Hugh Hefner was a hero not just in one way, cleaning up and legitimizing visual aids for men, to help them cope with modern atomized life (which was already there...). But in very many ways, and to very many people. The list of good people whose careers he boosted or even made possible is endless.
Often there is a grain of truth in what critics say. But in this case, his critics are not just partly wrong, they are completely wrong.
He did not invent objectification, nor apply it more than other capitalists (much less, actually, as far as I have seen). Objectification is the fundamental nature of capitalism. Some sell their bodies, others their minds, still others their souls. I would say the body is the least of these. Some of his worst critics sold their souls long ago.
He set such a high standard in his personal relations, business dealings, girlfriend dealings, employee dealings, that even such a perfectly fair minded person like me would be hard pressed to do as well.
These things are not easy to do well...he carried on for 91 years.
Sure, he had lots of girlfriends, and a few had some bad times (though that seems relatively rare), likewise with employees, customers. Overall, almost everyone who has actually dealt with him praises him. And I think it's fine if he has lots of girlfriends, and does his thing, so long as never forcing himself...and that is never claimed. Only psychological pressure. Being a follower or a friend always comes with this kind of pressure...and either it works for you or it doesn't.
I and many others have long seen him as an Icon. He earned that.
He opened up Jazz to new audiences, and many liberal writers and ideas as well. I think that's wonderful. Perhaps indeed that is a large part of why I am what I am, though I would seem to be farther lefter. Well, see, he made me possible, by making liberalism cool and respectable, that made it possible for me to go a bit further.
It was for THAT reason, his left liberal influence on the youth, that Hefner's philosophical ambitions were trashed by the interventions of supposedly fellow liberal Gloria Steinem, who had been an asset of the CIA spying on leftist groups, and might well have been working for the CIA while an undercover bunny spying on Hefner's first club.
It is true Steinem has promoted the "equality" of women meaning that women should be able to "rise" to the same occupations of men, and of course that kind of equality is a good thing. But her focus has primarily been on the top, eliminating the "glass ceiling" that kept women out of the CEO's office. But what the world needs is not more heartless CEO's who happen to be women, it needs a structure in heartless CEO's can't exist. The goal should be a world in which all occupations provide security, respect, and fufillment. Equality, not merely the hollow "equal opportunity."
And so, even from the beginning, Steinem was not a left liberal, she was a neoliberal, and the very prototype of Bill and Hillary Clinton. The neoliberal plan from the very beginning was to destroy the real left whose concern is social justice for working people, and replace it with weak tea identity politics that just gets enough people charged up to win a few elections. So her liberalism is fake, her leftism is fake, and even her feminism is fake...and it has been the source of much social destruction. Phony left feminists essentially destroyed the left in this country by creating division, with tract upon tract of influential nonsense misandry whose effect has barely diminished to this day.
Leftism will only work through unity, and the kind of unity that comes from within, from positive social and sexual relationships. Meanwhile, the right was immune, and was not affected. That was the plan all along, I believe. None of these phony left feminists (the 2nd wave antiporn ones) are what they claimed to be. Sexual prudes have always been tools of the Empire. The fake accusations against Julian Assange a good example of the timeless pattern of how the forces of empire use widespread prudity to crush dissent. The real scandal is always the Empire itself.
The result of Steinem's intervention has been that instead of a President Hefner or his disciple ending all wars*, including the War on Drugs and the War on Sex, we got Presidents Reagan, GWB, and Trump, who have ratcheted them all up in the name of Empire.
(*Hefner gave a platform to war critical journalists such as Seymour Hirsch--who exposed the Mai Lai Massacre.)
A large part of Steinem's work ever since has been the extreme form of antipornography, even to the depiction of women in any form, including the very clean Playboy Magazine, the antithesis of the "smut" which it replaced. In the extreme form of antiporn, the mere principle that women's pictures might be printed is "exploitation." Another antiporn feminist pushed for national laws to make magazines like Playboy legally liable for any crime. This didn't resist court challenges in the USA, but was pushed into law in Sweden, which has led me to believe I would not be comfortable staying there for any length of time. Porn reduces crime by reducing stress, much as smoking marijuana does. Hefner was an early promoter of drug reform too. His influence may even be a part of the long term decline of violent crime between 1960 and 2000. One famous psychopath claimed that pornography drove him to crime. But should we believe him? It seems to me more that violent crime comes from lack of pornography and drugs. It's hard to pull another trigger when you're using those.
Sometimes it is claimed that magazines such as Playboy create "body image issues." But there's nothing super special about Playboy centerfolds, other than the same youth and beauty you can find in any college classroom. The Playboy centerfold may be the prettiest girl in the classroom, but is not from another planet. When Hefner said he chose the girl next door, that was not far from the truth, though obviously he chose the prettiest or nicest girls he could find. The basic point of such "visual aids" is to pretend for a minute--or as long as it takes--that the prettiest girl in the classroom is interested in you. And most of them will not be--everyone knows that. But perhaps tomorrow, there may be one who is. So don't give up. Girls have always been hard to please, that's how heterosex works. Meanwhile, a piece of paper can help you get some relief tonight, and become a part of a larger and more interesting world.
There is a lot of exaggeration about these sorts of things, such as the girls being super busty. But that was rarely the case in Playboy. The girls are pretty and perhaps thinner than average, and that's all. Only the December centerfolds, up to about 1973 or so, were a bit bustier than average. After then, Playboy toned down that aspect. So much so, that I myself didn't subscribe to Playboy for very long, but looked for 'speciality' magazines where the women were bustier, if not as knock out pretty.
The famous "bunny suits" were/are sufficiently padded so any woman would be special wearing it. It's just make believe, and everybody knows that. But make believe is often needed just to keep on rolling down the road of modern life.
The take of antiporn feminists is anti-sex, anti-freedom, anti-human, unconstitutional, etc. And yet, it goes on. Antiporns on the fake left and the right. Most of them are antiabortion too. They provide only more restrictions, not solutions. In fact, the problem gets worse, by design, so that poor people suffer more.
I have met women in the Porn industry, who always insist they are the real feminists, and I believe they are correct. Nowadays many porn stars run their own businesses.
So as it turns out, including even the great antiporn pseudo feminist Gloria Steinem, Hefner's critics are all a bunch of prudes and theocrats.
Often heroes have weaknesses. It is quite hard to find one with Hefner. I can only guess that he didn't challenge Steinem and the fake left more than he did was that it was clearly not going to be good for business. Dissing people rarely is. He didn't put up the fight that might have done so. If he could have done that, he would have been our savior, not merely a hero. He retired from grand philosophical and political ambitions, and focused on his core mission: having fun and living well and living up to the quite demanding image of male pro sexual goodness he had created for himself and others. And so, we never had a complete revolution, sexual or otherwise. Just a small opening.
Meanwhile, because of the pernicious influence of the Empire's reaction to Hefnerism (the alignment of sexual freedom and leftism) by 2nd wave "antiporn" feminist memes (largely penned by Dworkin and Mackinnon, though backed by Steinem), only conservatives who never bought into those memes, and especially Christian conservatives, are allowed to be pro heterosexual very much anymore, and I'm not sure they are either except they have a lot more kids, and meanwhile virtually all of my similarly aged leftist male friends have none, and most haven't had girlfriends in a long time either.
Speaking of Mackinnon, similar ideas (and her name) was invoked at this threat at NakedCapitalism just this week.
I replied thusly (slightly edited):
The Empire always wins. Until it loses.
Hefner did his part better than anyone else, and probably as well as anyone could, the rest is up to us.
RIP, Hef.
Often there is a grain of truth in what critics say. But in this case, his critics are not just partly wrong, they are completely wrong.
He did not invent objectification, nor apply it more than other capitalists (much less, actually, as far as I have seen). Objectification is the fundamental nature of capitalism. Some sell their bodies, others their minds, still others their souls. I would say the body is the least of these. Some of his worst critics sold their souls long ago.
He set such a high standard in his personal relations, business dealings, girlfriend dealings, employee dealings, that even such a perfectly fair minded person like me would be hard pressed to do as well.
These things are not easy to do well...he carried on for 91 years.
Sure, he had lots of girlfriends, and a few had some bad times (though that seems relatively rare), likewise with employees, customers. Overall, almost everyone who has actually dealt with him praises him. And I think it's fine if he has lots of girlfriends, and does his thing, so long as never forcing himself...and that is never claimed. Only psychological pressure. Being a follower or a friend always comes with this kind of pressure...and either it works for you or it doesn't.
I and many others have long seen him as an Icon. He earned that.
He opened up Jazz to new audiences, and many liberal writers and ideas as well. I think that's wonderful. Perhaps indeed that is a large part of why I am what I am, though I would seem to be farther lefter. Well, see, he made me possible, by making liberalism cool and respectable, that made it possible for me to go a bit further.
It was for THAT reason, his left liberal influence on the youth, that Hefner's philosophical ambitions were trashed by the interventions of supposedly fellow liberal Gloria Steinem, who had been an asset of the CIA spying on leftist groups, and might well have been working for the CIA while an undercover bunny spying on Hefner's first club.
It is true Steinem has promoted the "equality" of women meaning that women should be able to "rise" to the same occupations of men, and of course that kind of equality is a good thing. But her focus has primarily been on the top, eliminating the "glass ceiling" that kept women out of the CEO's office. But what the world needs is not more heartless CEO's who happen to be women, it needs a structure in heartless CEO's can't exist. The goal should be a world in which all occupations provide security, respect, and fufillment. Equality, not merely the hollow "equal opportunity."
And so, even from the beginning, Steinem was not a left liberal, she was a neoliberal, and the very prototype of Bill and Hillary Clinton. The neoliberal plan from the very beginning was to destroy the real left whose concern is social justice for working people, and replace it with weak tea identity politics that just gets enough people charged up to win a few elections. So her liberalism is fake, her leftism is fake, and even her feminism is fake...and it has been the source of much social destruction. Phony left feminists essentially destroyed the left in this country by creating division, with tract upon tract of influential nonsense misandry whose effect has barely diminished to this day.
Leftism will only work through unity, and the kind of unity that comes from within, from positive social and sexual relationships. Meanwhile, the right was immune, and was not affected. That was the plan all along, I believe. None of these phony left feminists (the 2nd wave antiporn ones) are what they claimed to be. Sexual prudes have always been tools of the Empire. The fake accusations against Julian Assange a good example of the timeless pattern of how the forces of empire use widespread prudity to crush dissent. The real scandal is always the Empire itself.
The result of Steinem's intervention has been that instead of a President Hefner or his disciple ending all wars*, including the War on Drugs and the War on Sex, we got Presidents Reagan, GWB, and Trump, who have ratcheted them all up in the name of Empire.
(*Hefner gave a platform to war critical journalists such as Seymour Hirsch--who exposed the Mai Lai Massacre.)
A large part of Steinem's work ever since has been the extreme form of antipornography, even to the depiction of women in any form, including the very clean Playboy Magazine, the antithesis of the "smut" which it replaced. In the extreme form of antiporn, the mere principle that women's pictures might be printed is "exploitation." Another antiporn feminist pushed for national laws to make magazines like Playboy legally liable for any crime. This didn't resist court challenges in the USA, but was pushed into law in Sweden, which has led me to believe I would not be comfortable staying there for any length of time. Porn reduces crime by reducing stress, much as smoking marijuana does. Hefner was an early promoter of drug reform too. His influence may even be a part of the long term decline of violent crime between 1960 and 2000. One famous psychopath claimed that pornography drove him to crime. But should we believe him? It seems to me more that violent crime comes from lack of pornography and drugs. It's hard to pull another trigger when you're using those.
Sometimes it is claimed that magazines such as Playboy create "body image issues." But there's nothing super special about Playboy centerfolds, other than the same youth and beauty you can find in any college classroom. The Playboy centerfold may be the prettiest girl in the classroom, but is not from another planet. When Hefner said he chose the girl next door, that was not far from the truth, though obviously he chose the prettiest or nicest girls he could find. The basic point of such "visual aids" is to pretend for a minute--or as long as it takes--that the prettiest girl in the classroom is interested in you. And most of them will not be--everyone knows that. But perhaps tomorrow, there may be one who is. So don't give up. Girls have always been hard to please, that's how heterosex works. Meanwhile, a piece of paper can help you get some relief tonight, and become a part of a larger and more interesting world.
There is a lot of exaggeration about these sorts of things, such as the girls being super busty. But that was rarely the case in Playboy. The girls are pretty and perhaps thinner than average, and that's all. Only the December centerfolds, up to about 1973 or so, were a bit bustier than average. After then, Playboy toned down that aspect. So much so, that I myself didn't subscribe to Playboy for very long, but looked for 'speciality' magazines where the women were bustier, if not as knock out pretty.
The famous "bunny suits" were/are sufficiently padded so any woman would be special wearing it. It's just make believe, and everybody knows that. But make believe is often needed just to keep on rolling down the road of modern life.
The take of antiporn feminists is anti-sex, anti-freedom, anti-human, unconstitutional, etc. And yet, it goes on. Antiporns on the fake left and the right. Most of them are antiabortion too. They provide only more restrictions, not solutions. In fact, the problem gets worse, by design, so that poor people suffer more.
I have met women in the Porn industry, who always insist they are the real feminists, and I believe they are correct. Nowadays many porn stars run their own businesses.
So as it turns out, including even the great antiporn pseudo feminist Gloria Steinem, Hefner's critics are all a bunch of prudes and theocrats.
Often heroes have weaknesses. It is quite hard to find one with Hefner. I can only guess that he didn't challenge Steinem and the fake left more than he did was that it was clearly not going to be good for business. Dissing people rarely is. He didn't put up the fight that might have done so. If he could have done that, he would have been our savior, not merely a hero. He retired from grand philosophical and political ambitions, and focused on his core mission: having fun and living well and living up to the quite demanding image of male pro sexual goodness he had created for himself and others. And so, we never had a complete revolution, sexual or otherwise. Just a small opening.
Meanwhile, because of the pernicious influence of the Empire's reaction to Hefnerism (the alignment of sexual freedom and leftism) by 2nd wave "antiporn" feminist memes (largely penned by Dworkin and Mackinnon, though backed by Steinem), only conservatives who never bought into those memes, and especially Christian conservatives, are allowed to be pro heterosexual very much anymore, and I'm not sure they are either except they have a lot more kids, and meanwhile virtually all of my similarly aged leftist male friends have none, and most haven't had girlfriends in a long time either.
Speaking of Mackinnon, similar ideas (and her name) was invoked at this threat at NakedCapitalism just this week.
I replied thusly (slightly edited):
Hefner did his part better than anyone else, and probably as well as anyone could, the rest is up to us.
RIP, Hef.
