Judith Reisman

Judith Ann Reisman (; April 11, 1935 – April 9, 2021) was an American conservative author, best known for her criticism and condemnation of the work and legacy of Alfred Kinsey. She has been referred to as the "founder of the modern anti-Kinsey movement". During her career, Reisman occasionally served as a consultant to the U.S. Departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services. She held a doctorate in communications from Case Western Reserve University, and was a visiting professor of law at Liberty University.

Advocating for children

Writing for AlterNet, blogger Max Blumenthal wrote about how Reisman's daughter's molestation set Reisman on the path of researching Kinsey's activities. Purportedly, an investigation indicated a link between the assailant's viewing of a pornographic magazine and the 13-year-old girl's assault (noted in Reisman's memorial page). Following the sexual assault, the accused boy and his family slipped out of the country, while her daughter lapsed into a deep depression. Fifteen years later, the daughter died from a brain aneurysm, which Reisman suspected was linked to the earlier trauma.

Reisman was one of the founding members of the Reisman Institute, and served as its president until 2021. She delivered talks on child advocacy, and was the director of the Liberty Child Protection Center. She received the "Protector of Children" award from Citizens for Families in 2005, as well as the "Save Our Children Scientist Of The Year For 1993" from the Save Our Children National Alliance. She was nominated by the Inspector General for the Department of Defense to be part of the panel reviewing sexual misconduct for the US Air Force Academy in 2003.

Children in the Kinsey reports

Over the following years, her accusations against Kinsey became increasingly serious. She said that he was a fraud who had employed and relied on pedophiles for his research, and claimed that Kinsey himself had sexually 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, she was "ostracized by mainstream academia".

Prior to the release of the 2004 film Kinsey, Reisman and Laura Schlessinger attempted to place an advertisement "alleging Kinsey was a pervert and a pedophile".

The Southern Poverty Law Center has described Reisman as a "conspiracy theorist" and a promoter of "sexual pseudoscience" in regard to her views on Kinsey.</blockquote>

Diederik F. Janssen has reviewed her book Sexual Sabotage: How One Mad Scientist Unleashed a Plague of Corruption and Contagion on America from a postmodern perspective. Then he considers that Reisman plays truth games precisely because Kinsey had invited sexologists to play truth games.

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'."

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.

Reisman's book Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences; The Red Queen and the Grand Scheme was called "wildly irresponsible and baffling book... Nonetheless, it contains some interesting information about the reaction to Kinsey."

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 as well as intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress regarding alleged attempts to censor her book Kinsey, Sex and Fraud. The case was ultimately dismissed with prejudice in 1994.

Images of children, crime and violence

In 1983, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) was headed by social conservatives, including Alfred S. Regnery in the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). Reisman had given a talk on a Washington, D.C. radio program and on CNN's Crossfire about the "connections between sex education, sex educators, and the pornography industry" which was heard by a member of the DOJ, and Reisman was asked to discuss her views in person, which "struck a common chord ... especially those opposed to sex education in the schools." She was then invited to apply for a grant, which was approved without competition for the amount of $798,531 (though later reduced to $734,371), to undertake a "study at American University to determine whether Playboy, Hustler and other more explicit materials are linked to violence by juveniles." The allocation came under criticism as the grant was approved despite a staff memo from Pamela Swain, a director of research, evaluation and program development, in which she claimed that the study could be accomplished for $60,000. The report drew contemporary criticism in regards to its cost and quality. Sex crime researcher Avedon Carol commented that the report was a "scientific disaster, riddled with researcher bias and baseless assumptions." The American University (AU), where Reisman's study had been academically based, refused to publish the completed work, citing concerns by an independent academic auditor. Criminologist Robert Figlio of the University of Pennsylvania stated "The term child used in the aggregate sense in this report is so inclusive and general as to be meaningless." "Whatever the merits of her research," Trento wrote, when support from the OJJDP was needed most, its leadership backed away from Reisman leaving her project to fail and leaving Reisman feeling "bitter" and "helpless" after "spending years developing an expertise and doing what she thought was an excellent job in the public interest." 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 Frozens Elsa and Spider-Man.

Sources of child sexual abuse

When Playboy and Penthouse printed nude photos of Madonna in 1985, Reisman warned that because of the entertainer's idolization by youth, their publication would destigmatize and "encourage voluntary display by youngsters," leading to an increase in child pornography.

Allegations of homosexual recruitment of children

Reisman claimed that homosexuals employ recruitment techniques that rival those of the United States Marine Corps.

Erototoxins

Reisman postulated a physical mechanism to account for the dangers she ascribed to pornography: when viewed, an addictive mixture of chemicals (such as glucose) which she dubbed "erototoxins", floods the brain, causing harmful influences to it. Reisman hoped that MRI studies would prove porn-induced physical brain damage and predicted lawsuits against publishers and distributors of pornography similar to those against Big Tobacco, which resulted in the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. Further, if pornography can "subvert cognition", then "these toxic media should be legally outlawed, as is all other toxic waste, and eliminated from our societal structure." Finally, individuals who have suffered brain damage from "pornography are no longer expressing 'free speech' and, for their own good, shouldn't be protected under the First Amendment."

Endorphins are substances produced by the brain as a result of various things including sexual arousal, physical exercise, strong pain, laughter, etc. They cause pleasurable sensations and are somewhat addictive; drugs like morphine attach to the same receptors as endorphins. However, endorphins do not fit Reisman's definition of erototoxins, as many things cause them to be released, not only pornography.

The 2002–2011 Proceedings of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences state about her public statements about erototoxins: "facts stood in the way of her opinion and testimony."

Even at the testimonies before the US Congress in 2004, it was apparent that the opinions about erototoxins were divided, critics citing lack of evidence for the existence of eroto-toxins.

Homosexuals and Nazism

Reisman said that she believed that a homosexual movement in Germany gave rise to the Nazi Party and the Holocaust. She endorsed The Pink Swastika, a 1995 pseudohistorical book which expressed this view, and compared modern youth groups for homosexuals to the Hitler Youth.

Mapplethorpe exhibition obscenity trial

In 1990, Dennis Barrie, then director of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, was accused of obscenity for displaying controversial photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe; Reisman was called as the only expert witness for the prosecution. which "accused Mapplethorpe of being both a Nazi and a child molester". The defense argued that she was not qualified as an art expert, but the judge allowed her to testify as a rebuttal witness. During her testimony, Reisman did not discuss the sexually explicit content of Mapplethorpe's work, arguing instead that the five photographs were not works of art because they either did not display a human face, or, in the case of Self-Portrait, the face "... displayed no discernible emotion" and absent emotion, the placement of the photographs in a museum implied that the activities displayed were appropriate. She also claimed that the pictures of nude children legitimized pedophilia. The defense emphasized that Reisman's experience with art was limited to her work as a songwriter.

Personal life

Reisman was the daughter of Mathew L. Gelernter and Ada née Goldberg. She married Arnold Reisman in 1955 in Los Angeles. Her family was Jewish. She died on April 9, 2021.

She received praise from the John Birch Society, which stated "[...] Judith Reisman repeatedly, over the past several decades, strode into many hostile enemy camps around the world — colleges, universities, legislative bodies, media outlets — to speak truth to power and to expose vile works of darkness."

Robert Knight said in The Washington Times that "she was cast as a careless, right-wing fanatic", was scorned even by "conservatives who were afraid of guilt by association", and that she had converted to Christianity.

Bibliography

'. Judith Reisman et al.; Huntington House; Lafayette, LA (1990)
'. Huntington House; Lafayette, LA (1991)
'. The Institute for Media Education; Crestwood, KY (1998)
Kinsey's Attic: The Shocking Story of How One Man's Sexual Pathology Changed the World. Cumberland House Publishing (2006)
Sexual Sabotage: How One Mad Scientist Unleashed a Plague of Corruption and Contagion on America. WND Books (2010)
Her commentaries were featured in Salvo.
Some of Reisman's research can be found at Research Gate.

References

External links

Official website, archived on April 8, 2023
The Reisman Institute
Judith Reisman at C-SPAN