There is 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 most cherished fetishes.
Remember the name "Judith Reisman"? She had recently joined forces with sister fundie Shelley Lubben in a You Tube video taped at a recent porn convention, where Shelley was actively trolling for new fresh recruits to scam for her Pink Cross faux ministry or ex-porn starlets.
Before then, "Dr." Reisman was well acclaimed as a crackpot right-wing "scholar" who focused her antiporn activism on the calamitous impact of porn on the synapses of its user through "erotoxins", as well as her usual crackpot opposition to any form of sexual activity not approvable to her Christian fundamentalist sensibiities.
You may also remember "Dr." Reisman from her legacy of going from being a script writer for the old-school children's TV show Captain Kangaroo (an eye-roller of its own, considering that Mr. Captain himself, Bob Keeshan, was a openly activist liberal) to becoming an antiporn "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 antirape radicalfeminist anthem, Take Back The Night, she 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 appearance giving 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.
So...how does this connect with Gail Dines?? Well, Reisman's "scholarship" on the negative impacts of porn has been used, reused, and used over and over again by Dines and her associates over at Stop Porn Culture to make their case for censorship of all sexually explicit material. Also, Shelley Lubben has often used 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 antiporn "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 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 "barrier methods" 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 is vast opposition even there to what some feel is AHF's hamfisted 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.
Michael Whiteacre of The Real Porn Wikileaks alerted me to an article which ran today over at the very, very ultra right-wing site World Net Daily, which most folk would much prefer to call "WingNut Daily" due to its predisposition to the most bizarre conspiracy theories known to mankind. You know...Birth certificates? Madrassas? Agenda 21/ACORN? "Obama is a Muslim Socialist"??
Anyways..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. 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 article 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 evidence for this?? 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 PIV 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.”
Don't you just love how fundie rightwingers are so quick with cursing, and just as quick with masking it?
The payoff paragraph in this 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 antigay 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)
[click on thumb to link to article]
Yup....you read right....THAT Judith Reisman. Gail Dines' go-to source for "feminist" analysis against porn. The artist formerly known as "Judith Bat-Ada" who was so trusted by radfems that she scored a essay in one of their classic anthologies. The one connection between the whacked-out Hard Right and the radfem antiporn "Left". THAT Judith Reisman.
And now, the same Judith Reisman who is now attempting to ride the wave of antiporn/anti-sexwork activism, and link it with the anti- "sex trafficking" and "porn addiction" movements, and bring her old-school historic antigay bigotry into the mix.
Gee...I wonder what Michael Weinstein would be thinking once he reads this? Or, the "radicallesbians" 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" antiporn "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??
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