Erotoxins and pr0n, cont'd

woosp, looks like we got a bit sidetracked, there, with the nutty trail.

Well, but okay, this is hardly fair, is it? I mean, just because someone associates with someone else in one context doesn't mean they support their every position, right? (And after all, Reisman is Jewish. ...actually, so is Makow. bless his springy little head, but anyway):

And it's not like the anti-pr0n feminists/left ever call out other lefties and feminists because they've got links with or even seem to approve of a prominent sexist pornographer.

More to the point: well, we don't know that there are any links at all between Jensen/Goff and Reisman, right? For that matter, what feminists are even listening to Reisman?

Well, Aura Bogado, radical leftist and feminist activist, who by the way does have some I think legit bones to pick with the way things fell out between her and Hustler and Susie Bright and "Not in Our Name" and some other people (long involved story, you can get part of this gist in this next link at the Margins, anyway), did mention this, in passing a series of email exchanges, I note:

According to your email, you assume that I would potentially destroy “the Adult Entertainment Industry”. Quite the opposite. I enjoy and advocate erotica and consider myself a sex-positive woman. However, I do have a problem with misogyny and child pornography. Judith Reisman documents a disturbing pattern of the latter in this article:

That article might be the same one they were alluding to over at genderberg,
Wrt an article by Robert Jensen and Gail Dines on Hefner's 80th birthday, a commenter notes:

I'm really surprised that Dr.Gail Dines didn't mention Playboy's terrible 50 year history of glamorizing and making jokes in thousands of cartoon drawings,and articles and some pictures,of incest,gang rapes of women and children,sexual harassment on the job,and sexual murders :!: She did her doctorate on Playboy and she had worked with Dr.Judith Reisman who in 1986 did a report for the US Jusice Department for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention called,Images of Children,Crime and Violence in Playboy,Penthouse and Hustler Magazines.

So she's still quoted by, certainly not disavowed by, some, including at least one pretty prominent activist, on the anti-porn left, I think it's fair to conclude.

And then of course there are the places where ideology in other regards takes a backseat to the primary issue of fighting the pr0n. Here, for example, a "women-only" site which doesn't appear (thus far, still reading) to be particularly feminist -or- hardline religious in its orientation, Mothers Against Pornography Addiction,"which lists both (feminist, leftist) Gail Dines and Judith Reisman among its resources, along with various recovery and self-help sorts of links...and of course, an explanation of the "science behind porn addiction," that same U.S. Congress Testimony.

As for the Playboy et al study in question, once again, that was this one:

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]

via Poppy Dixon.

Ultimately, we can all play "six degrees of separation;" sooner or later, no matter what respectable cause or personage you're talking about, yer gonna find connections to seriously dodgy, even 180 degree inimical to the cause, types. This we know. And those of us who aren't quite as all het up about, you know, maintaining purity, are generally a tad more relaxed about that sort of thing--making strange bedfellows for the sake of realpolitik, sometimes.

On the other hand, when it's the lunatics' wacky ideas that seem to be adopted by your supposed allies...well, now, that's maybe something else again.