As Judith Reisman attacks the world’s biggest anti-porn organization, Anthony Kennerson examines the latest alliance of fanatics to collapse under the weight of their own bigotry
There’s a saying; Be careful of who you lie with, because you just might get bitten in the ass. (Unless, of course, ass bites are one of your favorite fetishes.)
Remember the name Judith Reisman? She had joined forces with sister fundie Shelley Lubben in a YouTube video taped at a 2011 porn convention, where Lubben was unsuccessfully trolling for fresh recruits to scam with her Pink Cross faux ministry of ex-porn starlets.
Lubben was, at that time, backed and promoted by Michael Weinstein’s AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), and trotted out at events as a ‘porn victim’ who had been “forced” to perform scenes without condoms back in the 1990s.
Judith Reisman with Shelley Lubben in Las Vegas, January 16, 2011, during the last AEE convention Lubben’s sham organization, Pink Cross Foundation, could afford to attend
Before then, “Dr.” Reisman was well-acclaimed as a crackpot right-wing “scholar” who focused her anti-porn activism on her theory of the calamitous impact of porn on the synapses of its user through elusive “erotoxins”, as well as her knee-jerk opposition to any form of sexual activity not approvable to her Christian fundamentalist sensibilities. [Reisman’s doctorate is in communications, by the way. — ed]
You may also remember “Dr.” Reisman from her legacy of going from being a songwriter for the old-school children’s TV show Captain Kangaroo (an eye-roller of its own, considering that Mr. Captain himself, Bob Keeshan, was an openly activist liberal) to becoming an anti-porn “feminist” activist who blamed adult sexual speech for causing child sexual abuse, pedophilia, rape, and other degradations to women and children.
In an essay that was posted to the 1970’s anti-rape radical feminist anthem, Take Back The Night, she famously maligned the three founders of print porn media — Playboy’s Hugh Hefner, Penthouse’s Bob Guccione, and HUSTLER’s Larry Flynt, in no particular order, as “Hitler, Stalin, and Goebbels”. She then parlayed that pub into an opportunity to give testimony to the 1980’s Meese Commission On Pornography, where she got to pontificate on the cosmic danger of Playboy pushing child porn to impressionable youth through its…cartoons.
Reisman’s “scholarship” on the negative impacts of porn has been used over and over again by Gail Dines and her associates over at Stop Porn Culture to make their case for censorship of all sexually explicit material. Also, Shelley Lubben has cited Reisman as a go-to source for some of most classic rantage about the destructiveness of porn on those who perform it.
Even better than that, Dines and SPC have been more frequently using Reisman’s “scholarship” as a means to unite the anti-porn “feminist” and traditionalist Religious Right “obscenity” movements with the anti-sex work “abolitionists” in connecting porn and prostitution/escorting/oncall sexual services/sexual commerce as “sex trafficking”.
Plus (and here’s the kicker to all this), Dines — like Lubben before her — has been attempting to glam her way into the debate over mandatory condoms in porn by positively citing the efforts of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation to force performers to use condoms and other methods of “barrier protection” as a means of containing an alleged STI/HIV “pandemic”.
Never mind that the efforts of AHF come from a fundamentally different paradigm of making money off condom sales….ahhhh, I mean, protecting the jobs of crossover HIV+ performers who would be otherwise prevented from performing in the ‘straight’ porn industry due to the current screening/testing regimen imposed by the Free Speech Coalition’s PASS protocols. And, never mind that AHF’s core constituency happens to be the very gay male community that has been truly wrecked by the HIV pandemic, albeit there exists vast opposition even there to what some feel is AHF’s ham-fisted approach to selling condoms as “behavior modification”, as opposed to treatment or development of a vaccine to cure HIV.
To Gail Dines, anything that can be used to slam porn as “corporate capitalist” mass rape and abuse of women is a good thing.
Except, with Judith Reisman, she may have bit off just a bit too much.
Judith Reisman wags her finger
Michael Whiteacre of The Real Porn Wikileaks alerted me to an article which ran Friday over at the very, very ultra right-wing site World Net Daily, which many folks would much prefer to call “WingNut Daily” due to its predisposition to the most bizarre conspiracy theories known to mankind.
The article pretended itself to be an attack on the notion that condoms are the most effective means for gay male folk to protect themselves against STI’s, including HIV/AIDS. Instead, it preferred the old tried-an-true method of gays giving up their nasty, sinful, disgusting “buggery” and coming home to Jesus Christ and the joys of heterosexual monogamy and procreative marriage..or facing the full brunt of criminalization through anti-sodomy laws.
The piece also called for good, God-fearing families of people suffering from HIV, and/or the relatives of people who actually succumbed to HIV/AIDS, to be able to file class action suits against “pro-gay” organizations for lying about the true nature of condoms failing to protect their users from contracting HIV.
Further, the WND article claimed that anal “sex” (yes, the fright quotes are included, because to the author of the piece, penises should never, ever attempt to even touch the tender anal passages of any other person, especially not another man) is not subject to the wonderful protection of more Godly acts like “natural” vaginal sex, because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) allegedly never approved the use of condoms for anal penetration.
The author’s supporting evidence?? Citations from a “study” from a right-wing Hawaiian state senator named Bob McDermott, attempting to oppose a sex education program in that state that was used by a whopping 12 schools, which called for the usage of condoms as a barrier protectant for vaginal and anal penetration. That study took note of the disclaimer that the CDC had not endorsed the use of the original condoms for anal sex due to the risk of breakage and the inflexibility of anal passages.
A single line quote from Rep. McDermott condenses the point concisely:
“Genitals are sexual reproductive organs,” McDermott told EAGnews, “and the a– isn’t that.”
The payoff paragraph, however, is whom the author recommends to be sued:
A class action lawsuit by AIDS victims and their loved ones would rock the world – a suit based on the fact that condom pushers have for years dispensed false, deceptive claims about how the product protects – or fails to protect – the health of sex participants. The reality is that everyday condoms are manufactured and approved for natural, vaginal sex, not anal “sex” – they are not effectively designed to protect from disease those people who engage in sodomy.
Such a lawsuit should target the AIDS Heathcare Foundation, Planned Parenthood and a myriad of teachers and school systems, too many to count, that have taught that anal “sex” (traditionally termed “sodomy” or “buggery” under British-based legal codes) as not so different than natural coitus.
A right-wing anti-gay organization targeting AHF for representing HIV+ gay folk isn’t really news, of course. Until you find out that the author of that piece happens to be…. (screenshot, please)…
Yup… Judith Reisman. Gail Dines’ go-to source for “feminist” analysis against porn. Shelley Lubben’s “mentor”. The one connection between the whacked-out Hard Right and the rad-fem anti-porn “Left”. THAT Judith Reisman.
The same Judith Reisman who is now attempting to ride the wave of anti-porn/anti-sexwork activism, link it with the anti-“sex trafficking” and “porn addiction” movements, and bring her old-school historic anti-gay bigotry into the mix.
Gee…I wonder what Michael Weinstein would be thinking once he reads this? Or, the “radical lesbians” now totally committed to this “alliance”? Or, for that matter, Professor Dines herself, since she constantly rails about her movement being nicked falsely as palling around with reactionaries. Or…is World Net Daily now simply her newest ally in the fight against The Great Porn Capitalist Conspiracy, and any talk of a “progressive” anti-porn “feminist” movement merely just a ruse to cover up the usual sex-hate against anything not linked to procreation or “mutual love”?
I suppose we will all have to see for ourselves, right??
This article appears in slightly different form at: http://bppa.blogspot.com/2014/03/gail-dines-allies-judith-bat-ada.html
I would have thought of adding pics of “Dr.” Reisman in my original post, but my eyes don’t need the strain of needing them poked out.
Well done, guys.
Interesting but not as strange as it sounds, or maybe stranger. From the minute AHF hooked up with Shelley Lubben it made it’s devils’ bargain with the religious right and all it’s homophobic crap. When confronted with this, both sides will offer some weak boilerplate about the need to reach across ideological boundaries in support of the greater “cause.” Many of AHF’s “endorsements” come from sources that regard AHF’s key client base – gay men – as sinners who must repent or burn. I doubt they’ll care much about what a loon like Judith Reisman has to say about anything… Read more »