By Maria Padhila
Maybe it’s just me. I haven’t watched daytime TV since I was home sick as a child and it was all “like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives…” But I got a news release on a forum and Eric alerted me as well that polyamory was to be discussed on The View by activists Diana Adams, a lawyer and writer, and Leon Feingold, co-host of Open Love NY, on the day I’m usually off and was home packing boxes anyhow.
I had to watch. I recorded it, but I also wanted to watch in real time, and I had some clothing and papers to sort, so I settled into the couch (yes, into — our couch is notorious for swallowing people, and some guests have not been able to leave) and hit the remote.
OK, so The View is a panel show targeted to women. They have a changing but usually demographically balanced group of four women who discuss current topics and host guests and do “fun” stuff to make people buy stuff without looking like that’s what’s happening. During some segments, they have an internist and professor of psychiatry, Dr. Drew Pinsky, who has been on several radio call-in shows and has had a reality TV show, Celebrity Rehab, and several spinoffs, including Sex Rehab, which aims to treat people for “sexual addiction.” He has been the subject of some disputes, one involving taking money from pharmaceutical companies, and another for long-distance diagnosis of celebrities.
While he has good traditional medical credentials, I lost patience with him a long time back, because he insists on pathologizing all but long-term monogamous relationships. Anyone in sex work, in BDSM, even sometimes trans people — he proclaims that they must have been abused as children and have some sort of current disorder. I would be even less patient if he didn’t demonstrate a self-awareness about when he goes too far and a sense of his own challenges, and if he didn’t appear motivated by compassion.