I hesitated before writing this piece.
Not because the subject matter is unimportant, but because it is deeply disturbing. Some of what follows is difficult to read. Much of it was difficult to research. At times, I found myself wanting to simply close the books, turn off the screen, and walk away from it all.
But we cannot pretend these things do not exist.
And if anything, the world Judith Reisman warned about is no longer approaching us.
It is already here.
We now live in a society where children carry smartphones more powerful than the computers that once sent men to the moon. Even school libraries are stocking books that would shock many of us.
Childhood itself often feels under siege.
That is why Judith Reisman matters. So here we go, down a rabbit hole that horrified me.
The Woman Who Refused to Look Away
When Dr. Judith Reisman died in April 2021 at the age of 86, the mainstream media barely noticed. Yet for decades she had been one of the fiercest and most controversial critics of the sexual revolution and the intellectual foundations upon which it was built.
To her supporters, she was a courageous defender of children and moral sanity.
To her critics, she was a dangerous conservative extremist who challenged modern society on issues "they " no longer wished to examine too closely.
But regardless of where one stands politically, Reisman forced people to confront uncomfortable questions many would rather avoid.
Questions about pornography.
Questions about childhood innocence.
Questions about research ethics.
Questions about what happens when sexuality becomes detached from restraint, responsibility, and human dignity.
Alfred Kinsey and the Revolution That Changed the West
At the centre of Reisman’s battle stood one man: Alfred Kinsey.
Originally trained as a zoologist and entomologist, Kinsey founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University in 1947.
With the publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and later Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, Kinsey transformed Western culture. His work challenged long-standing social taboos surrounding sex and helped pave the way for the sexual revolution that would sweep through the 1960s and beyond.
To many progressives, Kinsey represented liberation from repression.
To critics like Judith Reisman, however, he represented something far darker: the collapse of moral boundaries that had once protected children, families, and society itself.
The Horror That Shocked Reisman
Reisman’s research eventually led her to one of the most disturbing sections of Kinsey’s work - the infamous “Table 34” dealing with sexual responses in pre-adolescent children.
The material horrified her.
The data described reactions in infants and young boys in ways that raised profound ethical questions about how such information could possibly have been gathered.
Reisman became convinced that Kinsey’s research relied heavily on information supplied by sexual offenders and deeply unrepresentative subjects, including prison populations. She spent decades arguing that the scientific credibility of the Kinsey Reports had been built upon deeply unethical foundations.
Her critics fiercely disputed some of her conclusions, but even many mainstream scholars acknowledged serious methodological flaws in Kinsey’s sampling methods.
For Reisman, however, this was never merely an academic dispute.
She believed the ideas unleashed by Kinsey’s work had helped reshape the culture itself.
A World Judith Reisman Warned About
Looking around today, it is difficult not to see why she believed the stakes were so high.
Children are now exposed to graphic sexual material at younger and younger ages.
Young people are growing up immersed in a world where sex is simultaneously everywhere and strangely disconnected from love, commitment, family, and emotional maturity.
Meanwhile rates of anxiety, loneliness, depression, and social fragmentation continue to rise across much of the Western world.
None of this can be blamed on one man alone.
But Judith Reisman believed the sexual revolution fundamentally changed how society understood human behaviour, morality, and even childhood itself.
Whether one agrees entirely with her conclusions or not, it is difficult to deny that many of the debates she fought over decades ago are now raging more fiercely than ever.
The Tragic Lessons of John Money
Another figure Reisman warned about was John Money, the psychologist who popularised terms such as “gender role” and “gender identity.”
The tragic story of David Reimer remains one of the most disturbing case studies in modern psychology.
After a catastrophic medical accident during infancy, Reimer was raised as a girl under Money’s guidance as part of a controversial experiment intended to demonstrate that gender identity was primarily socially constructed.
The experiment became a disaster.
Reimer later rejected the female identity imposed upon him and returned to living as a male. Tragically, both David and his twin brother Brian would later take their own lives.
For many critics, the case became a chilling warning about the dangers of ideology overriding human reality.
More Than Politics
What struck me most while revisiting Judith Reisman’s work was not anger, but sadness.
Sadness that childhood innocence has become so fragile.
Sadness that technology now exposes children to things previous generations could scarcely imagine.
Sadness that genuine moral concern is often dismissed as hysteria or hatred.
Reisman spent much of her life walking into deeply uncomfortable territory because she believed children needed someone willing to speak plainly.
You do not have to agree with every argument she made to recognise the sincerity of that conviction.
And perhaps that is the question modern society still struggles to answer:
Who is willing to defend innocence when doing so becomes unpopular?
Judith Reisman was willing.
Whether history ultimately judges her harshly or kindly, she refused to look away.
And I applaud her for that.
Monty
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