Hugh Hefner and Hysteria

After a long and storied life, Hugh Hefner passed, and everyone seemed to have something to say about him. Those who had mostly negative things to say about him fell into two basic categories: self-proclaimed feminists who are misandrists, and people with a religious conviction that sex and nudity are for monogamous heterosexual marriage and anything that goes against that is some of the worst stuff ever.

While some critics puffed up their essays with big words, if you watched closely and read between the lines, what really upset people about Hefner more than anything else was that he and/or his media exposed or glaringly reinforced some truths people didn’t want to admit:

1)  Men can get sexually aroused strictly from the visual, and static, two-dimensional visuals at that.

2) Men want to see women naked more more than woman want to see men naked.

3) Men are willing to pay to see women naked.

4) Women, even the girl next door, are willing to sell their sexuality for money.

5) Men want sex more than women.

6) Women are their most visually attractive in their late teens/early 20s.

Hugh Hefner's biggest "crime" was making glamour nudes of the world's most beautiful women accessible to the masses, especially men, even if they were poor, whereas in the past, only the rich could see such women. He catered to the tastes of grown men, without trying to accommodate women and children or let women dictate what men should enjoy. Playboy allowed men to see nude women (albeit only pictorial representations) without having to sign a state marriage contract. These are his real sins in the minds of so many, whether they want to admit it or not. Some of the men speaking out are trying to appease their wives or pastors.

Regarding truth number 2, notice that while Playgirl and similar offerings became a thing, their popularity was only a tiny fraction of that of Playboy, and much of that interest came from homosexual men.

The critics, especially the religion-based ones, make it sound like Hefner was one of the worst things that ever happened to the world, because his magazine and associated media had young, beautiful, nude women and because he surrounded himself with young, beautiful women. He did far more damage with some of his political involvements and some of the messages conveyed in text, but people want to focus on the fact that his magazine featured women in their birthday suits.

Do the critics really think that if Hugh Hefner never existed, media, and society in general, wouldn’t be like it is today? While critics and fans alike try to paint Hefner as a pioneering pornographer, if he hadn’t done it, someone else would have. He saw a demand and cultural trends, and he capitalized on them.

Below are some of the reactions published online in response to Hefner’s death.


Catholic Ross Douthat at the New York Times:

...was 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.

I have to wonder if Douthat believes there are orgies that aren’t pathetic. And "rich on masturbation"? How many women throughout history have gotten rich off of the libidos of men?

“Exploitation of women” is commonly thrown around when it comes to women being portrayed with nudity or in sexual situations. According to Google, “exploitation” is either “the action of making use of and benefiting from resources” or “the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work”. We can assume it is the second definition that is being used here. And I have to wonder what is unfair about what Hefner did to the women who chose to appear in Playboy? They were well aware of what they were doing. Most of the women who appeared in the pages of Playboy essentially APPLIED to. They ASKED to. Most women who want to appear aren’t selected. While Playboy has had scouts (usually women, from what I understand) hand out information to women they meet in public, even those women know exactly what they’re getting into when they pursue the connection. It’s laughable to say that women are being treated unfairly when they’re being paid good money to pose - with what nature (and sometimes, cosmetic surgeons), eating right, and exercising gave them - in front of a camera while makeup and lighting artists and photographers do their thing, followed up by graphic artists. The women got money and attention, and in many cases, further employment with Playboy or elsewhere as a direct result.

...a revolutionary whose revolution chiefly benefited men much like himself.

And what is wrong with that, if it is true?

The arc of his life vindicated his moral critics, conservative and feminist: What began with talk of jazz and Picasso and other signifiers of good taste ended in a sleazy decrepitude that would have been pitiable if it wasn’t still so exploitative.

There are repeated swipes at Hefner that seem to be about the fact that he lived to 91. How many 91 year-olds are not decrepit?

But late Hef was a lecherous, low-brow Peter Pan, playing at perpetual boyhood — ice cream for breakfast, pajamas all day — while bodyguards shooed male celebrities away from his paid harem and the skull grinned beneath his papery skin.

This is curious. He’s supposedly a “pimp” but shooes away male celebrities. How does that square?

This late phase was prettied up by reality television’s “The Girls Next Door,” which kept the orgies offstage and relied on the girlfriends’ mix of desperation, boredom and charisma for its strange appeal. The behind-the-scenes accounts were rather grimmer: depression and drugs, “dirty hallway carpets and the curtains that smell like dog piss,” the chance to wait while Hef “picked the dog poo off the carpet — and then ask for our allowance.”

None of those women were being held against their will. My own house smells like dog piss, because we have an old dog and my wife refuses to let me take her to be put down. Wow, what a terrible man. He had pets living with him that had normal body functions!

Ben Shapiro, a brilliant conservative writer who is a religious Jew, gave this thoughts at The Daily Wire.

Let’s be clear about one thing: Hefner’s attempt to glorify the “swinging” lifestyle was a dressed-up version of pure hedonism.

He’d pretty much say the same thing.

What the Left truly loves about Hefner is that he was instrumental in destroying public support for monogamy.

Shapiro feels obligated to monogamy (despite patriarchs in the Torah having multiple wives), and by golly, everyone else should also feel obligated.

Hefner didn’t make women more respected; he made men more open in their piggishness.

Not really.

Katie Glass at The Spectator isn’t buying the “poor wittle wadies” ploy.

It would be wildly generous to bill Hugh Hefner as some kind of grandfather of feminism – I’m not sure his interest in women extended beyond getting his rocks off – but it’s equally outrageous to depict him as a gang-master abuser running a harem of sex-slaves. As it seems some feminists have. The women who worked for him were adults making choices and, brace yourself, some of them enjoyed themselves!

Yes.

When Playboy launched it championed sexual liberation in the face of 1950s conservatism. It still does that job. Except now it’s challenging not family-values traditionalists but so-called liberal feminists who’ve taken up the role of berating women for baring their bodies.

“Their body, their choice”, unless they want to entertain men.

Wanting to pose topless or choosing to position yourself as a sex object doesn’t make you a manipulated idiot. Some women want to celebrate their looks. Hence the endless list of wealthy, successful women who’ve keenly signed up for Playboy spreads: Amongst them Elle MacPherson, Pamela Anderson, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Sharon Stone and Kate Moss, who memorably posed for Playboy’s 60th edition to celebrate her 40th birthday coming up.

No! They’re all victims!!!

The word empowering is so overused. But I’ve heard it from women who’ve worked as bunnies who got kicks out of doing their jobs. Who found it entertaining, inspiring and – yep – liberating. I know women who partied in their suspenders at the Playboy mansion who are mourning Hef’s death – and with it some of the best nights they’ve had. Of course this won’t be true of all women who worked for Hefner. But it is for some. Who are we to undermine them?

Good question.

The suggestion all Playboy bunnies were exploited reinforces the infantilisation of women by undermining their choices. It also buys into the sexist idea that for women sex is innately harmful or corrupting.

Kathryn Lopez, who is beautiful on the inside, wrote a column at Townhall that was clearly just a plug someone else’s book lamenting that men pay less for sex now,  but she tacked on Hefner’s name to get hits.

"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."

These people are so upset that there are people having unmarried sex, not getting pregnant or transmitting a disease, the men aren’t having to pay a lot of money, and neither person is feeling bad or conflicted about it. They can’t stand it.

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.

Most marriages are failures, so perhaps she’d be better off if she changed her claim to want to eventually marry?

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.

Not as much misery as marriage has.

"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.

You mean where far more people are having sex younger, shacking up, and not bothering to hide their affairs?

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.

Let’s be real. Dates included sex. So what he’s lamenting is that men aren’t wasting as much time and money on dating, but are still having sex.

 ... 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.

Marriage seldom delivers. My sex life was better unmarried.

Stephen Dare wrote at The Celebrity Cafe:

But neither should we let him be defined by the moral scolds, the resentful 80s era brand of neopuritanism, or the eternally sex starved 16 year old that still peeks out from behind every dowdy career employee, impassioned minister, or hoary, hardened man of business.

The usually brilliant conservative Matt Walsh, devoted Catholic, wrote at The Daily Wire to try to connect Hefner to Harvey Weinstein:

One minute we're calling a creepy 90-year-old man a hero because he coerced a bunch of girls to get naked for him, the next we're crucifying a creepy 65-year-old man because he did something quite similar.

Coerced. Walsh seems to think women don’t like to get naked for pay unless that pay is community property. Maybe that’s his experience. Walsh goes on to say he’s not sure why people seem to think consent is what is important in sexuality and entertainment. Go read it if you don’t believe me.


Blaming Harvey Weinstein on Huh Hefner is like blaming Jim Jones on Martin Luther. Devout Roman Catholics (perhaps even Walsh) may be happy to do that, but most people who thoughtfully consider the matters are likely to see that as a bridge too far.

From The Economist:

What other philosophers really disliked was that he made money from it. A lot of money. The first-ever run of Playboy, with Marilyn Monroe clothed on the cover and inside naked, sold out overnight. It was the coup of a lifetime. By 1958, profits were $4m a year. He branched out into Playboy Enterprises: clubs and casinos across the world, films, cable, digital. His bunny logo was on cufflinks and shirts. The 1970s were his best years, when he moved from Chicago to the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles and flew in a black Playboy jet with attendants in ultra-brief black leather.

That’s capitalism.

He backed civil rights of most sorts. Feminists, though, were the enemy. They seemed to want women to be asexual, when the point of his crusade was to celebrate their wonderful differences: as displayed by those Bunny Girls who staffed his clubs and casinos, so cute in those black-satin corsets that made their breasts bigger, those big ears and fluffy tails.

Now women who choose to dress up as bunnies are called furries. There were comments:

The Long Haul Oct 11th, 17:34

Excellent obituary! Hefner certainly was no saint. But he was one of the first who managed to make a fortune by publishing a high gloss magazine that caters for male desires and therefore cut in on or extended the women magazines advertising market. That's really all folks.

More nuanced analysis was at The Conversation, provided by Carrie Pitzulo, adjunct Instructor of History, Colorado State University:

Hefner did not just promote hedonistic sex, but supported loving, committed relationships. In the prominent letters-to-the-editor columns, Hefner and his staff held a constant dialogue with their millions of readers about social, sexual, and political issues. They offered advice regarding the personal questions that were submitted.

Imagine that.

Over and over, readers were told that mutual respect and dignity were crucial to mature, loving relationships. Both men and women were steered away from infidelity. Men were told that they needed to take responsibility for unplanned pregnancies. Women were told that their sexual needs were as important as their partners’.

That misogynist!

When it came to the Playmates, the women featured in the magazine, it wasn’t their nudity that made them so iconic. Hefner created a formulaic look that stood apart from the existing sex magazines of the time, which tended to be degrading, cheap and shaming. In those brown bag publications, nude pictures were of nameless, thoroughly objectified women with vacant eyes – bodies to be consumed.

Hefner portrayed the models as real human beings in recognizable settings, such as getting ready for work, and included biographical sketches and secondary photos that showed them in their daily lives.

The women were college students, aspiring actresses or secretaries. In some cases, he even showed them, in accompanying photos, in their role as daughters – having Sunday dinner with their parents.

Rather than objectifying, Hefner consciously attempted to humanize the women who appeared in Playboy.

It can’t be true!

Camille Paglia, who is a must-read, was interviewed by Jeanie Pyun for The Hollywood Reporter, and she also had some great observations:

So let me just ask: Was Hugh Hefner a misogynist?

Absolutely not! The central theme of my wing of pro-sex feminism is that all celebrations of the sexual human body are positive. Second-wave feminism went off the rails when it was totally unable to deal with erotic imagery, which has been a central feature of the entire history of Western art ever since Greek nudes.

But pornography!

Pornography is not a distortion. It is not a sexist twisting of the facts of life but a kind of peephole into the roiling, primitive animal energies that are at the heart of sexual attraction and desire.

But it’s abusive, right?

But it is categorically not a world of unwilling women. Nor is it driven by masculine abuse. It's a world of show girls, of flamboyant femaleness, a certain kind of strutting style that has its own intoxicating sexual allure — which most young people attending elite colleges today have had no contact with whatever.

But what about gender relations???

The unhappy truth is that the more the sexes have blended, the less each sex is interested in the other. So we're now in a period of sexual boredom and inertia, complaint and dissatisfaction, which is one of the main reasons young men have gone over to pornography. Porn has become a necessary escape by the sexual imagination from the banality of our everyday lives, where the sexes are now routinely mixed in the workplace.

With the sexes so bored with each other, all that's left are these feminist witch-hunts. That's where the energy is! And meanwhile, men are shrinking. I see men turning away from women and simply being content with the world of fantasy because women have become too thin-skinned, resentful and high-maintenance.

And American women don't know what they want any longer. In general, French women — the educated, middle-class French women, I mean — seem to have a feminine composure, a distinct sense of themselves as women, which I think women in America have gradually lost as they have won job equality in our high-pressure career system.

But feminism!

For ideological feminists to go on and on about how we cannot have women treated as sex objects is so naive, so uncultured. It shows a total incomprehension of the history of art, which flows into the great Hollywood movies and sex symbols of the 20th century. The whole history of art is about objectification. That's what an art work is: it's an artifact, an object. Because of our advanced brains, it is the nature of human beings to make sex objects — objects of worship. Turning a person into a beautiful thing does not automatically dehumanize her.

All you have to do is look at the long history of the gay male world, beginning in classical Athens. No gay man has ever said when gazing at a beautiful young man with a perfect body, "I am making him passive beneath my gaze." That would be stupid beyond belief. Every gay man knows that youth and beauty are supreme principles that deserve our admiration and veneration. When we worship beauty, we are worshiping life itself.

Indeed.

Rachel Lu at The Federalist:

The Hefnerian credo is a manifest failure. Aspiring playboys should take note. No matter how much lipstick you put on the bunny, it is not possible to indulge every appetite and still be a man of sophistication and substance. Dirty old men are dirty old men, even in million-dollar bathrobes.

David French banged the drum at National Review:

Hefner, however, played his part, and the part he played was immensely destructive to our nation’s cultural, moral, and spiritual fabric. Hefner mainstreamed porn, he put it in millions of homes, and he even glamorized it — recasting one of America’s most pathetic industries as the playground of the sophisticated rich.

They keep saying it was destructive but they never really say how.

He then grew to a ripe old age, consorting with women young enough to be his granddaughters.

Someone’s envious. You know, neither secularist or materialist or naturalist thinking, not any Biblical passage, indicates that a large age gap in a relationship is a bad thing.

Boys grew up believing they were entitled to sex on demand, and the sex would always be amazing.

I’m sure as many boys believed this as girls believed they were entitled princesses. Or maybe not.

The normal female form was no longer enough. It had to be enhanced, sculpted, and waxed.

So he likes his women fat, butch, and hairy?

How many families have broken to pieces when a wife discovers her husband’s secret addiction…

There are far more families broken by hysteria and overyacting to normal male desires than by men actually being addicted to Playboy.

Sheila Gregoire, coming from the “nudity and sex is for monogamous heterosexual marriage” group, wrote on her website, To Love, Honor, and Vacuum:

And we were talking about how being married to someone with a porn addiction can give a wife PTSD, and can be abusive, in and of itself, especially if he’s dehumanizing her and asking her to act out things that he sees.

How many women want men to act out the things they see in soaps? In romcoms? In jewelry ads? In princess fantasies? It’s easy to blame “porn” for what men want, but which came first? Men were sticking it in sheep long before photography was invented. Blaming pixels or glamour pictures is silly.

When I was about 8, my best friend Christine showed me a stack of Playboys in her shed that her dad had stashed there. I’m thankful that we didn’t look too hard at them, but I know she and her older brother looked at them a bunch.

And what became of him? She doesn’t say. He’s probably a very normal man and probably married.

I remember being on a missions trip when I was 16, and one of the female leaders, who was about 27 at the time, recounting how she had seen a Playboy when she was about 10, and she was still struggling to get those images out of her head.

The images were likely of a woman smiling at the camera, nude. Maybe a group of women. What kind of terror is that?

And that’s one of the biggest problems: When we’re just starting to have sexual feelings, and then we see porn around the same time, we pair the feeling of sexual arousal with a degrading image, rather than with a relationship with someone we love.

What is degrading about glamour nudity? Is it really that hard to say "Look, I believe my religious prohibits posing nude and looking at the images created as a result."?

That’s what porn does to you–it separates your sexual pleasure from your spouse, and causes you to disengage.

See, here’s the heart of the concern. He might have visual stimulation elsewhere. Well, he was going to anyway. In a perfect world it would only be through his wife. And what about her? She never draws on thoughts and fantasies about other men or imaginary scenarios?  Never uses anything but her husband's body for stimulation and orgasm?

But we know what happened, don’t we? Playboy became too tame. That’s what porn addictions do. You no longer get a high from just looking at these women, so you need something “more” and something different.

How is being married any different? If this is what really happens, then just about every marriage is doomed.

Yet while his parties had all these brilliant, successful men, what kind of women did they have? They had “bunnies”. Young women, who all looked pretty much the same, who were there solely because of their bodies.

You mean like professional sports?

Bunnies aren’t old, either. They’re all young, and they’re there for entertainment purposes.

Oh, the horror! Young!!! Why oh why couldn’t bunnies be old, wrinkly and saggy, with a menopausal mustache? Then it would have been OK. And for entertainment purposes! Which is completely unlike everything else in… entertainment.

Even when he married, he married women far younger than him, because all that really mattered when it came to women was what they looked like. After all, if you wanted to have an important conversation–well, that’s what men were for.

You young women can’t make conversation, apparently.

Women even aspired to be Playboy bunnies, because they seemed so popular, so revered. But what they were revered for was not who they actually were.

You mean like actors?

(In the research I did for The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, the best sex in marriage is years 16-24. It gets better the longer we’re together!).

I’d like to believe this. But it’s looking like it will be the opposite for me.

It’s not about the super young girls. It’s about a relationship of real intimacy. But he didn’t know that, because he never had that.

Actually, he married at 22 as a virgin. So he might have had that. Except his wife cheated on him. Imagine if that marriage had been different.

And he encouraged other people to see sex the way he did

Like you do?

It’s all about men feeling important, and women being used.

Actually, no, if you bothered to read the magazine. And of course her readers were all too happy to chime in:

“Pornaddict”

Right off the bat, you know this is going to be skewed.

As you say I think it’s really important to talk about how important intimacy in marriage is and the dangers of pornography.

And what are those dangers?

I wrote in another of your posts how I confessed about my own addiction to my wife.

He told her he has an imaginary condition.

Things are going great btw....Anyways, there are days that are hard , because we haven’t had sex in 2 months(started prior to my confession) and I’m an active redditor so I posted something about missing sleeping beside my wife(we don’t because our kid sleeps beside her)...

Oh yeah, that all sounds like things are going really great. She has a kid sleeping with her but the big issue is that he likes to see women depicted via pixels.

Apparently some guy under the name of Tom Hillson dared to bring a male perspective to the comments.

J. Parker on September 29, 2017 at 3:29 pm

What angers me most is how many women actually cooperated with the idea that posing nude and being lusted after by thousands of men you don’t know is somehow empowering rather than degrading. C’mon, ladies!

Tom Hillson on September 30, 2017 at 8:09 am

J, about this quote of yours: “being lusted after by thousands of men you don’t know is somehow empowering rather than degrading.”, I don’t think I will ever understand this. I don’t think I will ever understand how being desired by countless numbers of the opposite sex isn’t the greatest feeling on earth. I would give my possessions, I would give my money, I would give my time, I would give practically everything I have or get obtain to be lusted after by thousands of women. Please expound on your feelings some more. As I said, I don’t think I will EVER understand, but I want to keep trying. The jealousy I feel towards women is hard to express in words.

J. Parker on October 1, 2017 at 6:03 pm

Then you’ve obviously never been judged, mistreated, harassed based entirely on your appearance. I have, and it’s far from the greatest feeling on earth. Someone is literally treating you like tool for their own self-pleasure. Please, Tom, understand how wrong that is to view humans made in God’s image that way.

Tom Hillson on October 2, 2017 at 1:13 pm

J, that still doesn’t sound awful to me. If a woman was looking at me with pure lust, and just wanted my body, I still find that incredibly flattering. I know that lust isn’t good from God’s perspective, but it still sounds so good to me, and many men. I am certain that men and women as a whole will never see eye to eye on this. Sigh.

J. Parker on October 3, 2017 at 11:20 am

Here’s a quote from an article I wrote for Crosswalk.com on 6 Ways Hugh Hefner’s Ideas Were Bad for Women and Our Culture:

“So many women I’ve encountered have experienced this objectification in the real world, being treated by a man as if her whole value was wrapped up in her physical attributes."

Who says whole???

Since you clearly long to be desired, perhaps you should rethink what kind of treatment would appeal to women. And, more importantly, what kind of treatment is respectful and right toward women.

Clueless. The simple fact is, even the best behaved men almost never experience women desiring them the way men desire women.

Jolie on October 3, 2017 at 1:04 pm

Tom,

I believe I understand what you are trying to convey and I’m a woman. What I hear you saying is that you (as well as many other men ) would find being/feeling sexually admired and desired is an ego booster.

I can see how you would feel that way IF you define your sense of self worth and masculinity soley through your sexuality. Sadly (female perspective) I believe society has encouraged that thought process. Thank you Hugh. I know a lot of men who determine their sense of manliness based on being admired by the ladies.

I may be wrong, but I don’t hear Tom saying women should feel good about being objectified, he’s saying how good being admired as a sexy good looking man would feel for him and can’t understand why being admired as a beautiful/sexy women wouldn’t feel flattering to her. Plain and simple….nothing to do with objectification. Shouldn’t that be a compliment?

How many of us women feel complimented that our husbands find us beautiful and sexy?

I get the impression Tom thinks we should feel the same when other men express that same sentiment.

There in lies the basis of a whole other problem.

His brain, her brain.

Actually, I find it enlightening to hear/see how the male mind works. Explains a lot .

See? But someone couldn't stand a normal male perspective:

Anon on October 2, 2017 at 2:27 pm

Would someone please get Tom Hillson off here?! Seriously. His comments for months now have been offensive and inappropriate and I’m not sure what he’s even doing on this blog, other than offending people.

Sheila Gregoire on October 2, 2017 at 3:02 pm

I think that’s fair. Tom, I’m going to put you on moderation status. I don’t think you realize how hurtful your comments are to most women, when you tell us that we’re lucky to be lusted after. If you have something more constructive to add to the conversation, please go ahead, and I’ll let it through. But I really do think we’ve talked about your issues a lot, and what you really need to do at this point is to ask God for a renewing of your mind, that you can see women as whole people, and understand sex as something which isn’t just physically intimate, but is spiritually intimate as well. Until you do that, you’re likely to keep struggling.

Yikes.

Chris on October 2, 2017 at 10:13 pm

Sheila, i think that at its core, what Tom is saying is that he wants to feel the feeling of being desired. He is just confusing being desired in the right way with being desired in the wrong way. Its easy for men to do, because most men, even the married ones, dont get desired in either way. We are just there. We are invisible. Its a lonely place. I am praying for you Tom.

Tom Hillson on October 2, 2017 at 11:21 pm

I understand Sheila. I’m surprised you let me comment as long as you have.

I don’t understand this: “I don’t think you realize how hurtful your comments are to most women, when you tell us that we’re lucky to be lusted after.” How is that so hurtful? Are women really that fragile? Also, I don’t understand why you say “that you can see women as whole people”. When did I say I didn’t? You can just email me with your answers please. Thanks.

Sheila Gregoire on October 3, 2017 at 7:15 am

Hi Tom,

I really do understand that you’re flabbergasted by this, but the very fact that you don’t understand how hurtful your comments are implies that you don’t see women as whole people. The fact that you don’t understand that people don’t want to be objectified, and noticed only for their body, implies that you see women mostly in sexual terms–which is what we don’t want, which is what we find so terrible, and often quite scary. I understand that you don’t get it, but I’d really suggest that you try hard. Until you do understand, you’ll never be able to relate to the female gender properly. But it’s just this: women want to be loved and respected. When someone objectifies us, they tell us, “I’m interested in you solely for your body, for you what you can give to me.” When someone reacts to us only based on what we look like, we feel infanticized–like our faculties don’t matter. And that means that we don’t matter. It’s dehumanizing.

For you to keep saying that you would be flattered means that you don’t understand women’s basic need to be loved and respected, and our fear that we never will be because too many guys see us as only sexual objects, and ignore the rest of us. We want to be understood and cherished. When guys just see us as body parts, that’s so terribly insulting and dehumanizing. And it’s awful. That’s just the way it is!

Lisa Manske on October 2, 2017 at 7:39 pm

Okay Tom Hillison. Let me try to explain.

Women are not lusted after by other women in these scenarios. They’re lusted after by MEN.

So put yourself in the position of being lusted after by MEN. Men who are bigger than you, stronger than you, and who don’t mind hurting you, ripping your tissues, to get sexual pleasure.

Does that sound fun? Because you don’t have to give up all your worldly possessions to find yourself in a room full of men who want to get sexual release by using your body, without giving a thought to the fact that you’re a human being.

Are you still jealous?

This fails in many ways. Tom is attracted to women, not men. Most women are attracted to men. And it seems to be a complaint that men are bigger and stronger than women.

Tom Hillson on September 29, 2017 at 8:41 pm

I don’t understand what’s wrong with this: “Hey, it’s normal for guys to want to look at women! It’s healthy even! Let’s celebrate it!” Isn’t it normal for guys to want to look at women?

Phil on September 29, 2017 at 9:32 pm

Well Tom it is normal. Whats not Normal is to look at women as objects. They are beutiful strong human beings whose purpose is just the same as a man. To be like Jesus. Hope you are open to seeing this is the answer to your question rather than fighting. I am willing to try again to help you see. Was wondering where you been. Good to see your still kickin.

Tom Hillson on September 29, 2017 at 9:52 pm

Hello Phil. Yes, I’m not saying to look at women as objects. But let me ask you this: if I listen to an audio recording of a medical talk from a female doctor, am I objectifying her mind? After all, I’m paying no attention to her personality or her looks. Likewise, if I admire a woman’s looks in a magazine shoot, I am paying no attention to her intellect or her personality. What’s the difference?

Phil on September 29, 2017 at 10:59 pm

I would say the answer lies within yourself. Your choice. Ill give you an example. I was on a Christian based site a few weeks ago were the woman talks mainly about sex. I thought what she wrote was a bit graphic in addition to maybe just a bit outside her normal writting style. It triggered my addictive thinking for sure. To me it was written similar to a pornographic article. The comments were such as well. I chose however to look at the article as intended. She was trying to convey what she felt was a Christian message. So I did not take her out of context but I might of considered arguing if it was a Christian message. I actually chose to keep my mouth shut and just acknowledge that I can see the intentions. (Whether I agree or not). In my addiction I probably would have checked out her picture and objectified her and to heck with her message. Creepy thinking and so on. Observing a woman as beautiful is different than making her a non human and or for my consumption. I may observe she is beautiful and then I move on. I am married so it stops there. If I was not married I might see what she has. Meaning what is her spirtual being? Yeah enjoy her mind and body. Get to know her see if we are a match. So on. You have a great question here Tom. For many this is a natural process. For guys like me seems I got lucky or God struck in this part of my life. God provided me a beautiful loving wife who waited for me to get healthy. But I have had a host of other problems and still do albiet thankfully more managable today through hard work. I would be interested in talking to you sometime. Openness is key to healing whatever your issues. I feel a bit guilty tonight clogging Sheilas blog but really glad to strike a conversation with you. I think I needed this today. Good night. Thanks

Kacey on October 3, 2017 at 5:03 pm

Tom, a doctor’s purpose in doing some kind of medical talk would be to share knowledge. Yes, it’s completely normal to think only about the subject matter at hand if you were listening to her. But generally, people don’t then assume her medical knowledge is her main reason for existing. Pornography, on the other hand, puts one purpose above all others: deriving sexual pleasure from a woman’s appearance. Yes, that may be the purpose the woman in the photos is going for, but it’s certainly NOT the aim of the average woman on the street. Porn may exist solely to excite sexual pleasure, but WOMEN do NOT."

Without the context of a trusting relationship, comments on a women’s appearance may make her feel like she’s only porn to someone.

On to others...

Samantha on October 10, 2017 at 3:02 pm

I think we desperately need to begin talking about the truly awful and destructive legacy women in the media, are creating. It is very easy to look at men like Hugh Hefner and big industries and say that they are responsible for the objectification of women. But in reality, women are the ones who are making the choices to pose in magazines, dance half naked in music videos, participate in nude scenes on television and movies, and so on. And the thing that gets to me is that these women are rarely reproached for their poor and destructive choices. Most go about happily with successful acting, modeling, and music careers. In fact, many are even applauded for promoting body positivity for women. When men lust after these women we are quick to point out that they shouldn’t be objectifying them, but we seem to skim over the fact that that is the GOAL of these women.

I feel like this is a topic that gets swept under the rug because we are afraid of being accused of “slut shaming” or blaming women for the lust issues that many men struggle with. But I want to be clear that I am not blaming women for men’s struggles and I am not talking about your typical women who make poor wardrobe choices once in a blue moon. And I am definitely not talking about women who dress perfectly modest but are still unjustly accused of causing men to lust. I am talking about women who ARE consciously attempting to get the sexual attention of men. Single men, married men, teenage boys, any man. And that IS what they are trying to do. No woman dresses in a seductive way or gets nude for themselves or for other women to be inspired by how confident they are in their skin.

Yes, these women are sadly and very dangerously misguided. They are just as dangerously misguided as the men who struggle with lusting after these women, but the difference is that we will reproach these men and talk about how they need to change their ways all day long. As we should. But we never have really great conversations about how these women and ANY woman can have the overgrown and destructive desire to be lusted after.

And just to be clear, I am not suggesting that we bash these women or attack them. I am suggesting that we begin to call them out for the damage that they are causing to men, women, marriages, and young girls and boys because of their choices. Let’s call them out so that we can begin calling them and all women to a higher standard. To God’s standard for women.

Ben Domenech at The Federalist:

The passing of Playboy creator Hugh Hefner at the impressive age of 91 marks the end of a life that had an enormous impact on media, culture, and sex. Hefner will be for the most part hailed this week as having a legacy of progressive advancement of sexual mores, with nostalgic references to the culture of free love and plaudits as a champion in the libertine battle against prudish Bible thumpers. But in fact, Hefner’s legacy is much more complicated than that, and much of Playboy’s struggles in recent years have more to do with the persistence of an underlying conservatism and traditionalism in view of sex roles and the nature of manhood.

Also...

The vulgar side of what he did at the time seems positively quaint compared to the images and offerings that surround us today. You will find more explicit pornographic scenes in an hour of watching original HBO programming than you can find in a decade of Playboys, and images of women as scantily clad as his original purchased shots of Norma Jean are on the covers of magazines next to the Altoids in the supermarket. The confusion about where prudishness remains appropriate extends to CNN, which apologized to viewers recently for a guest’s use of “the B-double-O-B-S word”, but will go right along in highlighting the reaction to Hefner’s death from women he made famous for showing theirs off.

When it doubt, blame men.

What separates him from the more lurid members of his industry is an appreciation for manners and a particular form of American masculinity: he advised you to be a gentleman, not a cad, in your pursuit of the centerfold or the girl next door.

Yes he did. That doesn't make fornication OK, but he wasn't advocating assault or deadbeat or mannerless behavior.

Embedded in his work was the idea that what we appreciate in one another isn’t sexless. It’s deeply rooted in our differences. Without those differences, sex itself becomes much less interesting. So while he was derided as selling prurience and stereotypes to the profane and stereotypical, he was actually celebrating the sexual complementarity that has bound men and women together since the dawn of time. The fact this idea has become a problematic one in some pockets of American culture is one Hefner would doubtless find absurd – he built an entire empire on it, after all.

Finally, I'll link to something Dennis Prager wrote before all of this about men seeing women as sex objects.