Topic: WorldNetDaily
Sadly, No! predicted how "everybody on the Internet" would react to the Virginia Tech shooting: "The senseless massacre at Virginia Tech basically confirms everything I’ve been saying all along."
Doing her best to live up to that prediction is Judith Reisman, who uses an April 23 WorldNetDaily column to graft Cho Seung-Hui to her anti-Kinsey, anti-porn crusade. Reisman claims, citing a story Cho wrote as evidence, that Cho's massacre was sparked in part by "a society drenched in sadosexual arousal as entertainment" and because he sat "at the Internet every night, angrily lusting after naked young blondes who provoke his loins." These, according to Reisman's thinking, were "erototoxins."
Say what?
According to Reisman, pornography "not only influences behavior but also actually alters brain chemistry, making children most vulnerable to its toxic imagery. Erotic images, she says, "also commonly trigger the viewer's 'fight or flight' sex hormones producing intense arousal states that appear to fuse the conscious state of libidinous arousal with unconscious emotions of fear, shame, anger and hostility. These media erotic fantasies become deeply imbedded, commonly coarsening, confusing, motivating and addicting many of those exposed."
As with her anti-Kinsey research, there are some holes in Reisman's thinking. As the UK Guardian points out: "Much of Reisman's research in developing her theory has necessitated examining hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pornographic magazines and films. By her own reasoning her brain ought, by now, to be a seething mass of toxic smutmulch."
The Mind Hacks blog adds: "Many of her arguments are based on one-reference claims, and some only on what she calls 'extensive documentation'. One unmentioned implication is the fact that, if sexual arousal from pornography causes 'brain damage', then so will real-life sex!"
