Strange bedfellows

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.