Anti-Porn Feminists

Reclusive Leftist on Christie Hefner and Playboy (as part of an article on feminism and conflicting/complex political loyalties):

Christie Hefner makes a big deal out of identifying as a feminist: she gives money, she sits on boards, she makes noises about women’s rights. She also, of course, has spent her life profiting from the sexual exploitation of other women. Playboy magazine was always a shrine to patriarchy; under Christie Hefner’s direction it became a giant Borg ship of bunny-eared misogynistic objectification, a vast enterprise selling everything from stripper outfits for toddlers (get ‘em started young!) to hardcore porn videos. The ubiquity of the Playboy brand has been a key factor in the normalization of pornography — or perhaps I should say the pornification of normality. Margaret Atwood once observed that if aliens tried to understand human civilization from magazine covers, they would conclude that only women have bodies. That was a few decades ago. Now the aliens would conclude that not only are women the only people with bodies, but all the women are porn stars.

But Playboy is guilty of more than just being a capitalistic vampire squid. They’ve been firing on the ideological front as well. One of the most noxious things Christie Hefner did was hire Camille Paglia as Playboy’s in-house anti-feminist pundit. And make no mistake, Paglia is definitely anti-feminist; she calls herself a feminist purely as a marketing ploy, to get people to pay attention. “Oh, look! A feminist who says that patriarchy is good and women are happier being oppressed and that ‘no’ really means ‘please fuck me!’ Cool!” Paglia spent years shoveling that horseshit in the pages of Playboy, particularly her claim that second-wave feminism was puritanical and anti-sex. This is all part of the game, you understand: it’s how patriarchy fights back. Feminists say they don’t want sexuality that is warped by misogyny; patriarchalists say that means feminists don’t want sex. See the sleight of hand? Sex = misogynist sex. In the world of Playboy, there is no other kind.

Playboy has also fought the feminist revolution with its “show us yer tits” series of famous women. For decades, female entertainers have been heckled by drunks demanding that they disrobe. You could be Joni Fucking Mitchell singing “A Case of You,” but some asshole in the back will still yell “show us yer tits,” thus reminding you and everybody else that while you may think you’re a fancy-schmancy singer-songwriter who can give Dylan a run for his money, underneath the clothes you’re just a pair of tits. And that is the psychological essence of every single Playboy feature on women-in-the-news. As women have branched out and become high achievers in sports, cinema, education, law, and politics, Playboy has been there at every step of the way to yell, “show us yer tits!” Think you’re a famous director? Show us yer tits! An Olympic gold medalist? Show us yer tits! Rhodes scholar? Champion athlete? Show us yer tits! A collection of Playboy back issues is like a serial killer’s trophy room: photographic mementos of all the uppity women who’ve been reduced to masturbation fodder.

And yes, of course the famous women who’ve posed have done so willingly. That’s because they’ve been persuaded by the anti-feminist backlash that to do so is “empowering,” which is proof that there is almost nothing propaganda can’t do. No idea is too absurd, no suggestion too preposterous that a good propaganda campaign can’t make it seem perfectly logical and appealing. Look, if posing naked were empowering, then the rich men who run the world would be lining up for it. We would be awash in naked dick shots of Warren Buffet and Bill Gates and Barack Obama; magazines would be filled with male politicians and financiers and moguls with their bits hanging out. Softly lit, perhaps; head coyly tilted, bunny tail on the ass. Power.