Posted on 09/30/2017 8:01:39 AM PDT by Kaslin
"Sex for me is ... perhaps the single greatest humanizing force on this earth," Hugh Hefner said during a 1974 interview with CBS, sitting alongside Protestant theologian Harvey Cox. "It would be a rather sad planet if there weren't two sexes. And I think that we've managed to use and abuse and misunderstand our sexuality."
"Sex is cheap," sociologist Mark Regnerus at the University of Texas at Austin, explains in his book, "Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage and Monogamy. "It is more widely available, at lower cost to all than ever before in human history. ... Cheap sex has been mass-produced with the help of two distinctive means that have little to do with each other -- the wide uptake of the Pill and mass-produced high-quality pornography -- and then made more efficient by communication technologies. They drive the cost of sex down, make real commitment more 'expensive' and challenging to navigate, ... put women's fertility at risk -- driving up demand for infertility treatments -- and have taken a toll on men's marriageability ... Cheap sex does not make marriage unappealing; it just makes marriage less urgent and more difficult to accomplish."
Playboy was certainly on the cutting edge of the sexual revolution, albeit in ways that seem relatively quaint compared to what's taken as convention these days. Regnerus opens the book with the story of a 32-year-old named Sarah, who is essentially looking for love in all the wrong places, so to speak. Adrift in a sea of casual relationships, she still wants marriage someday -- only nothing she's doing is likely to get her there, as Regnerus' research makes clear.
And his is no "wistful" ode to an era that never was, but a clear-eyed look at what's going on. Regnerus writes with compassion about Sarah and other woman in the U.S. "mating market." His chronicle of the situation, based on extensive numbers and interviews, shows what misery the Playboy Philosophy, as it were, has wrought. It's one fueled by medicine -- primarily, birth control -- and an ideological idolization of a false freedom that changed not just mores, but expectations and led to utter incoherence in individual lives.
"Despite shrinking double standards and growing egalitarianism, something seems amiss with sex these days," Regnerus writes. "Most Americans -- left or right, religious or not -- can sense it. ... Online porn is now standard operating procedure for a near-majority of men. We construct comprehensive identities and communities around sexual attraction in a way unfamiliar to most of the Western world, including Western Europe. Cultural struggles over marriage continue -- now out of the political limelight -- in households, congregations and workplaces. Meanwhile, the common date has eroded, now quaint in light of the ubiquitous, unromantic hookup. ... We can't seem to get enough of sex -- so we focus on technique -- but what we get is leaving us hungering for still more or longing for some emotion or transcendent satisfaction that cheap sex seems to promise but seldom delivers. Social and interpersonal trust erodes; solitude and atomization increase. Mothers and fathers split. In light of these common realities, how many of us would confidently declare that yes, these are the best of times in American sexuality, that we are making progress, that we have modeled a template of more satisfying, fulfilling sexual unions?"
Hugh Hefner has been quoted talking about the devastation of infidelity -- his first wife cheated on him. He also said, during that CBS interview, "I think that there are certain aspects of adolescence that might be best retained for a lifetime." Pretending this is a healthy attitude would fall on the immature side of our perpetual adolescent times and would mean we've learned nothing from Hefner's life and legacy. Hefner's passing invites us to get moving on next steps, so love won't be lost more permanently -- out of reach for so many -- to a state of misery pretending to be freedom.
Hefner was a disaster but if it wasn’t him surely someone else would have taken his place. The downward spiral seems inevitable.
Perpetual adolescence isn’t healthy for an individual or society.
Playboy was just Esquire with a photographed girl instead of pinup art.
Hefner's dream growing up was to work for them, he planned his high school and college work around that goal.
And then he got his dream job writing copy for them...and then they laughed him out of the office when he asked for a $5 a week raise.
He hated the name Playboy, he wanted to name his version of Esquire Stag Party, a terrible name and one that was already taken.
He also hated the rabbit logo and wanted to stick with the stag that he had for his idea for calling the magazine Stag Party but he came around when he saw it's success.
That is very possible.
Pretty rare species
Pretty rare species.”
Nonsense.
Yep and women change
Men don’t much
In that regard
I'm not sure you understand the meaning of the (verbed) word "commoditized".
Hookers and brothels have always always been around as boutique businesses. The libertine ethos brought in by the sexual revolution is more akin to a Circle K on every corner.
There have always been sluts and whores and nasty porn, but they were minor exceptions kept on the down low. Playboy was something new. Celebrities aside, the girls in Playboy centerfolds were girls next door. It normalized porn and made jerking off respectable. It joined an unholy alliance with the libertine Left to remove the stigma from slutty (read:irresponsible and self-destructive) behavior while branding anybody who wishes more for their sons and daughters than to be rutting pigs as religious prudes. ("Don't want your daughter spreading her legs for the football team or your son to contract V.D.? You are a sex-hating prude!!!)
So . . . can anybody say with a straight face our society is healthier now than in 1950 because we are comfortable with free sex? Really? Now that the rallying cry of the American male is, "Milk is free, you stupid cows, hahahahaha!"
That is exactly right
Playboy mag got much more feminist and liberal under Christie
I think he gave it to her cause the feminist attacks bothered his liberal sensibilities
And he wanted to show folks he was open to women in leadership roles
Besides the internet Hefner actually killed himself business wise
The notion Playboy is now quaint and outdated
There are no playboys anymore
Hipsters and fags
Most masculine men are black or Hispanic now
A white playboy would be rare
A Joe Namath or Paul Horning today
Gerard Butler is.a playboy I guess
Jack White maybe...
John Mayer
Not many around
When I was younger, there were two types of girls. The kind you take home from the party and the kind you take home to mom and dad. Never mistake one for the other.
Before Playboy, men’s garages and tool sheds had calendars with pinup art and even photography. Copies of Esquire and other similar men’s magazines too.
It was quite a business, all kinds of businesses and organizations were pumping them out.
Nancy Pelosi herself was ‘Miss Lube Rack’.
Hefner and the bible thumpers would like to believe that he brought down Western Civilization and kept America from being able to win land wars in Asia.
All he actually did was put out a version of ‘Esquire’ with a better name and pictures in it instead of art. He even printed articles they turned down.
And for some crazy reason ‘Esquire’ stopped putting pinups in their magazine around that time, their circulation plummeted.
The folks at DU couldn't have said it any better.
Exactly!
Since Hefner was an atheist he is not smiling now.
You’re just giving Hefner far more credit than he is due.
He didn’t invent the birth control pill. He didn’t invent the transportation systems that made living around large cities convenient where you could act with anonymity. He didn’t invent the electric typewriter and Gregg’s shorthand bringing legions of women in the office.
And all those had a much more colossal impact on the ‘sexual revolution’ of the 50’s through the 70’s than a magazine that never exceeded a few million subs. Despite whatever Hefner and some bible thumpers would like people to believe.
110M of the the 360M US citizens have a STD.
Center for Disease Control (CDC) fact. (or about 1 in 3 chance).
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/10/10/hidden-epidemic-110m-std-infections-in-us.html
Your state may have even more per average especially if you live in a liberal enclave (or DEM stronghold).
See here https://www.livescience.com/48100-sexually-transmitted-infections-50-states-map.html
He was just a cog in the machine, but he was a cog.
The term "bible thumpers" is one of the Left's favorite sneers.
Miss Botox then.
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