Hefner was a Sexist Pig, but Women Wouldn't Understand

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wants us to know that Hugh Hefner, who died last week, was a pretty seedy creature, a "lecherous, low-brow Peter Pan":

[A] pornographer and chauvinist who got rich on masturbation, consumerism and the exploitation of women, aged into a leering grotesque in a captain's hat, and died a pack rat in a decaying manse where porn blared during his pathetic orgies.

But the real problem with Hefner is with the society that took on the values Hefner espoused allowed him to become a cultural icon. We need to take a long hard look at ourselves.

Now that death has taken him, we should examine our own sins. Liberals should ask why their crusade for freedom and equality found itself with such a captain, and what his legacy says about their cause. Conservatives should ask how their crusade for faith and family and community ended up so Hefnerian itself - with a conservative news network that seems to have been run on Playboy Mansion principles and a conservative party that just elected a playboy as our president.

But I've read a heap of insightful writing on Hefner, Playboy and the effects it's all had on our society. What about Julie Bindel's piece in the Independent or Robin Abearian on how Playboy's dreams were for men only? Suzanne Moore's account of her dealings with Hefner and his legal threats?

Nope:

You can find these questions being asked, but they are counterpoints and minor themes. That this should be the case, that only prudish Christians and spoilsport feminists are willing to say that the man was obviously wicked and destructive.

(Emphasis mine).

Ross Douthat is here to tell us what's going on here. Bindel, Abearian, Moore and the others aren't real writers. They're women, you see. They don't have a place in mainstream commentary. They're spoilsport feminists. Their views and opinions are "minor themes". Douthat will bring the debate into the mainstream as only a man can. We need a man to explain what a lecherous clot Hefner was. Women write women's writing about women's issues, and when they complain about anything, they're spoilsport feminists. Men are the default, we need men to do the real writing, and thank goodness a man has come along to tell us how sexist Hefner was. 

Leave a Comment