The man was a saint
The Washington Post just cannot rave about Hefner enough.
The actress Kat Denning remembered meeting Hugh Hefner at his famed mansion, where he was “very nice to my mom.”
Kim Kardashian said she was “honored to be part of the Playboy team.”
Larry King called him a “GIANT in publishing, journalism, free speech & civil rights.”
Pamela Anderson says he taught her everything important about freedom and respect.
A visionary editor who for decades threw lavish parties at his home, the Playboy Mansion, Hefner lived a glamorous Hollywood life, sharing time and photo ops with a diverse cast of celebrities, civil rights leaders and journalists.
So glamorous! So much fucking of so many compliant young rabbits!
As The Washington Post’s Matt Schudel wrote: “From the first issue of Playboy in 1953, which featured a photograph of a nude Marilyn Monroe lounging on a red sheet, Mr. Hefner sought to overturn what he considered the puritanical moral code of Middle America.
“His magazine was shocking at the time, but it quickly found a large and receptive audience and was a principal force behind the sexual revolution of the 1960s.”
Yeah, because it’s puritanical to think women shouldn’t be viewed as fuck toys for the consumption of men.
While the magazine helped launch some women’s entertainment careers, it also outraged feminists who found his magazine’s depictions of women degrading.
Crazy feminists, right? So damn crazy. What’s degrading about it? What’s degrading about framing men as the viewers and women as the objects viewed? What’s degrading about this lovely snapshot?
Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson noted that the magazine editor was a “strong supporter of the civil rights movement,” a part of Hefner’s legacy that others also wanted to highlight.
Because women are just meat.
“But He Was Good to His Mother”
A different view, but check the comments (or don’t – use your imagination*).
https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/celebrities/97367335/why-women-and-the-world-are-better-off-without-hugh-hefner
* Comments on Stuff are moderated, so there’s nothing obscene or outright threatening.
And that is not a bug, something that could in principle be “fixed”. It the one and only feature of the whole industry.
You’re all missing the REAL reason that Hefner was an American Hero: he was a business man (hero!) who made a lot of money (hero^2!). Ergo, he is great and his critics are schlubs.
Man, that old skit from Mr. Show, “More Money = Better Than” really hit the nail on the head.
It’s puritanical to think other people should not be allowed to look at certain types of pictures. I’m not sure if that’s what you are saying or not.
Why do find the picture of Hef with all the pretty young things degrading? It’s not an emotional reaction I share.
Which do you think is worse, society allowing or banning those pictures being produced and distributed?
In my opinion, Beth, a society that would ban pornography would be bad,, but a society that sees women as little more than bodies to ogle, to masturbate over, to fuck, to exploit, and to abuse is several orders of magnitude worse.
The picture itself is not necessarily degrading until one considers what it represents. The women themselves may not feel degraded; many of them might enjoy what they do, but they paint women in an artificial light as objects happy to be evaluated for their sexual worth alone, and if that isn’t degrading to any woman being openly assessed, cat-called, wolf-whistled, groped, and worse, then I must be mistaken about what degrading means.
ps. I’m a man.
Beth #5, no one’s talking about “banning” anything, or “not allowing” anything. Nice straw man though.
If you don’t care that our culture perpetuates the idea that women are objects and not fully human, knock yourself out, but the well-being of women as a class isn’t about you. It’s about all of us – again, as a class. You’re one of 3.7 billion. What’s good for all of us takes precedence over your “emotional reactions.”
Saint? No.
Creepy old man? Yes.
It strikes me that praising him unqualifiedly for civil rights across the board only counts as ‘intersectional’ if the intersection doesn’t include women. It seems that most of them don’t, though, so I guess it’s par for the course.
Issues of freedom, sexual expression, sexual education, and women’s equality is complicated. The explosion of pornography did not, in fact, bring with it a concomitant increase in public honesty and an exorcism of sexual pathology; it seems that the pathology kept right on trucking. At its best moments, the ‘sex positive’ movement attempts to address the contradictions of a culture drenched in sexual imagery and simultaneously beset by sexual pathology, and to reconcile it by reducing the pathology.
Heffner’s contributions to the civil rights of African Americans and gay people is real, and is worth considering. But it is qualified by his exploitation and profiteering off of sexualised images of women without adequately addressing the culture’s sexual pathology toward women (and, pretty inarguably, contributing to that pathology). That qualification can rightly be seen differently by different people, but to ignore it entirely is to ignore the problem.
@Acolyte of Sagan – Why do you equate allowing these pictures to “a society that sees women as little more than bodies to ogle, to masturbate over, to fuck, to exploit, and to abuse”? And why do you consider that orders of magnitude worse than banning such pictures? Our society, before Playboy, was far more restrictive and demeaning to women, sexually and in every other way. Not that Hefner was a saint, but he was part of breaking down the cultural expectations of women which was, IMO, a good thing.
I think you are mistaken about degrading means. I don’t see anything in the picture posted as denigrating or degrading the women who participated. Your explanation that it is degrading because of what it represents (paint women in an artificial light as objects happy to be evaluated for their sexual worth alone) is dependent on your subjective interpretation not inherent to the picture itself. Why do you interpret it that way? What is being degraded?
@ Cressida – If you are not in favor of banning, then you must perforce agree that such publications should remain legal. What do you think is the appropriate response to the problem those pictures represent to you?
As a female born in the 50’s, to me women’s liberation movement was about allowing women to decide for themselves if they want to be engineers or doctors or nude models instead of limiting our choices to traditional female occupations, that our value as human beings was not negated or diminished if our bodies were exposed to view.
Really? So there were a lot of overweight, middle-aged, less attractive women being presented in a positive light in these pictures? I think not. The picture is still one of women’s value being how young, attractive, and slender they are. They are all about body image. Whether women choose that or not does not change the dynamic of whether it objectifies or depersonalizes women – it does. The cultural expectations of women are not all that different now than in the 50s, it’s just that we are now allowed to be “feminine” as doctors, nurses, airline pilots, etc, as long as we are able to handle the abuse we get for being doctors, airline pilots, scientists, etc.
It is totally possible to support freedom of speech and the press, and to see these pictures as degrading, demeaning, and disempowering. It is totally possible to accept that these women were willing, even eager, in their choice, and still see them as degrading, demeaning, and disempowering. It is possible to accept the First Amendment, and still criticize the speech of people who have ideas that are not good for other people, which is what Cressida is getting at, and I suspect your question is a bit disingenous, because I don’t think that was hard to understand.
There is a difference between allowing freedom of speech and requiring that to mean no one gets to criticize the speech.
It is also a question of what Free Speech really covers. I have some problem with the idea of Clear and Present Danger, because it has been applied in the past to speech that someone (such as Anthony Comstock) did not like, which is why Eugene Debs ended up in prison for his speeches against WWI. I also have a problem with the idea of “societal standards”, because those are often puritanical, and also tend to suppress any art, theatre, education, or other works that offend the most repressive among us. That being said, I, a free speech absolutist all my life, am coming to see the weaknesses in that position. Do I have the answer? How can we tell what speech is damaging, and can everyone agree on that, and can we be sure we’re right even if everyone agrees? I would suggest that the answer to all three of those questions is no, and that puts us in a pickle, so we continue to allow speech that is damaging and demoralizing to women (and as someone pointed out, you are only one woman among 3.7 billion in the world, so the fact that you are not bothered by it does not mean that the rest of us have to take on that opinion). At the same time, the power of “free speech” is being used to silence unpopular views (predominantly feminism and anti-racism, but also a segment of the population that speaks out against Islamism) by using the “free speech” to harass, harangue, abuse, and torment anyone with views that someone doesn’t like. This has created a stifling atmosphere where the fact that we protect the nastiest of speech creates a situation where that very protection leads to a repression of other speech.
So, I guess my take away is, if you don’t want to read all that, is that not censoring Hefner is one thing; beatifying him is another. Ophelia is speaking against the beatification of this man, and explaining why she feels the reporting is skewed. Education is the goal. Many people (including you) are unable to see why others find these pictures demeaning. We have tried to explain it, and that is not the same as saying “off with his head” or even “off with his masthead”.
Beth Clarkson @ 9 – to single out just one item –
No. Even adding “perforce” doesn’t make that true. You love to reduce everything to these crude either/or choices, but that’s just you. As several people have pointed out, I’m not even talking about banning anything. Your reducing the discussion to that is just a derail.
Beth #10, the appropriate response, at a minimum, is for people to realize when they’re reinforcing patriarchy and stop doing it. This isn’t hard to understand.
Also: I said,
And you said,
Way to prove my point. This isn’t about individual choices. Again, this isn’t hard to understand, so I don’t know why libfems resolutely refuse to understand it.
@iknklast – Thanks for your thoughtful response. I agree that Hefner was no saint, but it’s fairly common for people to write adulatory obituaries. What isn’t common is the loathing? offense? those adulatory obituaries have then spawned. Particularly given how tame Playboy’s standards are considered today.
I don’t understand this reaction at all. I get that you can “support freedom of speech and the press, and to see these pictures as degrading, demeaning, and disempowering”. I just don’t feel that way about these pictures. This isn’t unusual for me. I am not bothered by many behaviors that apparently have driven other women out STEM profession, which may account for my longevity in such a profession.
What are describing seems more a cultural assessment that an emotion. What that be an accurate assessment? But it also seems a very emotional reaction to Hefner’s passing. You are totally allowed to criticize him btw. It’s just unusual after someone’s passing. Is it because his crusade to make and distribute the pictures he did have led us to the porno overload of today’s internet?
Sorry for asking if anyone was proposing banning those pictures. To me, it’s a reasonable question given the put down of Hefner’s cultural zeitgeist because that was the situation he challenged and changed. That is why WP and NYT write obligatory adulatory obituaries about him.
@Ophelia : It’s true. I do like to delineate the fuzzy edges which allows for binary classification. No, you haven’t been talking about banning. I was asking if you were hinting at that. I’ll take that answer as a no, you don’t favor banning licentious material made and produced for consenting adults. Is that an accurate statement of your position or have I misunderstood you?
Jesus. Whether or not it’s an accurate statement of my “position” (I’m not a ruler of anything so I don’t have to have a “postion” on things), it’s nothing to do with my comment @ 12. As I said: that’s not what I’m talking about.
Beth #14,
Again, I said,
And you said,
You really don’t get it.
Also…Beth @ 14 again –
That may be what you like to do, but it’s not what you do in fact do when you derail this way, as you do every time you comment. What you do is simply change the discussion to the one you want to have instead of the one we were having. What you call “the fuzzy edges” is what I was talking about. I don’t need you dropping in to try to wrench the whole conversation in a different direction, let alone to impose your many misinterpretations on it. It’s frustrating as fuck.
I would agree that the picture would be a sign of liberation from repressive norms if the models were of all ages, races, sizes – and both sexes. And if the man at the front were also barely covered.
As it is, the (badly) manipulated photograph has been stuffed with cut-outs of young women (no men) of the kind society has been manipulated to see as fuck-toys, posing to show as much flesh as possible without actually being naked. Now, that might be usual office attire for men and women somewhere on this planet, but it certainly isn’t how people dress around here.
There is nothing progressive for women represented by that photograph – just more of the same old patriarchy.