General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHefner's advocation of civil rights
Comedian Dick Gregory revealed in an interview that Hefner provided $25,000 toward a reward that Gregory later credited with helping break one of the civil-rights movements most notorious cases: the murder of three young civil-rights workers in Meridian, Mississippi.
Hefner was also an avid supporter of Martin Luther King Jr. and would go on to serve as a significant funder of the Rainbow PUSH coalition helmed by King acolyte Jesse Jackson. (Hefner donated to a number of progressive and legal causes throughout his life, including funding Americas very first rape kit, via his charitable foundation.)
Though many may hear the name Playboy and think of centerfolds (or, lets be honest, breasts), those of us who are writers, particularly writers of color, think of names like Alex Haley. Long before Roots made Haley a literary superstar, he conducted the very first interview for Playboy magazine with musician Miles Davis.
In the interview, Davis discussed his thoughts on racial inequality, setting the tone for what would become a staple of the magazine: serious people giving serious interviews, on serious subjects, including many prominent people of color. Those people included everyone from athlete and activist Muhammad Ali to Sammy Davis Jr., and Dr. King, who granted the longest print interview of his career to Haley for Playboy. The extraordinary interview from January 1965given shortly after King received the Nobel Peace Prizewas republished by The Daily Beast three years ago.
Hefners son, Cooper, even said the last article ever written by King was published in the magazine.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/hugh-hefners-surprising-civil-rights-legacy
PragmaticLiberal
(904 posts)Many people don't know about THIS Hugh Hefner.
niyad
(113,552 posts)Response to PragmaticLiberal (Reply #1)
Name removed Message auto-removed
niyad
(113,552 posts)The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,836 posts)or maybe he thought it was fine if we can vote and get good jobs as long as he could make money by taking the objectification of women mainstream and making it "acceptable." 40 years ago he offered plenty of tits and ass for teenagers wanking in their bedrooms and losers who couldn't get laid if they walked down the street with $100 bills pinned to their polyester leisure suits, but who expected all women to look like Hefner's pouty, airbrushed models.
Fuck him and the silk pajamas he slithered in on.
WhiskeyGrinder
(22,431 posts)Response to The Velveteen Ocelot (Reply #4)
Pacifist Patriot This message was self-deleted by its author.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)Hefner was a man of glaring contradictions, and definitely purveyed a highly sexist view of women. He also did other things.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/09/28/for-hugh-hefner-gay-rights-were-part-of-the-sexual-revolution/
The move would serve to represent an early example of Hefners lifelong commitment to gay rights, and civil rights in general. Hefner, who died Wednesday at 91, prided himself as an advocate for the LGBT community, taking public stands on high-profile issues such as sodomy laws, same-sex marriage and transgender rights well into his later years.
..................................................
Asked if he considered himself a gay rights activist, Hefner responded that he had been a human rights activist from the magazines inception. He said he had campaigned against the nations sodomy laws, which criminalized certain sexual acts. If the pursuit of happiness has any meaning at all as it is written in the Constitution, the governments intruding into ones bedroom, into personal sexual behaviors, is as unconstitutional as anything can be, Hefner said.
The interview also touched on the AIDS crisis, which profoundly changed Hefners life in the early 1980s, Yarbrough wrote. Hefner fixated on the disease soon after it was identified, he wrote, and used Playboy to keep a spotlight on the epidemic with articles that examine everything from the diseases origins to safer sex practices.
Hefner told the Advocate: The only thing wrong with AIDS is the way our government responded to it. They are culpable on many, many levels. I have chosen every aspect of human sexuality and the discrimination that goes along with some of those aspects as my major concern. Homosexuality and, later, the homophobia that surrounds the AIDS crisis are part of a much bigger picture for me.
DLevine
(1,788 posts)and described them as objects instead of human beings, he was a really great guy.
m-lekktor
(3,675 posts)The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,836 posts)Women have often participated in their own objectification, which is what happens when people internalize their culture's opinion of them. Women allow themselves to be objectified because they've been told all their lives, explicitly or implicitly, that they're worthless unless they're sexually attractive to men. Look at the women who voted for Trump. Nobody made them vote for him, but they did it anyhow, knowing he was an admitted sexual predator, that he's cheated on all of his wives and that he's sexually attracted to his own daughter. Some were even wearing "Trump Can Grab My Pussy" t-shirts. Nobody made this woman wear this shirt:
But even though she's not posing nude for Playboy she willingly allowed herself to be objectified in the same basic fashion; she apparently thinks it's fine for a man to grope women, even those who didn't volunteer to be groped. How does a woman come to think so little of herself and of other women?
demmiblue
(36,885 posts)DLevine
(1,788 posts)WhiskeyGrinder
(22,431 posts)WhiskeyGrinder
(22,431 posts)He was so fucking obsessed with her he's going to be buried next to her. He was a predator.
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,036 posts)https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2017/09/28/marilyn-monroe-helped-launch-hugh-hefners-career-but-they-never-even-met/
But yes, he was obsessed with her. But he did not stalk or predate on her. He spoke with her one time on the telephone and never met her.
oasis
(49,407 posts)offensive stuff. EVER!
OregonBlue
(7,754 posts)misogynist just like our president when it comes to women. We don't like him. No woman with a sense of self-worth would every consider him an honorable man.
BannonsLiver
(16,448 posts)For those that do nuance.