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elfsA peek into the far right echo chamber:
Judith Reismann is everywhere this week. Once, we thought we had been rid of her, back in 1989 when her bizzare paper "Images of Children, Crime and Violence" appeared at the infamous Meese Commission on Pornography. The paper was little more than a survey of every photo spread and cartoon that appeared in mainstream porn magazines in the 80s, with every possible excuse made for labeling any image "provocative toward violence" or "provocative toward explotation of a child." The paper was soundly trashed by the sociological academia of the day, pointing out that it was so badly crafted and so ideologically skewed that it had no place, and to this day if it is mentioned in media studies it is as a bad example.
Before becoming an anti-pornography activist, Reismann's professional life consisted of writing songs for Captain Kangaroo. Since then, she has gone on as a speaker and writer, producing books only read on the far right. Her most extreme claim is that watching pornography causes the release of hormones that poison the brain. She calls these hormones "erototoxins," that porn consumers become addicted to erototoxins, and that, like actual drug addicts, over time porn consumers need harder and more graphic material to get their fix. Thus far, no reputable scientists have actually been able to find a physical correspondence to her claims.
Reisman is back, in two articles back-to-back. On World Net Daily, she's ranting about David Ogden, a man nominated by the Obama administration to be deputy attorney general. Ogden is apparently a free-speech absolutist who has defended porn producers, and Reisman is frothing. She accuses him of helping to create
But Reisman's most bizarre-- and self-serving-- statement is over at the anti-choice website Lifesite, in which she rants that "600,000 Americans" are known to be trading in illegal porn, and that that's the expected outcome of the legalization of adult pornography. She provides no actual context or evidence for this statement. She ends saying, "All porn is Erototoxic."
Look, there's bad porn. There's porn out there so bad I think it's a public health problem. The solution is better porn, like Violet Blue's website Tiny Nibbles, or anything by Tristan Taormino, and so on.
Reisman's simply wrong; if the numbers are as bad as she claims, the first world ought to be even more miserable a place for women than is apparent to anyone who's walked outside. But they're not. Men and women are, as awkwardly as ever, feeling their way through life, trying to make sense of their relationships with one another. Porn has thrown more knowledge and myth into the mix, some of it good, much bad, but it's less "toxic" than Reisman's preferred myth, with its own ugly blend of woman-fearing and stranger-hating. Reisman isn't helping anyone, except maybe herself with those unbelievable numbers; she's only creating more fear and suspicion between the sexes, between adults and kids, and between neighbors. For all of that, she deserves an infinite amount of ridicule.
Judith Reismann is everywhere this week. Once, we thought we had been rid of her, back in 1989 when her bizzare paper "Images of Children, Crime and Violence" appeared at the infamous Meese Commission on Pornography. The paper was little more than a survey of every photo spread and cartoon that appeared in mainstream porn magazines in the 80s, with every possible excuse made for labeling any image "provocative toward violence" or "provocative toward explotation of a child." The paper was soundly trashed by the sociological academia of the day, pointing out that it was so badly crafted and so ideologically skewed that it had no place, and to this day if it is mentioned in media studies it is as a bad example.
Before becoming an anti-pornography activist, Reismann's professional life consisted of writing songs for Captain Kangaroo. Since then, she has gone on as a speaker and writer, producing books only read on the far right. Her most extreme claim is that watching pornography causes the release of hormones that poison the brain. She calls these hormones "erototoxins," that porn consumers become addicted to erototoxins, and that, like actual drug addicts, over time porn consumers need harder and more graphic material to get their fix. Thus far, no reputable scientists have actually been able to find a physical correspondence to her claims.
Reisman is back, in two articles back-to-back. On World Net Daily, she's ranting about David Ogden, a man nominated by the Obama administration to be deputy attorney general. Ogden is apparently a free-speech absolutist who has defended porn producers, and Reisman is frothing. She accuses him of helping to create
the pandemic adult and child trafficking/pornography, child sexual abuse and sexual addictions, with arrests (still at this time) of judges, university presidents, legislators, mental health professionals, male and female teachers, clergy, state attorneys general, Nobel prize winners, police, FBI agents and, now, children who molest children.Yeah, Playboy did all that. Uh-huh. TownhalL compares this to nominating Jack Kevorkian to Surgeon General.
For over 50 years, Playboy conditioned men and boys globally to laugh at and thus to embibe the trafficking, exhibiting of nude, "enhanced" women and girls, alongside images of illicit drug use, sexual harsssment in the workplace, bestiality, sexual sadism, murder, child and adult rape, gang rape, incest and suchlike. Since its earliest issues, Playboy has led the Western world in legitimizing sex trafficking, often known in its broader application as prostitution.
But Reisman's most bizarre-- and self-serving-- statement is over at the anti-choice website Lifesite, in which she rants that "600,000 Americans" are known to be trading in illegal porn, and that that's the expected outcome of the legalization of adult pornography. She provides no actual context or evidence for this statement. She ends saying, "All porn is Erototoxic."
Look, there's bad porn. There's porn out there so bad I think it's a public health problem. The solution is better porn, like Violet Blue's website Tiny Nibbles, or anything by Tristan Taormino, and so on.
Reisman's simply wrong; if the numbers are as bad as she claims, the first world ought to be even more miserable a place for women than is apparent to anyone who's walked outside. But they're not. Men and women are, as awkwardly as ever, feeling their way through life, trying to make sense of their relationships with one another. Porn has thrown more knowledge and myth into the mix, some of it good, much bad, but it's less "toxic" than Reisman's preferred myth, with its own ugly blend of woman-fearing and stranger-hating. Reisman isn't helping anyone, except maybe herself with those unbelievable numbers; she's only creating more fear and suspicion between the sexes, between adults and kids, and between neighbors. For all of that, she deserves an infinite amount of ridicule.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-10 10:07 pm (UTC)Make statements like that and you can forced to either back them up with hard data or pay large fines (fines to depend at least in part on how many people you exposed to your lies)
Being honestly mistaken or trusting bad sources is one thing (though a pattern of trusting bad sources would get you in trouble too I suspect).
But pulling numbers out of your ass? Slam-dunk.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-10 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-10 11:13 pm (UTC)What I see has a lot of that context added as picture captions. And I'm not talking about the potential misunderstanding of BDSM imagery. It's not presented as, for instance, a real castng-couch situation: it's presented as deceit by men pretending to be music video producers.
The stories are toxic, rather than the sex. You could tell the same sort of story using pictures from an issue of Playboy>/i>: the stupid woman lured into posing for the camera, ha-ha!
If anyone's too dumb to be out on their own after dark, it's the politicians who, when they see porn, suddenly struggle with the odea of acting in front of a camera.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-10 11:38 pm (UTC)Thank you very very much. I shall have to find a way to make this available to my teenagers too in order to fully do my part to save the world.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-11 12:37 am (UTC)The trick is, that pretty much anything that doesn't cause further stress in life can be addictive to certain personalities, not because it is pleasurable, but because the people who become addicted are using that thing to escape reality, while simultaneously making their reality worse. In other words, the addict's fix doesn't fix the underlying problem that's driving the addiction in the first place, but they use it more and more in an attempt to escape.
What's wrong with her is that she doesn't understand that. Her 'fix' for addiction is instead 'avoid the thing that's the addict uses for the fix'. Nevermind that the addict is desperate to escape the emotional scars of childhood abuse, or the tremendous stress they experience at work. Willpower is the answer! And God will give you that willpower if you just pray hard enough (and give money to the church)!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-11 02:14 am (UTC)As you say, the stories to many (most?) of these are toxic, but I suspect it has to do with there being a limited number of ways to get people out of there clothes quickly without violating the illusion that this whole idea is new to them. At least in these cases I think we're dealing with a cultural mix of impatience (who cares bout this story stuff, get to the sex already!) and cynicism (is she really an amateur?) that goes far beyond the porn industry.
Of course, there are plenty of other sub-genres that have their own share of toxic plotlines, but I suspect that a some of them also owe their format to limited writing talent and a desire to skip to the sex as quickly as possible.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-11 02:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-11 04:19 am (UTC)