JOY doing segment on Hefner and civil rights...and YES he was an activist

[pnwmom]

61. He was a pimp. He was that kind of civil rights "activist."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/28/hugh-hefner-pimp-sue-playboy-mansion

The accounts of the “privileged few” who made it into the inner sanctum of the 29-room Playboy mansion as wives/girlfriends/bunny rabbits are quite something. In Hefner’s petting zoo/harem/brothel, these interchangeable blondes were put on a curfew. They were not allowed to have friends to visit. And certainly not boyfriends. They were given an “allowance”. The big metal gates on the mansion that everyone claimed were to keep people out of this “nirvana” were described by one-time Hefner “girlfriend no 1” Holly Madison in her autobiography thus: “I grew to feel it was meant to lock me in.”

The fantasy that Hefner sold was not a fantasy of freedom for women, but for men. Women had to be strangely chaste but constantly available for the right price. Dressing grown women as rabbits – once seen as the height of sophistication – is now seen as camp and ironic. There are those today who want to celebrate Hefner’s contribution to magazine journalism, and I don’t dispute that Playboy did use some fantastic writers.

Part of Hefner’s business acumen was to make the selling of female flesh respectable and hip, to make soft porn acceptable. Every man’s dream was to have Hefner’s lifestyle. Apparently. Every picture of him, right to the end, shows him with his lizard smirk surrounded by blonde clones. Every half-wit on Twitter is asking if Hefner will go to heaven when he already lived in it.

SNIP

If any of them left the mansion and were not available for club nights where they were paraded, they didn’t get their allowance. The sheets in the mansion were stained. There was to be no bickering between girlfriends. No condoms could be used. A nurse sometimes had to be called to Hefner’s “grotto” if he’d had a fall. Nonetheless, these young women would have to perform.

SNIP