Slate- "The Myth of Hugh Hefner"

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2017/09/28/how_hugh_hefner_s_complicated_legacy_got_cast_as_female_sexual_liberation.html

His life of female exploitation has been disguised as a legacy of sexual liberation

How Hugh Hefner’s Incredibly Complicated Legacy Got Cast as Female Sexual Liberation

By Christina Cauterucci

At age 91, in the Holmby Hills mansion he called home, Hugh Hefner died this week, releasing the complex feelings of an international public that paid witness to his life with a mixture of admiration, titillation, and disgust.


“Thanks to Hugh Hefner our generation learn to read magazines with one hand,” a former Colombian soccer star tweeted. Barstool Sports, home to bros who love boobs and fart jokes, posted a bunch of photos of Hefner surrounded by bikini-clad white ladies, calling him an “absolute legend.” Meanwhile, GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis sent out a statement contending that Hefner “was a not a visionary” but “a misogynist who built an empire on sexualizing women”; others called him “an abuser” and “a world class creep.” One Trump fan and singer who says she’s known Hefner since she was a teenager is beseeching commentators, “please don’t trash a man with class.”

Long before Hefner died, he was already reckoning with the seemingly conflicting legacies he knew he’d leave behind. In interviews he gave in his 70s and 80s, Hefner repeatedly positioned his life’s work as a crusade against sexual repression, a force that limited the fulfillment of men and women alike. His record of philanthropy would seem to demonstrate a progressive understanding of women’s bodily autonomy: He published features that supported abortion rights years before Roe v. Wade, and his Playboy Foundation made gifts to rape crisis centers, abortion support services, and the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project. Hefner also fought for First Amendment protections—a predictable cause for the publisher of a nudie magazine—ran some brilliant interviews, and gave money to civil-rights causes.

At the same time, Hef’s magazine explicitly trashed women who stepped outside his feminine ideal. In 1970, the magazine ran an essay on women’s rights that both patted the movement on the head and slapped it in the face: “No other recent struggle for human rights has been so frivolous and yet so earnest, so absurd and yet so justified, so obsessed on the one hand with trivia and, on the other, with the radical restructuring of male-female relationships,” it read. Internal Playboy memos at the time found Hefner declaring of feminists, “These chicks are our natural enemy.” His very first issue scolded female readers, “get back to your Ladies’ Home Companion.”


snip - more to read at the link

[Tommy_Carcetti]

1. More often than not, creepy old lecherous guys who wear robes all day are just considered crazy.

I suppose Hef got lucky.

[oberliner]

12. Or they become President

So there is that.

[Alice11111]

2. NYT long article good too. Remember Gloria S went

Undercover as a bunny and exposed him.

Hard.to believe Alex Haley hung out with him.

Funny joke in your OP by Columbian.

[HopeAgain]

3. Don't forget a number of Cosby's rapes occurred on Playboy properties.

I'm not in favor of sexual repression, but so much objectifying has truly thrown us into a rape culture.

[smirkymonkey]

4. He was just a gross, pathetic old man.

Nothing admirable about him.

Reminds me of someone else.

[oberliner]

13. He wasn't always old

[prayin4rain]

5. "These chicks (women wanting equality) are our natural enemy." Sums it up nicely. nt

[radius777]

6. White feminists should spend more time critiquing white women,

the majority of whom voted for Trump and have voted GOP since 1996, a party that stands in direct opposition to women's rights.

Hef was a Dem who always supported the liberal movement in America even when it wasn't popular to do so.

[kcr]

7. Right, because heaven forbid they critique a man.

Or critique the demographic that carried him by a significantly larger amount.

[Hekate]

9. +1

[JI7]

8. how about the far higher number of white men who supported Trump and other republicans ?

[radius777]

10. Progressive narratives generally acknowledge

that the power structure is controlled by white men, so one would expect them to vote for the party (GOP) which seeks to maintain that power.

However, progressive narratives (feminism) also posit that all women (including white women) are oppressed by all men.

If this was true, most white women would vote Dem the way most PoC do.

It should be noted also that younger white men historically have leaned Dem, and men of color overwhelmingly vote Dem (and did for Hillary).

[JI7]

11. white women that voted trump voted for white privilege. you ignore race and other issues

[JHan]

15. There are ways to defend Hugh Hefner without going down that rabbit hole..

of a logical fallacy. You're just begging someone to tell you people can walk and chew gum at the same time.

The pushback you've been fighting since yesterday is caused by an absurd glorification of Hugh Heffner. Mythologizing him is just as dishonest as an extreme demonization of him. Despite his social activism, which is laudable, the man was a creep.

... can't quarrel with a word of this:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/28/hugh-hefner-pimp-sue-playboy-mansion

The fantasy that Hefner sold was not a fantasy of freedom for women, but for men. Women had to be strangely chaste but constantly available for the right price. Dressing grown women as rabbits – once seen as the height of sophistication – is now seen as camp and ironic. There are those today who want to celebrate Hefner’s contribution to magazine journalism, and I don’t dispute that Playboy did use some fantastic writers.

Part of Hefner’s business acumen was to make the selling of female flesh respectable and hip, to make soft porn acceptable. Every man’s dream was to have Hefner’s lifestyle. Apparently. Every picture of him, right to the end, shows him with his lizard smirk surrounded by blonde clones. Every half-wit on Twitter is asking if Hefner will go to heaven when he already lived in it.

Playboy magazine did advance mainstream journalism and was a part of the sexual liberation movement but this doesn't change the fact that his brand of sexual liberation was soiled by both misogyny and his own narcissistic obsession with the image he projected onto the world. Acknowledging the ugly doesn't negate whatever good he did, both should be discussed.

[RobinA]

14. I Always Found

Hefner to be rather pathetic. I mean, get a real job. Also figured he had major bedroom issues given his obsession with the subject.