical Studies. She really understands the anti-porn feminist stance, but shows how it's a largely bourgeois reaction to an angry sexist, racist, but also self-loathing population of underclass readers of Hustler (especially). It's a pretty stunning and moving essay. No one here probably needs it, but I did, and I'm extremely glad I spent time with it.
? as far as I'm concerned, plug away.
I can't see the problem with extra reading stuphs, at least the suggestion of any such.
I have the Laura Kipnis book; and yes it is good reading stuphs.
Flynt and co. may want to exploit and misprepresent me; but Wildmon and co. want me annihilated.
Well, yeah. The other thing being that Flynt...I'm not a fan, but he's not exactly calling what he does anything other than what it is.
and sure, if you have real evidence that real women...are being exploited and want out, by all means, activism.
Dingdingding! Let's draw a nice bright line between images that certain persons may find distasteful and actual honest-to-Jebus exploitation. I don't know why that's so hard.
On the sitemeter front, I am taking in about a hundred hits a day for Beth Chapman's boobs. Vile!/sarcasm
and people seem to be on board with it, or at least don't see a problem with it. or...who knows.
I told you, it's just the Internet that's weird. Or, alternatively, the people who go to feminist events in New York tend to be pro-porn, which doesn't really reflect positively on the anti-porn crowd.
Oh, you don't know the half of Judith Reisman's dual citizen status, Belle.
In the late 70s and early 80s, she was not only not attacked by the antiporn feminist "left" as a collaborator....but she was openly accepted; under the pen name "Judith Bath-Ada" she wrote several jeremiads against porn (including one for the anthology "Take Back The Night" where she labeled Hugh Hefner of Playboy, Bob Guccione of Penthouse, and Larry Flynt of Hustler as, in no particular order, "Hitler, Stalin, and Goebbels").
And way back in 1978, in an address to the forerunner group Women Against Violence in Pornography and the Media (which would evolve into the main organization Women Against Pornography), Reisman....well, I'll just let Pat califia take over from there:
(excerpted from Califia: "Radical Sex")
"[...] Reisman attacked pornography on the grounds that it was destroying the family, invalidating spirituality, and eroding relationships between the sexes. She defended institutionalized religion and the nuclear familiy as civilizing and controlling influences on male sexuality. [...]"
Later on in a footnote from the same essay, Califia continues:
"Reisman ended her talk by asking the audience what a world without pornography would be like. "Just think -- for the first time in human history, truly loving relationships between the sexes would be possible," she crooned, and flashed a slide of a heterosexual couple walking hand in hand on a beach. I couldn't believe a room full of dykes was going to sit still for this. They didn't -- they applauded!"
Not exactky an "Amazonian" radfem, she wasn't...but on the fundamentals of sexual fascism, Reisman and Dworkin and MacKinnon were definitely on the same page, in my book.
Nothing strange at all about them, to me. Just two sides of the same coin.
Anthony
Yeah, Alon; but some people get off the Internet at some point, too, sometimes. I mean, it's all "just the Internet," what we're doing here...
I mean, I hope YearlyKos is more representative of What's Going On than the blogosphere; I still think, you know, hearts and minds, they matter.
...you know, I gotta say, besides everything else: Jewish folks aligning with the Christian Theocrats really grate my cheese something wicked.
seriously, how blind do you have to be to not see the rampant antisemitism (yes, still)? And no, fools, supporting Israel does NOT automatically translate to "friend of the Jews." In many cases, it just means it fits into their loony prophecies.
oh well, it makes as much sense as a woman aligning herself with the (for real, now; as in, these guys CALL themselves "patriarchs" sometimes) patriarchy, I suppose.
What has been said--not just by us but by the Reagan appointee who originally comissioned her study--is that her methods are unscientific. In this case, from what I understand thus far, it's not a question of her being able to count; it's a question of *what* she counted.
My question: what exactly did the Sheffield Fems achieve, here?
I mean, as I understand it from the original bulletin, the results were this:
The leafleting campaign was followed up with letters which were sent to the Head Offices of these three retailers. The letters detailed a number of the points set out in the leaflet and also included statistics taken from Dr Judith Reisman's study of Playboy which revealed a huge back catalogue of sexualised images of children in the magazine. Sheffield Fems asked that, in the light of this evidence, retailers removed from sale all Playboy branded items aimed at children.
The group were delighted to receive a swift reply from Claire's Accessories which apologised for causing offence and confirmed that, once all remaining in-store stock had been sold, no more products would be ordered from the suppliers. John Lewis replied a week later, also confirming that, although the range had been successful, they would be replacing it with another range and reducing all remaining stock. WH Smith decided not to remove the products from sale, but informed the group that it appreciated their comments and would continue to monitor feedback on the range. The actions of both John Lewis and Claire's Accessories demonstrate their commitment to customer service and responsible retailing, and Sheffield Fems hope that other retailers will feel able to follow their lead.
Sheffield Fems view this success as part of the wider movement to combat the intrusion of pornography into mainstream culture, from the sexually objectifying and degrading images of women on the covers of lads' magazines to the misogynistic lyrics and music videos of MTV stars, and we hope that our success will inspire other groups to keep pushing for change.
***
I mean, I get that people find it offensive and creepy that the Playboy logo is being marketed to kids, really I do.
But...what happened here, was, as far as I can see, one store stopped selling consumer shit with pictures of glittery bunnies to impressionable girls. So instead they're pushing some other brand of consumer shit.
I guess what I'm not clear on is what this does for actual exploited women and/or girls, specifically.
I'm not saying it's never worth complaining about icky consumer items; I just...well. Mm. Anyway.
two stores/chains, excuse me.
The bigger issue is, for me:
If Judith Reisman is correct--and I'm not necessarily saying she's not--Playboy is not just a relatively softcore porn glossy that publishes annoyingly sexist images of nekkid women, but some sort of Evil Empire which ruthlessly exploits actual children, then it makes total sense to prioritize taking the fuckers down, as best one can.
If she's *not* correct, however, and it really is pretty much a softcore nudie mag that publishes annoyingly sexist pictures of women, no more no less, well....I can't help but think that you know, there might be better focii for one's energy.
that, and distributing leaflets with her POV and numbers does kind of tend to lend her a certain legitimacy among people who otherwise probably wouldn't know who the hell she was.
Sorry, Witchy-Woo, but no cigar here....the point isn't that your antiporn feminist allies and Far Right fundamentalists like Judith Reisman share the exact same objectives, but that in the shared goal of wiping out adult sexual speech and expression that they deem unacceptable, they do indeed share common beliefs which strengthen the overall goal of sexual censorship.
You can distance yourself from the Religious Right all you want, but in the long run, in the matter of controlling and obliterating sexuality, the only difference between you and Judith Reisman is the rhetoric used.
Otherwise....same song and dance, different DJ.
And there is no real difference between what Shetland Farms did to those outlets in forcing them to remove Playboy and what Don Wildmon and Judith Reisman did to Southland/7-Eleven..or what the Canadian authorities did to gay/lesbian bookstores like Glad Day following the Butler decision. All three of those decisions resulted in legal material being pulled from the shelves without any genuine proof of wrongdoing....and all three actions resulted in the rights of free expression for minority groups (especially feminists and sexual dissidents) being curtailed.
It's not just the ideology that counts...it's the actions and consequences.
Anthony
...I am trying to find something more specific wrt Reisman's methodology. In the meantime, there's also this:
http://libertus.net/censor/rdocs/candle3.html
Several submissions referenced the writings of Judith Reisman. In particular, Stuart Reece's submission relies heavily on Reisman's material in support of claims that pornography and nudity are responsible for many problems in modern society, from sex crimes to eating disorders. For example, he stated (p371):
"The material in this submission relies heavily on the various materials prepared by Dr Judith Reisman... One of the major concerns of the present submission is with the effects of pornographic material on sexual assault and rape crimes, but it must also be obvious to the thoughtful observer that the likely implications and ramifications of pornography extend also to a wide variety of other behaviours and pathologies. In addition to the obvious literature and film publishing industry, a number of related industries are also driven by pornography. These include mass entertainment, sexology, sex education, advertising, agents, reporters, writers, photographers, paper manufacturers, printers, doctors and retail personnel and businesses. ...
'Pornography' may be taken to be any portrayal of the unclothed female breast or male or female genitalia which is not made in a clearly medical context."
Reece also contended in his submission (p374) that:
"Clearly by its very nature of unclothing that which is usually covered, pornography breaks the usual social taboos and conventions. ... The direct argument could thus very well be made that as our culture becomes generically more sexually explicit, and indeed as depicted or suggested nudity becomes virtually commonplace under the relentless pressure of the generally depraved artistic, advertising and media industries, so the number of sex related depravities and indeed casualties dramatically increases. This would include not only sexually violent crimes against the person, but HIV / AIDS, a plethora of dozens of sexually transmitted diseases, psychological maladies from depression, anxiety, stress, eating disorders and suicide, broken homes and marriages and all the consequences of teenage delinquency which so often follows from that, child molestation and abuse, child gang rape, child sexual murder and many murders and serial murders.
Indeed given that all these pathologies have virtually appeared in the last thirty years, it could well be said that without recognized societal norms culture rapidly degenerates into an unholy mess."
***
Which, I mean, damn, if one believes all that, then no wonder one would want to make fighting porn a priority!
Only one problem: it's not actually the case that "all these pathologies have appeared in the last thirty years."
That, and: it's pretty much not progressives who yearn wistfully for the days of yesteryear, when things were so much better.
Anyway, she's apparently still rather influential, is Reisman, discredited or no.
slip.
"the road to hell is paved with good intentions"
...and this, same Avedon Carol quote as before, with a little more context:
The Reece submission stated (p386) that "One of the central objectives of pornography is the mainstreaming of child pornography". Reece stated that "Reisman has written at length describing the child magnets used in pornography. These include such classic child characters as Mickey Mouse, Santa Claus, Winnie the Pooh and other childhood favourites" and also referred (p391) to Reisman's analysis of Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler stating that Reisman found "6004 child images" in these magazines.
This study was undertaken by Reisman in 1984 using a US Justice Department grant of $734,371 to analyse the content of these magazines between 1954 and 1984. Subsequently, Reagan-appointee Alfred Regnery, who commissioned the study, had to admit that it was a mistake (Carol, 1994).
"It was a scientific disaster, riddled with researcher bias and baseless assumptions. The American University (AU), where Reisman's study had been academically based, actually refused to publish it when she released it, 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'." (Carol, 1994, p.116)
...and she's still at it, as of late 2004:
http://www.alternet.org/election04/20744/
In her writings and lectures, Reisman conjures a dark world in which Playboy magazine insidiously pushes kiddie-porn, where homosexuals crusade for the hearts and behinds of America's youth and "erotoxins" as powerful as crack cocaine fill the somatasensory cortexes of porn watchers. From Reisman's writings and lectures, one could get the impression that this world is entirely the creation of Kinsey, the Master of Perverts.
While Reisman's ideas have naturally endeared her to a Who's Who of ornery theocrats and survivalist militia types, in recent years she has found herself kibitzing with the likes of GOP senators and Bush administration officials. Though the "Dr." that precedes her name on her book and her web site is practically cosmetic, earned with a degree in communications, this November she provided expert testimony on Capitol Hill for Republican Sen. Sam Brownback on the scientific perils of pornography. There, she also lobbied for the reintroduction of a bill that would mandate an investigation into her claim that Kinsey sexually abused children during his research. Through friends in the Justice Department, Reisman has helped push for an increased focus on prosecuting porn. And she is a favorite speaker at conferences of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, a federally funded non-profit which provides technical assistance to controversial abstinence-only programs in public schools. As Reisman gathers influence in Republican-dominated Washington, her work is bearing an increasingly apparent mark on the Christian right's political agenda and by extension, on the White House's social policy.
"As president and founder of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, Judith Reisman has affected my life personally through the enormous amount of scientific research she's done – and without Judith's impact on my life, I don't believe the abstinence community would have been impacted," Abstinence Clearinghouse founder, Leslee Unruh, told me. The Abstinence Clearinghouse, advised by members of conservative Christian groups like Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America and Coral Ridge Ministries, is funded in part by the Department of Health and Human Services. As the spearhead of the abstinence-only movement, its primary task is to design and disseminate curricula to public schools which administer abstinence-only courses.
...his November, Reisman spent a week on the Hill at the invitation of Sen. Brownback, the Catholic Kansas Republican, to testify before the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space on "The Science Behind Pornography Addiction." In her testimony, Reisman presented her discredited Playboy/kiddie-porn report to reinforce her contention that, "Pornography triggers myriad kinds of internal, natural drugs that mimic the 'high' from a street drug. Addiction to pornography is addiction to what I dub 'erotoxins' – mind-altering drugs produced by the viewer's own brain." She added, "A basic science research team employing a cautiously protective methodology should study 'erotoxins' and the brain/body." Her call for a research team was both a tacit admission that her presentation was bereft of any scientific evidence, and yet another plea for federal grant money for her studies.
Though Reisman has cultivated a wealth of connections within government, her deepest wellspring of influence remains the Christian right, which is certain to enjoy unprecendented access to the White House in a second Bush term. Reisman is a longtime consultant to Washington-based lobbying powerhouses like Concerned Women for America and the American Family Association. And she has enlisted her friend Eunice Ray, founder of Restoring Social Virtue and Purity to America (RSVP America) to campaign full time for the reintroduction of HR 2749.
***
"Erotoxins," huh.
More science:
Given the impact of Reisman's agenda-driven research on the abstinence-only movement, it's perhaps no surprise that the credibility of abstinence-only curricula has been widely questioned. A recent report by California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman revealed that Abstinence Clearinghouse-reviewed programs teach teens that, for instance, genital touching can cause pregnancy and that HIV can be transmitted through tears and sweat. Another Clearinghouse-reviewed textbook informs them, "Women gauge their happiness and judge their success on their relationships. Men's happiness and success hinge on their accomplishments." According to Waxman's report, 80 percent of data about reproductive health in abstinence-only programs is false, misleading or distorted.
...ah. More on the "erotoxin" theory:
ttp://www.guardian.co.uk/life/farout/story/0,13028,1527638,00.html
According to Dr Judith Reisman, pornography affects the physical structure of your brain turning you into a porno-zombie. Porn, she says, is an "erototoxin ", producing an addictive "drug cocktail " of testosterone, oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin with a measurable organic effect on the brain.
Some of us might consider this a good thing. Not Reisman: erototoxins aren't about pleasure, they're a "fear-sex-shame-and-anger stimulant". Reisman's paper on the subject The Psychopharmacology of Pictorial Pornography Restructuring Brain, Mind & Memory & Subverting Freedom of Speech has helped make her the darling of the anti-pornography crusade, and in November last year she presented her erototoxin theory to the US senate.
Under the auspices of Utah's Lighted Candle Society (LCS), Reisman and Victor Cline, a clinical psychologist at the University of Utah, began raising money from American conservative and religious organisations. They hope to raise at least $3m to conduct MRI scans on victims under the influence of porn and so prove their theories correct. They foresee two possible outcomes: if they can demonstrate that porn physically "damages " the brain, that might open the floodgates for "big tobacco"-style lawsuits against porn publishers and distributors; second, and more insidiously, if porn can be shown to "subvert cognition " and affect the parts of the brain involved in reasoning and speech, then "these toxic media should be legally outlawed, as is all other toxic waste, and eliminated from our societal structure "
***
jesus, she really DOES want to be the anti-Kinsey, doesn't she?
except i keep picturing the Bugs Bunny cartoons with the "mad scientist" motif, you know, where they're trying to swap someone's brain with a chicken's brain.
"Come...back...here....rab...bit...."
Does anyone have the skinny on exactly how Reisman arrived at her 6004 images of children in Playboy, for that study? the Avedon Carol piece in full, maybe?
...I'll keep looking.
just, in general: not saying she couldn't still be right about this one thing, but seeing as how she's been discredited by the *guy who commissioned the study in the first place,* and her overall just appearing to come off as not just a theocratic fascist but a total crank (refrigerator magnets??)...I, well, I'll wait and see. I'm curious now, too.
Well, just speculating based on the snippets I've already read: she seems to include cartoons among the evidence she's marshalled for other campaigns.
And then, too: what's her definition of a child?
I mean, you'd *think* that clearly she must mean a very obviously underaged girl; but it's also possible she means something else.
for one thing, there have always been these "schoolgirl fantasies," which are of course adults dressed up in uniforms and pigtails. Is she counting this?
I don't have an answer yet, mind.
I just find it sort of difficult to believe that in all those years, from 1954, yet, no one (else) would have noticed all this blatant kiddie porn in the wholesome fairly-mainstream Playboy. I'm not saying it's impossible, but...
...here's a suggestion that my suspicion is at least partly correct:
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?041206ta_talk_radosh
...She was lecturing on evidence of child pornography in Playboy cartoons, when, as she recalled it, a mysterious man approached her and said, “If you’re really concerned about child sexual abuse you have to look at ‘The Kinsey Reports...
and here, in the Califia piece:
http://cultronix.eserver.org/califia/meese/
>Two feeble attempts were made to provide research that was tailor-made to support the Commission. The Justice Department had given antiporn activist Judith Reisman a grant for $734,000 to study the cartoons in Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler. Reisman is known for attacking Kinsey, whom she says got all his evidence about child sexuality from a man who molested over eight hundred children. Her knowledge of child sexuality probably comes from her experience as a scriptwriter for "Captain Kangaroo." Her grant was so poorly written and its budget so inflated that it drew criticism from the Senate Juvenile Justice Subcommittee. It emerged that Reisman's "peer review" had been conducted by three vice cops, an FBI agent, and fellow antiporn activist and beneficiary of Justice Department funding, Ann Burgess. Reisman testified at the hearings, but her warning that "The cartoon scenario is the common setting in erotica/pornography within which the breaking of sexual taboos first appears," was not exactly what the Commission needed to put itself over the top.>
Even in the right-wing sites endorsing her, they also allude to cartoons and illustrations. Jokey ones. There's no allusion to Playboy's use of actual children at all, that I've found thus far. I'd rather think she'd have been able to make a much bigger stink if she had done; and that her study wouldn't have been dismissed by pretty much everyone except the Christian right, which is what happened.
so now I'm curious as to what the cartoons were.
but even assuming that they were deeply creepy, which they may well have been, there's a really big difference between creepy cartoons and actual exploitation of real live children.
slip. Well, maybe, but if they were *that* influential I'd expect a lot more pianos to be dropped on peoples' heads, exploding roadrunners, that sort of thing. It'd certainly make life more entertaining, that's for damn sure.
and no, as far as I know, the charges of pedophilia against Kinsey are pretty much smears made by the right, mostly based on his having talked to actual pedophiles in the course of his interviews. hardly an endorsement of pedophilia, much les a sign of his own proclivities.
as per his research findings being suspect, Kinsey: well, there are justifiable criticisms levelled at his methods wrt accuracy; specifically that the people he talked to and did his research with tended to be fairly self-selecting insofar as certain demographics were a lot more likely to be comfortable with talking to a researcher about S-E-X than others.
the nasty shit, that comes from the likes of Reisman, and now it's starting to look to me like much of it comes from Reisman herself. whom you'll note has made the crusade against Kinsey's legacy pretty much her life's work. God knows why.
but I do know that the RRR have never gotten over the fact that he said all kinds of shocking shit, like x% of men had (gasp) homosexual desires and/or experience; and that women masturbated; and all kinds of stuff that simply wasn't said.
and pretty much every anti-gay "research" tank you'll find has a goodly chunk devoted to ranking Kinsey to the dogs and back.
responses to the Kinsey pedophilia charge:
http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2006/kinsey.html
The centerpiece of Kupelian's attack is Reisman's critique of Kinsey's "Table 34" -- "multiple orgasm in pre-adolescent males." According to Reisman (and directly quoted by Kupelian), "Kinsey solicited and encouraged pedophiles, at home and abroad, to sexually violate from 317 to 2,035 infants and children for his alleged data on normal 'child sexuality.'" Kupelian adds: "She is speaking the awful truth here."
Perhaps not. Dixon examined Reisman's claims about Table 34. She points out that, contrary to Reisman's assertion:
Kinsey interviewed people who were engaged in illegal sexual activity, but did not encourage, or facilitate in any way, any sexual behavior. He did not "allow...child abusers to conduct experiments" as the Kinsey institute conducted no experiments, nor trained anyone to do so."
[...]
The Kinsey Institute has never carried out sexual experiments on children, either during Alfred Kinsey's time as director or since. As stated clearly in the first Kinsey volume, [Sexual Behavior in the Human Male], published in 1948, the information about children's sexuality responses was obtained from older subjects recalling their own childhoods, parents observing their children, and a small number of adult men who had engaged in sexual contacts with children and who were interviewed by Dr. Kinsey and his staff.
The Kinsey Institute has also responded to Reisman's allegations:
Kinsey was not a pedophile in any shape or form. He did not carry out experiments on children; he did not hire, collaborate, or persuade people to carry out experiments on children. He did not falsify research findings and there is absolutely no evidence that his research "opened flood gates for the sexual abuse of children".
[...]
Kinsey clearly stated in his male volume the sources of information about children's sexual responses. The bulk of this information was obtained from adults recalling their own childhoods. Some was from parents who had observed their children, some from teachers who had observed children interacting or behaving sexually, and Kinsey stated that there were nine men who he had interviewed who had sexual experiences with children who had told him about how the children had responded and reacted.
While Kupelian notes the Kinsey Institute's response, he tries to portray it as debunked because an institute director later admitted that much of it came from a single person, Rex King, whom Kupelian describes as a "serial pedophile." Kupelian then goes on to play guilt by association, linking Kinsey to the notorious North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA).
Despite his description of Kinsey as "a sexually depraved human being who "rejoiced" at pedophiles' conducting horrifying, Dr. Mengele-like sexual experiments on hundreds of children," Kupelian never offers any evidence to support Reisman's claim that Kinsey "solicited and encouraged pedophiles" to "sexually violate ... infants and children" -- perhaps because Reisman herself has no such evidence.
Kupelian further calls Kinsey a "sexual psychopath" but manages to avoid (in this article, at least) explicitly calling him a pedophile -- something Reisman has regularly done, though she has admitted that she has no direct evidence of it. Her purported evidence of this claim: "Everything he wrote. Nobody but a pedophile could write what he did."
A bit more on Kinsey:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0412.larson.html
While conservative pitchforks have been raised at each of these harbingers of the sexual revolution, the anger directed at Kinsey even today, a half century after his death, is unique. For decades, every member of Congress who has tried to choke the spigot of federal funding for sexuality or AIDS studies has hurled invectives at both Kinsey and the University of Indiana research center that bears his name. When the 50th anniversary of his books arrived, conservatives marked the occasion by founding new anti-Kinsey advocacy organizations, such as Restoring Social Virtue and Purity (RSVP). Each year, the Abstinence Clearinghouse devotes two hours of its annual conference to debunking a man whose fame and influence peaked generations ago.
Why does Kinsey hold such a distinct place in conservative crosshairs? The answer is the same reason that his studies of American sexual behavior were so influential when they first appeared. Unlike Freud, whose theories were debated by the educated classes, Kinsey published books that everybody read—or read about. And unlike Henry Miller, Bob Guccione, or Xaviera “the Happy Hooker” Hollander, Kinsey didn't present himself as an advocate of sexual license, but as an objective scientist describing the sexual profligacy and heterogeneity that already existed in American culture. It was the apparent impartiality of his data that so shook America's settled notions of sexuality, as deeply as Darwin's theory of natural selection did the literalist Biblical notions of creation.
As with Darwin, detractors have tried for decades to roll back Kinsey's influence by raising questions about the messenger and the reliability of his enterprise, portraying Kinsey as more pervert than researcher, someone who hid his libertine agenda behind a white lab coat. “Kinsey was a promiscuous sado-masochistic bisexual,” charges CWA's Bob Knight, “who tailored his research to validate his sexual appetite. He sought out sexual perversions—he projected that as picture of average American sex life.”
fsqgqxBelle:
Mostly, from what I have seen, Reisman simply counted the number of "child" images in all the cartoons run in Playboy (and the other mags) and simply through her junk theories that anything looking underage WAS in fact underage, and that Playboy counted as a "porn mag" (never mind that it doesn't go beyond nudity and does not even show explicit sex acts), grafted the theory that Playboy contributed to "child porn", simply assumed that those images were innately "kiddie porn". In short, she pulled her theories out of the thin air of her own antisex right-wing biases.
The fact of the matter remains that other than popular images of Disney or other popular characters that were satirized (no different than the satire used in mainstream magazines), there is NO evidence of ANY underage children -- real or imaginary" being used in Playboy or any other adult magazine for the expressed purpose of explotiation. Considering that the magazines are totally restricted BY LAW to adults over 18, and that those more precondictioned to child porn or child abuse have more than enough existing underground channels (not to mention the basic fact that most child abuse occurs with relatives rather than strangers) without having to resort to Playboy, Penthouse or any other adult magazine to satisfy their illegal fix,
As for the charge of Kinsey having "paedophilic predelictions": outside of Reisman and other sources of the Religious Right, no other source has ever proven or even leveled the charge that Kinsey ever abused his subjects...or even that he was gay. And the wide acceptance of his main theories of sexuality within the sex research field should answer any questions about the quality of his research. The only agenda that I see here is the attempt by rightists to smear him and other sex reserachers for not abiding by their "traditional" goals.
NO, W-W, I see no misunderstanding or misinterpretation at all in my view of your movement as reactionary and restrictive. The long-standing and open collaboration between your side and the Religious Right in restricting choices more than backs up my points...and none of your denials can erase that.
And yes, I do wear size 9 shoes....but I tend to tread lightly in them when I'm near people. I'd rather address the arguments, not the individuals.
Oh, I agree, W-W..you are very much a person...a person with very direct core beliefs. No problem with that at all....but when those beliefs are used to smear and distort the truth and to support policies that end up being corrosive and reactionary, then I have the right to bring my 9" feet and every other portion of my body here to clear up the record and speak for the other side of the debate.
It's a simple thing, W-W...sex radical feminists like me are simply fed up with your side intimidating us and manipulating the debate to fit your biases...we just won't surrender the debate field to you any longer.
We are here, and we are not going away. Just deal with it, madam.
Sorry for the tone, Belle, but someone has to stand up and level the playing field.
Anthony
sigh.
I'm not telling anyone to go away. I understand the desire to not feel yelled at or stomped on; and I understand the desire to feel...safe, I guess, when it comes to sensitive personal stuff.
Right now though we're talking in a pretty distanced way about facts, documents, theories; so I'm hard put to tell anyone who's contributing to that discussion that they're not welcome, I'm afraid.
One thing before I make my exit, Belle:
Contrary to Witchy-Woo's assertions, I do NOT wish to shut her up in any way (as if I ever could do that); all I want to do is to respond to her beliefs. If she takes that to mean that she's being "silenced" by my "butting in", then that's her interpretation.
I understand that I can come on a bit strong in my arguments (just like when you admonished me at antiprincess's blog for basically the same thing), and I sincerely apologize if I overdid it this time, too....but, I feel that for far too long, my side of the debate has allowed her side to intimidate, distort, personally attack, and basically define the debate on sexuality; and frankly, it's got me down to my last nerves.
As a feminist supporting man and a sex radical, I simply have had it up to here with always having to defend my personal sexual views from being misconstrued, distorted, and attacked merely because I happen to be a man with a working penis. They can talk about being called "anti-sex prudes", but is it any different when I or any man who dares to challenge an antiporn feminist is attacked as a virtual rapist, a "pimp", and a murderer for the "crime" of stating that not all men (or even a majority of them) are presumed to commit rape or otherwise disrespect women???
So please forgive my anger towards W-W..and if I am that much of a distraction from reasonable debate, then I will break myself away from this and keep my views to myself (and my own blog). No need for me to disrespect the rules of some one else's house.
C'est finis...and peace.
Anthony
I have no real rules, except for
1) it's good to try to hear what the other person is actually saying, at least some of the time
2) if you're gonna make a mess with the blowtorch 'n' shit, help clean up afterward.
Those aren't rules, really; just advice for not getting me too cranky.
Since I have the impression that the party's actually getting going, I feel a certain hostly obligation that i tend not to let constrain me elsewhere.
i can't guarantee how long that will last.
or what i'll do if i get too cranky.
then too, i am also a malicious bastard who might just ban someone for the sheer gleeful hell of it.
oh, yes, and: should any trolls appear on the scene, I demand that they at least be entertaining enough to make up for the tedious work of cleaning up after their shit.
the last few i've played with have been no fun; they fell right over.
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