I have little problem with Hef, the person. At least he is not a hypocrite.
bump
what a shame - He deserves the prayers of all Christians
What a disappointment he must have been to them.
There is absolutely no basis in this article for any intimation that Heffner 'owns' the porn industry.
So9
A title like that, and a super long post to boot. This post is a lot like a meatless subway sandwich.
I just looked at this post to 'read the articles'.
Apparenly PlayBoy played a very important role during Vietnam. Porn will never go away no matter how much people wish it to be so.
Admittedly I'm of the "old school" still Hef is not a gentleman nor are his female's ladies.
LOL! What a loser.
I admit that I have a warm spot in my heart for Hef, but that's not an endorsement of pornography in any way. I have probably picked up less than 1/2 dozen copies of Playboy in my day, and none after I passed the age of 17 or so, and I admit porn in print, video, or PC is not a vice of mine and never has been.
I think Playboy objectified and debased women and sexuality, but when you look at the type of porn out there these days - I am admittedly not an expert, but just going by the convenmtional wisdom, channel flipping, and PC pop-up screens - Playboy is tame in comparison and in its own way quite charming. It just had pretty pictures of pretty naked young women.
On a scale of 1-10, if the current 'porn' debasement of women, men, and sexuality can be considered a 9 (just for purposes of comparison), Hef's pictorals are maybe a 2 or a 3.
So a young boy growing into manhood is curious about women and sex, that's entirely natural. I know I was. There is a certain charm in finding a newstand in town that will sell you a copy Playboy when you are 16 and not quite 18. I look at it as a sort of rite of passage that I think most males used to get through well enough.
I think in the modern era, porn is just a website click away, and the debasement is far more severe - while I am sure lovely pictorals of lovely young woman are out there, it seems to me that its much easier to get to much raunchier pictorals. That's a shame on two levels.
1. The excitement of getting that glimpse of something otherwise forbidden - finding that shady newstand - is gone. It was basically innocent - after all that trouble and sneaking around, the actual copy of Playboy was almost an afterthought. The thrill was getting it - that thrill is gone, now.
2. It's easier for a youngster to get to the much more hardcore and debasing porn via the internet, meaning that their perceptions and expectations will most likely be skewed in a bad direction. Yep, they are probably downloading something far more obscene than a lovely pictoral of a fantasy woman (more airbrush than flesh) standing on a beach with that look in her eye that says 'I love you, Tiger!'
Back in the day, most males used to find out soon enough that even the models in the pages of Playboy didn't actually look like they do in the pages of Playboy. It's like the anxiousness of a young male to get within eyeshot of a nude beach - the mental image that their anticipation concocts is much sexier and appealing than the reality.
A naked woman on a nude beach reading a magazine, a naked woman in the pages of Playboy looking like as if she loves you, and a naked woman in your bed who genuinely does love you each look very different. Again, this is something that most males used to figure out somewhere along in the process, and most were not the worst for wear for it.
These days I am not so sure. Breast implants are a popular high school graduation gift for girls. Many young men's expectations of women and sexual relationships are wildly skewed and create unrealistic expectations. I think the modern nature of porn is largely (though not entirely) responsible.
If by young adulthood a male has casually digested hundreds (or thousands) of hours of video and pictures where a woman is depicted simply as a wide-eyed, anatomically impressive, sexually receptive, but otherwise undemanding and unpersonalized oriface to be knocked around for hours at a time, that man's emotional range is most likely to be severely limited and impaired.
I know many young fellas who resemble that remark, and they go from shallow relationship to shallow relationship. Is porn the cause of their problems? No. Is it part of their problem. Yes, no doubt in my mind.
A half dozen (or even three or four dozen) copies of Playboy over adolescence and young adulthood doesn't create that same image of debasement of women and sexuality, nor creates a significant disconnect from reality. It is tamer, and as life experience expands and maturity develops, men figure out that you are expected to hold your end of the relationship with a living breathing human being, who has needs and thoughts all her own, just like everyone else.
The girls in Playboy never made that clear, of course, but they satisifed a basic curiosity that most mature out of - the realization that it's a lot more fun to actully touch pretty young women, kiss them, etc, than just looking at pretty pictures of them.
I am 36, have had several fulfilling and long term relationships with young women, and I have no children yet. I'd be far less alarmed if I found a copy of Playboy in my 15 year old son's room than I would be if I found a copy of a more 'hardcore' magazine, a collection of porno bookmarks on a PC, or a DVD of "Anal SWAT Team 3."
Maybe I'll become more of a hardnose over this as I mature, but I do think a normal curiosity in pretty young nude women is healthy, but that a lot of the influences out there (probably most) are too debasing, and that a steady stream of it over adolescence and young adulthood handicaps a young man's expectations about relationships. They skew his perception and almost certainly contribute to creating a barrier to meaningful relationship with women.