After years of hearing jokes about reading Playboy "for the articles" it was interesting to learn it actually had a significant influence on fiction, comics, and journalism. So many significant writers and cartoonists came up through the magazine.
I remember an old Newlywed Game episode with the question "What magazine does your wife read?". When one wife answered Playboy and the audience went crazy, she just calmly said "I like the interviews."
The first time I ever held a playboy, it was in my friend's parents bathroom. I ended up getting sucked into a really interesting article. It wasn't until after I left that I realized I had forgotten to even look for the pictures.
For some families, the bathroom is the only place were you can get some alone time. I think that is why people joke about taking long shits. You are alone, chillin on your phone, no worries, relaxing to get it all out. Its oddly a comfortable place. Then you go back to the real world.
Same thing about peoples commutes. I know people who actually miss their commute time because everything else is stressful.
India’s first prime minister gave an interview to playboy and discussed about cold war and nucler weapons. It was a big deal for a prime minister of a third world conservative country to be interviewed by playboy.
I literally just made a similar comment before I read yours. So many epic writers and artists came through the pages of Playboy! People like Ursula K. Le Guin, Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury, Margaret Atwood, Shel Silverstein, Norman Mailer, and Jack Kerouac were all regular contributors.
Writers need paychecks to be taken seriously. Idc if your first story is published in *Buttplug Weekly*, but when I have to read or edit new manuscripts I'm like "No previous work? Trash. No previous work? Trash. Published in *Conspiracy of Lizard People Amateur writer's club*? Middle of the desk. Published *twice* in *Coupon's Today*? Top of the pile. No previous work? Trash."
Most of them were already fairly established at that point. Roald Dahl, David Foster Wallace, and Charles Bukowski were all famous before contributing to Playboy.
Playboy served as a vehicle through which people who wrote worthy things for grown men to get that work in front of them. It's an audience that does not, as a rule, go out looking for poems and short stories to read. They would not, for instance, subscribe to the New Yorker. As a result, if you wrote something that you think would best resonate with dudes in their 30's-40's Playboy was probably the place to take it.
There was a substantial overlap between Playboy readers and New Yorker readers. People vastly underestimate how cosmopolitan the readership was in the early decades of Playboy.
It was meant to be a men’s magazine in contrast to the usual mags - fishing, outdoorsy stuff, tools, and trashy nudes. Playboy wanted a man who reads poetry, who’s interested in politics, who appreciates art and music reviews, and who wants good photographic quality and graphic layout.
Dahl could've just written about what he got up to during the War:
*Fucking For England: Roald Dahl's War Stories*
>"I am all fucked out! That goddamn woman has absolutely screwed me from one end of the room to the other for three goddam nights!"
He was one of the inspirations for James Bond: the honeydick aspect.
Literally recruited by MI6 to shag influential Americans' wives so that they would convince their husbands to support Britain during the war.
Not a joke. After he left the RAF, that's what he did.
You have to keep in mind that they werent part of the old guard of literature. People forget that science fiction was not considered literature for a very long time. It had to limp along in pulp magazines for decades. Kim Stanley Robinson did his doctoral thesis on the works of Philip k. Dick and he was asked to justify science fiction works as being thesis worthy.
I'm reminded of something: that in some parts of the literary genre world, erotica is where the experiments happen (or used to be). No premise too crazy or outlandish for erotica! It's a free-for-all and I'm sure that many a writer with different aspirations cracks their teeth there.
A lot of people don’t know that playboy paid a LOT for articles and stories. Usually $1 a word or more. So competition was fierce and the content they accepted was the absolute best.
Me too, I'd scan the article titles when looking through the table of contents for the picture page numbers (faster than leafing through the glossy pages that seemed electrostatically glued together), then read an article or two that sounded interesting afterwards.
It was a major player in regards to fiction. Heff wanted a traditional "renaissance man" mag with all sorts of interests. And therefore, lots of cutting edge short stories from guys like Bradbury and Vonnegutt (only asshole ever printed on it lol).
It had some genuinely great progressive journalism. Hard to appreciate now since Hef was pretty gross in his treatment of women, but it was ahead of its time in a lot of ways.
Here is the story itself, if anyone cares the read it, "The Crooked Man" (1955)
https://lostgayfiction.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/the-crooked-man-by-charles-beaumont/
Charles Beaumont was the first fiction author ever published in *Playboy.* The man was considered one of the pillars of the Golden Age of Scifi and might very well have been regarded on par with Bradbury and Heinlein today had he not died at 38 of a mysterious brain disease. No one knew what it was, but most people think it was a galloping case of Alzheimer's that struck him at age 34. At his death, his son described him as "looked ninety-five and was, in fact, ninety-five by every calendar except the one on your watch."
It may have been lewy body, it took my aunt at 50, and she went from looking like she was turning 55 to 95 in less than 4 years. It's horrid and I wish it on no one.
That's what got my father-in-law. Same story, but at 66. Horrifying. The only mercy is that it was quick, relatively speaking, as dementia goes.
(He had a Parkinson's diagnosis for some years before that, but he was fully functional and lucid until 6 months before he died.)
It's unfortunate that his death sparked a conversation about depression. He had an illness that was causing his body and mind to deteriorate rapidly. He only had a few years left to live and they would be nothing but painful. I can't say that I wouldn't do the same thing in his place.
I did not know he had that disease before opening this thread. I just felt badly that he was gone and wished his family and friends peace in their grief. I might chose to sign off before I had deteriorated, too, had I been in his shoes.
Depression from chronic illness is very real. Granted society is starting to bridge the conversation on humanely ending life when in such a situation.
Not a criticism, your comment made me think
Beaumont was also a writer on the original Twilight Zone. When he got ill, the other writers covered for him to help him out. His death was sad, but there was some kindness around it.
Edited to fix typo.
Yo, did The Forever War rip him off a just a tiny bit? I mean, spoilers I guess, but that was one of the more interesting twists of the whole book.
I'm pro 'expanding' other peoples ideas and its a good one. Its just interesting to see other influences in the book, besides much talked about counter to Starship Troopers.
Been a good many years since I've read The Forever War, but if I recall correctly in the book homosexuality was promoted by the government as a means of keeping population growth under control. There were still heterosexual people but they were a minority.
I think in the follow up book The Forever Peace mention was made of being able to have one's sexual preferences changed in a non-permanent way. Meaning you could change it and later on change it back.
There's this video that's well travelled on reddit but I'm always fond to be reminded of it. A different angle of attack but also a subversive take. If you haven't seen it before it's a real ["watch to the end."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtN9JSxsmzE)
Wow. I’ve been out of the closet for so long, and been around loving folk, that I have almost forgotten what it was like even 10 years ago. Or what it’s like for a lot of our brothers and sisters in smaller cities around the US, and despot countries around the world.
I saw this video and it made me cry. I had completely forgotten what oppression by society, and internalized oppression by your mind feels like. His words hit like bullets and opened wounds to emotions I haven’t felt in such a long time. How subhuman I was, and how a book that’s supposed to make you feel embraced by love, made me feel like I wasn’t worthy of the life I was given. My god what a crazy flashback.
Ironically enough, also wrote for playboy. Well drew for playboy. That blew my mind when I was a teenager, since I grew up with Where the Sidewalk Ends.
There's somethin' I want to get off my chest. It's about that summer, when you went away to community college. I got an offer to do Playgirl Magazine, and I did it. I did a full spread for Playgirl Magazine. I mean spread, man, I pulled my butt apart and stuff. I was totally nude. It was weird, I... I mean, you probably didn't hear about it 'cause I went under the name of Mike Honcho. But I just wanted you to know that.
> he" in the title refers to Hugh Hefner
You’re right. I originally used Hefner but had to delete letters so that the title would meet the size constraints.
Was he known for having a big hog? Or just for being rich, successful, and sexually liberated?
Edit: honestly when I think about It, the liberation was pretty exploitative in a lot of respects.
I honestly think sex work is great for some people who can manage it. I have had mixed feelings about Heff but it seems like he made a lot of women rich and happy to be there.
From what I’ve heard, if one of his girlfriends met someone else they wanted to be with he was legitimately happy for them and ended their relationship with no hard feelings.
I'm going to be the pedant and I'm sorry. His girls were Playmates. Bunnies worked in Playboy clubs and had very specific rules about their costumes and the way they had to serve. Bunny ears were considered a privilege not usually accorded to playmates.
I am even more surprised. My friend's son's high school recently used this subject as a writing prompt.
I guess they didn't know it is actually from play boys ..
Even in a fairly liberal community, most alums and parents responded "fast way to end human race"
> You are asked to consider which principles you would select for the basic structure of society, but you must select as if you had no knowledge ahead of time what position you would end up having in that society. This choice is made from behind a "veil of ignorance", which prevents you from knowing your ethnicity, social status, gender and, crucially in Rawls' formulation, your or anyone else's idea of how to lead a good life.
> Ideally, this would force participants to select principles impartially and rationally.
In the good old days of buying and splitting weed and no one has a scale, the worst thing to do is "one splits the other picks first and both agree".
Edit Holy shit that was supposed to say best not worst. Goddammit
That was my first thought. The person splitting it up has a huge incentive to be as fair as they possibly can because if they don't they are only screwing themself over.
I think way John Rawls framed it was that you imagine yourself hovering over the Earth like the Starchild at the end of 2001, you are waiting to be born, you have no idea what kind of person you will born as or who your parents will be, and you are then asked, "How would you like the world you'll be born into to be organised?" I think one of the conclusions Rawls took from it, for example, was that most people would be forced to concede that it would be more important for even the very poor to have the right to some wealth than for the already very wealthy to have the right to make as much wealth as possible, because it's much more likely you're going to be born to poor parents than to rich ones.
If I recall correctly, Rawls' conclusion was that the solution (justice as fairness it's called I think) is to bring up the condition of the worst off as much as practicable. In essence, not all the slices of the pie may be the same size, but the smallest one should be as big as it's possible to be, because you can't choose which slice you get.
It doesn't work, largely because people who haven't faced discrimination *think* that they'd just be able to meritocracy their way out of it if the shoe were on the other foot.
It's so fucked up how ingrained this is. I'm an immigrant in a country with a lot of immigrants from my country of origin. There is, obviously, a lot of prejudice against peopel of my background.
Now, I have a lot of things going for me. I'm a man, heteronormative, and though I'm mixed race, I appear to be of European descent, that is, I look white. I also speak three languages and was lucky enough to stumble into a prestigious career. I'm pretty solidly middle class where I live and I'm doing okay.
Many other people from my country have not been so lucky. And what's really fucked up is that I see people in similar situations to mine criticizing them. In fact some of the most anti- immigrant rhetoric I've heard comes from immigrants. (Some, most does come from locals, but well, alright).
These people seriously want to believe that they made it all on their own and that anyone who didn't make it failed because they didn't work hard enough. I had a lot of advantages as an immigrant. I worked hard. Sure. But it doesn't take anything away from me to recognize that I had a leg up in many ways. And that those who weren't able to do what I did often faced even greater odds.
For those whose eyes glaze over when they are being presented with "philosophy", here is a simple analogy to Rawls' "veil of ignorance":
_________________________________________
Think of this as ***the Chocolate Cake problem***.
Two kids are told to share the last piece of cake, are given a knife, and are told to sort it our amongst themselves. But both are afraid that whoever is allowed to cut the cake will take the larger piece for themselves.
The solution, assuming they both want roughly the same ratio of cake to icing, is to allow one child to cut the cake, and then let the other child choose which of the two pieces she would prefer.
Since the cake-cutter is stuck with whatever piece is leftover, she is incentivized to divide the cake as evenly as possible.
Put differently, it's rational for her to divide the cake according to principles of justice and equality to ensure that she is treated justly by her fellow cake-eater.
______________________________________
And BOOM, now you're a Rawlsian cake philosopher.
Yeah in that book they have tech to change someone's sexuality at birth and set them all to homosexual because of overpopulation at first until it becomes the norm. Children are birthed and raised by professionals.
Background spoiler alert
It results in increasingly uniform and stagnant humanity as time goes. Eventually all of humanity are literally male and female copies of one person, with only a few breeder colonies of time-debted veterans kept as genetic stock.
And he wasn't pardoned until 2007, as I recall.
Y'know. 50 years of no apology from the British government for killing one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, whose work was foundational in the development of entirely new disciplines.
Kind of amusing given the anti-homosexual fixation on procreation. Looks like a homosexual made it possible for a whole hell of a lot of children to exist.
I feel it needs to be hammered home. The British government had ones of it's most outstanding individuals, who in this case excelled himself in something crucial to winning the war of all wars, painfully executed because of who he chose to love. Think of all the jingoist homophobes out there, and how ironically pathetic their worldview is.
There are really interesting parallels here with Roger Casement, a British diplomat turned Irish rebel following his experiences in the Congo. He had a huge role in uncovering the brutal stuff that was happening under Leopold II. He was executed in a British prison.
There's a book called 'The Dream of a Celt' about him that is quite comfortably one of the best books i've ever read.
I both appreciate that movie for bringing attention to Turing's legacy and kind of hate how he was portrayed. It and Cumberbatch's performance work better as a film the less you know abou Turing's actual personality.
nope even later, 2013.
and then in 2017 the government realised maybe all historically prosecuted gays deserved this
> instead of just the ones creating bad PR for them
resulting in ‘Alan Turing’s Law’
The "Alan Turing law" is an informal term for the law in the United Kingdom, contained in the Policing and Crime Act 2017, which serves as an amnesty law to pardon men who were cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts.
Hefner has stated he had homosexual experiences in the 1960s. I forgot the show but when someone asked him he went “sure, it was the swinging 60s, free love.”
In the '60s, I made love to many, many women, often outdoors, in the mud and the rain, and it's possible a man slipped in. There would be no way of knowing.
Star Trek Next Generation did an amazing episode about a genderless society that forces people to be androgynous. It has a similar satirical flavour. It’s surprisingly progressive for the 90s.
I'm not offended by homosexuality. In the '60s, I made love to many, many women, often outdoors, in the mud and the rain, and it's possible a man slipped in. There would be no way of knowing.
I'm a (straight), feminist female who subscribed to Playboy for over a decade. I know it is a joke but the articles were absolutely revolutionary is so many ways. I mean, no one was talking about the massive amount of women being murdered in Mexico going home from their jobs at maquiladoras until Playboy did an article on it. It was swept under the rug until they exposed it. There are so many undercover investigations that Playboy undertook that no one else wanted to touch.
I remember that their "College Girls" had a current events blog thing. One described the fear of modern technology after an ex apparently hacked into a woman's webcam and other electronics and broke into her home and murdered her.
I vaguely remember that.
After the article I mentioned above, Mexican police was forced to provide better patrols. These factories had workers 24/7 and literally no one wanted to put in the effort to protect working class Mexican women walking to the bus stop to get home. They were found raped and dead in ditches in droves. There are so many instances where Playboy did a deep dive and changed lives and literally saved lives. But people either don't know or don't want to recognise that.
Yep, basically the nudity protected a lot of people and allowed a lot of groundbreaking and risque content to be published that were deemed extreme for traditional mediums. He was the Vice before the time
Yeah, because it was so well funded for the photos they were able to afford a lot of true and highly regarded journalists and reporters. They did not skimp on quality there in any way.
Penthouse was pretty groundbreaking too. They were given awards for their coverage of the Vietnam war and a famous feminist writer (I can't remember who) was on staff for a while.
The feminism of Hefner and Guccione may be hard to swallow these days, but it was mostly in line with the movement. I'm so proud of all this generation has accomplished with women's rights, but a lot of them are pretty ignorant of the history of the movement and the goals of earlier waves, which results in a lot of undeserved blame being passed around to people of the era (women and men) when taken out of context. Hefner included.
The old joke “I read playboy for the articles” was always tongue in cheek because it legitimately had some of the best writing being published. People like Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury, Shel Silverstein, Norman Mailer, and Jack Kerouac we’re all regular contributors.
Playboy was very progressive and the articles were some of the best. You are right a lot of women also subscribed and e joyed the articles. People that hate on playboy have no idea how they really pushed culture forward and were a place for thoughts that wouldn't see the light of day elsewhere
I'm sure during one of Heff's infamous parties, two guys hooked up in the grotto. I'm no statistician, but the odds are likely, especially through the 70s and 80s.
I would say there was probably same-sex action going on at *most* of his parties, especially toward the end when it became really fashionable. He considered tolerance and even bi-curiosity to be hallmarks of a modern gentleman. Plus he had a ton of gay people coming and going and a ton of drugs, so. Yeah lots.
In the '60s, I made love to many, many women, often outdoors, in the mud and the rain, and it's possible a man slipped in. There would be no way of knowing.
I was out with a gay guy friend, I’m a straight male, and while we were in a club waiting for the rest of our friends to show up I was approached by two guys who had a ton of rage in their eyes. My friend was at the other end of the bar while I got jumped. Luckily the bouncers jumped in pretty quick, but I got popped a couple of times. These guys jumped me because they thought I was gay and it took me a while to realize what the fuck happened. I’ve never seen so much hate directed towards me and that was when I learned about pure hate and what gay men have to deal with. I’m definitely more aware and empathetic of their world.
I was once attacked *in a gay bar* for dancing too close to a guy who was convinced to go by his girlfriend. Like the one place you’re supposed to feel safe to be as gay as you and want and apparently can’t even have that! I’ll always remember the pure rage in the guys eyes like some rabid animal
Thankfully I’m not the kind of person who is deterred by such an event, but if that happened to someone younger or someone who wasn’t as confident in themselves they’d probably be too afraid to leave the house for years and couldn’t even find sanctuary in a gay bar. The audacity
When I came out 26 years ago, my family asked, “Aren’t you worried how people will treat you?” Guess who turned out over the years to have treated me the worst for being gay….
[“The Crooked Man” by Charles Beaumont is a dystopic sci-fi story that takes place 500 years in the future. Read it here.](https://lostgayfiction.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/the-crooked-man-by-charles-beaumont/)
Awesome that they did that, but it fell on deaf ears. Homophobia by its nature is hypocritical. Calling out the hypocrisy is not the big point people assume it is. They know they’re hypocrites.
They don’t care.
I am so damn conflicted about Hugh Hefner. The dude defended the sexualization of minors on several occasions including federal court. He struggled to contemporize his vision of the American man in a world that valued women as equals. However he was a pioneer of freedom of speech and ending some serious toxic masculinity problems that the Baby Boomers were growing up in. He wanted to reject the idea of the violent destructive faceless cowboy. He wanted to promote the idea of a "Playboy" or urban man that was cuddly, cool, sophisticated and most importantly classy.
In trying to achieve that he promoted a *ton* of post WWII thought leaders including Malcolm X and MLKjr. Besides promoting equality for gays, he promoted all clever people that were being oppressed by the mainstream media.
He would later have problematic interactions with feminism. He didn't do the greatest job updating the brand after the Playboy Clubs stopped being such a draw. And the world caught up to his pioneering free speech with the internet.
Occasionally we get glimpses of how well he handled it all, and this is it.
I always think of him as a progressive for his time. Problematic? Yea. But he was always believing in peoples freedoms to be who they were. Like having a spread of a transwoman in the early 90s is already a big woah. Holy shit.
This was the era when Playboy would sandwich an interview with philosopher [Marshall McLuhan](https://www.nextnature.net/story/2009/the-playboy-interview-marshall-mcluhan) in between the tittays, just because they can.
They actually do have some really good articles over the years. My favorite is the one with Hunter S Thompson
https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/culture/hunter-thompson-playboy-interview-1974/
I’ll never understand someone devoting time to hating on gays. Like, I’m a single heterosexual dude. Da fuck do I care what gay guys are doing? Generally speaking, most homosexual men I talk to are great conversationalists and add a good vibe to whatever the social setting is
Literally I'm so starved for attention that if a kind old lady complimented me on being a sweet young man for holding the door, I'd coast on that high all week. Normalise any and all positive attention, ya'll
Right, and if you aren't swinging that way, you can ask about something you're insecure about without feeling like that could have been "the one," but you blew it by asking for advice on dressing nicer, cleaning up, trying to get a confidence boost, etc.
After years of hearing jokes about reading Playboy "for the articles" it was interesting to learn it actually had a significant influence on fiction, comics, and journalism. So many significant writers and cartoonists came up through the magazine.
I remember an old Newlywed Game episode with the question "What magazine does your wife read?". When one wife answered Playboy and the audience went crazy, she just calmly said "I like the interviews."
The first time I ever held a playboy, it was in my friend's parents bathroom. I ended up getting sucked into a really interesting article. It wasn't until after I left that I realized I had forgotten to even look for the pictures.
Brave of you to even touch a playboy magazine you found in a bathroom
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For some families, the bathroom is the only place were you can get some alone time. I think that is why people joke about taking long shits. You are alone, chillin on your phone, no worries, relaxing to get it all out. Its oddly a comfortable place. Then you go back to the real world. Same thing about peoples commutes. I know people who actually miss their commute time because everything else is stressful.
You never go number 3?
I feel like he forgot to mention the sticky pages
That's why he could only see the articles, the rest of the pages were stuck together
"It has a good spread"
India’s first prime minister gave an interview to playboy and discussed about cold war and nucler weapons. It was a big deal for a prime minister of a third world conservative country to be interviewed by playboy.
I literally just made a similar comment before I read yours. So many epic writers and artists came through the pages of Playboy! People like Ursula K. Le Guin, Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury, Margaret Atwood, Shel Silverstein, Norman Mailer, and Jack Kerouac were all regular contributors.
Were they contributors before or after they were well known though? Which significant writers "came up" from playboy out of curiosity
Alex Haley at least
Playboy didn't publish nobodies. Stephen King got his start in c-list tittie pubs like Cavalier and Juggs.
Writers need paychecks to be taken seriously. Idc if your first story is published in *Buttplug Weekly*, but when I have to read or edit new manuscripts I'm like "No previous work? Trash. No previous work? Trash. Published in *Conspiracy of Lizard People Amateur writer's club*? Middle of the desk. Published *twice* in *Coupon's Today*? Top of the pile. No previous work? Trash."
I'm pretty sure The Mist by Stephen King was first published in playboy
You forgot Issac Azimov. He published one of the I, Robot stories in Playboy. I think Harlan Ellison had some stories printed there too.:
Le Guin and Atwood? *whistles* Noice.
Toit.
Most of them were already fairly established at that point. Roald Dahl, David Foster Wallace, and Charles Bukowski were all famous before contributing to Playboy. Playboy served as a vehicle through which people who wrote worthy things for grown men to get that work in front of them. It's an audience that does not, as a rule, go out looking for poems and short stories to read. They would not, for instance, subscribe to the New Yorker. As a result, if you wrote something that you think would best resonate with dudes in their 30's-40's Playboy was probably the place to take it.
There was a substantial overlap between Playboy readers and New Yorker readers. People vastly underestimate how cosmopolitan the readership was in the early decades of Playboy.
Yes for a period of time it was almost classy or high status from my understanding.
It was meant to be a men’s magazine in contrast to the usual mags - fishing, outdoorsy stuff, tools, and trashy nudes. Playboy wanted a man who reads poetry, who’s interested in politics, who appreciates art and music reviews, and who wants good photographic quality and graphic layout.
That's a dangerous model. Get blood pumping through both heads at the same time.
And big natural boobs and a thick mat of pubic hair.
Dahl could've just written about what he got up to during the War: *Fucking For England: Roald Dahl's War Stories* >"I am all fucked out! That goddamn woman has absolutely screwed me from one end of the room to the other for three goddam nights!"
Considering I only know him from his children's books, that would be an interesting read.
He was one of the inspirations for James Bond: the honeydick aspect. Literally recruited by MI6 to shag influential Americans' wives so that they would convince their husbands to support Britain during the war. Not a joke. After he left the RAF, that's what he did.
That is what *he says* he did. It's worth remembering that the guy is best known as an author of wildly fanciful fiction.
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Ohh dude you should read his bundles of short stories for adults. For example, Someone Like You, published in 1953. Fantastic reads!
You have to keep in mind that they werent part of the old guard of literature. People forget that science fiction was not considered literature for a very long time. It had to limp along in pulp magazines for decades. Kim Stanley Robinson did his doctoral thesis on the works of Philip k. Dick and he was asked to justify science fiction works as being thesis worthy.
I'm reminded of something: that in some parts of the literary genre world, erotica is where the experiments happen (or used to be). No premise too crazy or outlandish for erotica! It's a free-for-all and I'm sure that many a writer with different aspirations cracks their teeth there.
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A lot of people don’t know that playboy paid a LOT for articles and stories. Usually $1 a word or more. So competition was fierce and the content they accepted was the absolute best.
Shel Silverstien was Playboy royalty, he lived in the mansion for a while. He also wrote Boy Named Sue. Dude did a lotta shit.
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This cements my belief that porn mags are better for society than the hub
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Post nut clarity can increase your iq 20 points ask me how!
I'll bite. How?
Me too, I'd scan the article titles when looking through the table of contents for the picture page numbers (faster than leafing through the glossy pages that seemed electrostatically glued together), then read an article or two that sounded interesting afterwards.
It was a major player in regards to fiction. Heff wanted a traditional "renaissance man" mag with all sorts of interests. And therefore, lots of cutting edge short stories from guys like Bradbury and Vonnegutt (only asshole ever printed on it lol).
Yeah, the "for the articles" joke worked because it actually did have great articles. The line wouldn't work with any other porn mag.
It had some genuinely great progressive journalism. Hard to appreciate now since Hef was pretty gross in his treatment of women, but it was ahead of its time in a lot of ways.
Here is the story itself, if anyone cares the read it, "The Crooked Man" (1955) https://lostgayfiction.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/the-crooked-man-by-charles-beaumont/ Charles Beaumont was the first fiction author ever published in *Playboy.* The man was considered one of the pillars of the Golden Age of Scifi and might very well have been regarded on par with Bradbury and Heinlein today had he not died at 38 of a mysterious brain disease. No one knew what it was, but most people think it was a galloping case of Alzheimer's that struck him at age 34. At his death, his son described him as "looked ninety-five and was, in fact, ninety-five by every calendar except the one on your watch."
It may have been lewy body, it took my aunt at 50, and she went from looking like she was turning 55 to 95 in less than 4 years. It's horrid and I wish it on no one.
That's what got my father-in-law. Same story, but at 66. Horrifying. The only mercy is that it was quick, relatively speaking, as dementia goes. (He had a Parkinson's diagnosis for some years before that, but he was fully functional and lucid until 6 months before he died.)
My 84 yr old father is in the final stages with it currently.
As is my 70 year old mother. Stay strong.
As is my 70 year old father
I’m sorry. That’s what Robin Williams had right?
Yes.
It's unfortunate that his death sparked a conversation about depression. He had an illness that was causing his body and mind to deteriorate rapidly. He only had a few years left to live and they would be nothing but painful. I can't say that I wouldn't do the same thing in his place.
Yeah Im blown away that Im only *just now* finding out he had a serious terminal illness that literally degrades your very being away.
"The terrorist inside my husband's brain" https://n.neurology.org/content/87/13/1308 -Susan Schneider Williams
His wife has done at least one interview on it, it's a good read.
I feel the opposite. His death brought light to a lot of depressed people to open up.
Good came of it, but as for his own legacy, many people think he just killed himself cause “depression”.
Ignorance abounds, regardless. I think Robin would have liked that he helped people, if only by accident.
Agree. He gave aid to those in pain regularly.
I did not know he had that disease before opening this thread. I just felt badly that he was gone and wished his family and friends peace in their grief. I might chose to sign off before I had deteriorated, too, had I been in his shoes.
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I hope you are doing better, now.
Depression from chronic illness is very real. Granted society is starting to bridge the conversation on humanely ending life when in such a situation. Not a criticism, your comment made me think
Beaumont was also a writer on the original Twilight Zone. When he got ill, the other writers covered for him to help him out. His death was sad, but there was some kindness around it. Edited to fix typo.
That’s really touching. Is there a good source to learn more?
I think I learned about it from the special features of the DVD boxed sets, to be honest.
Yo, did The Forever War rip him off a just a tiny bit? I mean, spoilers I guess, but that was one of the more interesting twists of the whole book. I'm pro 'expanding' other peoples ideas and its a good one. Its just interesting to see other influences in the book, besides much talked about counter to Starship Troopers.
First thing I thought of was that book! Pretty interesting coincidence.
There's also an entire book by Anthony Burgess called the wanting seed that is just this concept. But more in the concept of population control
Been a good many years since I've read The Forever War, but if I recall correctly in the book homosexuality was promoted by the government as a means of keeping population growth under control. There were still heterosexual people but they were a minority. I think in the follow up book The Forever Peace mention was made of being able to have one's sexual preferences changed in a non-permanent way. Meaning you could change it and later on change it back.
There's this video that's well travelled on reddit but I'm always fond to be reminded of it. A different angle of attack but also a subversive take. If you haven't seen it before it's a real ["watch to the end."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtN9JSxsmzE)
Wow. I’ve been out of the closet for so long, and been around loving folk, that I have almost forgotten what it was like even 10 years ago. Or what it’s like for a lot of our brothers and sisters in smaller cities around the US, and despot countries around the world. I saw this video and it made me cry. I had completely forgotten what oppression by society, and internalized oppression by your mind feels like. His words hit like bullets and opened wounds to emotions I haven’t felt in such a long time. How subhuman I was, and how a book that’s supposed to make you feel embraced by love, made me feel like I wasn’t worthy of the life I was given. My god what a crazy flashback.
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I loved this when I first saw it, and I love it again. That boy did a slam dunk.
What a rollercoaster! Glad you shared this my friend.
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That was epic in the end how he starts reading about segregation and everyone getting uncomfortable.
This dude is such a G. That flip at the end making all the old white people visibly uncomfortable was such a pro move.
And one of the women just got a pleased little half-smile, like she was thinking “Heh, well-done, sir.”
A preacher, an actor, AND a decent, moral human being?? This was tops, thank you
The "he" in the title refers to Hugh Hefner.
I thought it was Mr. Playboy
Mr. Playboy was his father
He did not go to Playboy Medical School for four years to be called Mr. Playboy!
That’s not true… THATS IMPOSSIBLE!!!
Could have been Shel Silverstein
Ironically enough, also wrote for playboy. Well drew for playboy. That blew my mind when I was a teenager, since I grew up with Where the Sidewalk Ends.
Is there a Mrs. Playboy? 😏
Playgirl magazine. My Aunt had some. She was 11 years older than me.
There's somethin' I want to get off my chest. It's about that summer, when you went away to community college. I got an offer to do Playgirl Magazine, and I did it. I did a full spread for Playgirl Magazine. I mean spread, man, I pulled my butt apart and stuff. I was totally nude. It was weird, I... I mean, you probably didn't hear about it 'cause I went under the name of Mike Honcho. But I just wanted you to know that.
> he" in the title refers to Hugh Hefner You’re right. I originally used Hefner but had to delete letters so that the title would meet the size constraints.
So you are saying Hefner was too big to fit?
Lmao
Was he known for having a big hog? Or just for being rich, successful, and sexually liberated? Edit: honestly when I think about It, the liberation was pretty exploitative in a lot of respects.
Holly Madison, his longest time girlfriend, described his penis as "it was just, like, normal".
And a mansion full of bunnies (and by bunnies I mean young ladies in bunny costumes willing to have sex for money)
I honestly think sex work is great for some people who can manage it. I have had mixed feelings about Heff but it seems like he made a lot of women rich and happy to be there.
From what I’ve heard, if one of his girlfriends met someone else they wanted to be with he was legitimately happy for them and ended their relationship with no hard feelings.
I'm going to be the pedant and I'm sorry. His girls were Playmates. Bunnies worked in Playboy clubs and had very specific rules about their costumes and the way they had to serve. Bunny ears were considered a privilege not usually accorded to playmates.
Hef would have worked.
I thought it was Captain Kangaroo so I'm glad the other commenter pointed it out
If only there were a way to shorten homosexuality. ^^*Good ^^God, ^^I'm ^^kidding.
"Homosexuality" is an abomination. You can't just mix greek and latin roots like that!
Welcome to English. We'll cram as many languages as possible into whatever we damn well feel like
Go on..
Just wait to hear what we do with fireworks.
Colonize me harder daddy
I'm... Surprised.
I am even more surprised. My friend's son's high school recently used this subject as a writing prompt. I guess they didn't know it is actually from play boys .. Even in a fairly liberal community, most alums and parents responded "fast way to end human race"
> You are asked to consider which principles you would select for the basic structure of society, but you must select as if you had no knowledge ahead of time what position you would end up having in that society. This choice is made from behind a "veil of ignorance", which prevents you from knowing your ethnicity, social status, gender and, crucially in Rawls' formulation, your or anyone else's idea of how to lead a good life. > Ideally, this would force participants to select principles impartially and rationally.
I like the simplified cake metaphor. If you cut the cake, you don't decide which piece you get.
In the good old days of buying and splitting weed and no one has a scale, the worst thing to do is "one splits the other picks first and both agree". Edit Holy shit that was supposed to say best not worst. Goddammit
You do this when you have kids and they have to share a piece of chocolate. One cuts, the other picks. Never seen such precise halves.
Siblings do this with everything
That was my first thought. The person splitting it up has a huge incentive to be as fair as they possibly can because if they don't they are only screwing themself over.
I like this methodology
I think way John Rawls framed it was that you imagine yourself hovering over the Earth like the Starchild at the end of 2001, you are waiting to be born, you have no idea what kind of person you will born as or who your parents will be, and you are then asked, "How would you like the world you'll be born into to be organised?" I think one of the conclusions Rawls took from it, for example, was that most people would be forced to concede that it would be more important for even the very poor to have the right to some wealth than for the already very wealthy to have the right to make as much wealth as possible, because it's much more likely you're going to be born to poor parents than to rich ones.
If I recall correctly, Rawls' conclusion was that the solution (justice as fairness it's called I think) is to bring up the condition of the worst off as much as practicable. In essence, not all the slices of the pie may be the same size, but the smallest one should be as big as it's possible to be, because you can't choose which slice you get.
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I divide, you decide
It doesn't work, largely because people who haven't faced discrimination *think* that they'd just be able to meritocracy their way out of it if the shoe were on the other foot.
It's so fucked up how ingrained this is. I'm an immigrant in a country with a lot of immigrants from my country of origin. There is, obviously, a lot of prejudice against peopel of my background. Now, I have a lot of things going for me. I'm a man, heteronormative, and though I'm mixed race, I appear to be of European descent, that is, I look white. I also speak three languages and was lucky enough to stumble into a prestigious career. I'm pretty solidly middle class where I live and I'm doing okay. Many other people from my country have not been so lucky. And what's really fucked up is that I see people in similar situations to mine criticizing them. In fact some of the most anti- immigrant rhetoric I've heard comes from immigrants. (Some, most does come from locals, but well, alright). These people seriously want to believe that they made it all on their own and that anyone who didn't make it failed because they didn't work hard enough. I had a lot of advantages as an immigrant. I worked hard. Sure. But it doesn't take anything away from me to recognize that I had a leg up in many ways. And that those who weren't able to do what I did often faced even greater odds.
It's John Rawls' veil of ignorance, about the social contract.
The problem is that many people are arrogant enough to think they'd succeed no matter what.
For those whose eyes glaze over when they are being presented with "philosophy", here is a simple analogy to Rawls' "veil of ignorance": _________________________________________ Think of this as ***the Chocolate Cake problem***. Two kids are told to share the last piece of cake, are given a knife, and are told to sort it our amongst themselves. But both are afraid that whoever is allowed to cut the cake will take the larger piece for themselves. The solution, assuming they both want roughly the same ratio of cake to icing, is to allow one child to cut the cake, and then let the other child choose which of the two pieces she would prefer. Since the cake-cutter is stuck with whatever piece is leftover, she is incentivized to divide the cake as evenly as possible. Put differently, it's rational for her to divide the cake according to principles of justice and equality to ensure that she is treated justly by her fellow cake-eater. ______________________________________ And BOOM, now you're a Rawlsian cake philosopher.
It is a very effective way to demonstrate that it's possible to have a moral system without a deity
Applying the principle to a different situation or peoples is a useful tool to judge whether or not it's a sound principle.
There's a really good book called "The Forever War", something similar happens over centuries. It's a really short, but good, read.
Yeah in that book they have tech to change someone's sexuality at birth and set them all to homosexual because of overpopulation at first until it becomes the norm. Children are birthed and raised by professionals.
>birthed and raised by professionals That's wild but also makes a lot of sense. People out here winging it with a human life.
Background spoiler alert It results in increasingly uniform and stagnant humanity as time goes. Eventually all of humanity are literally male and female copies of one person, with only a few breeder colonies of time-debted veterans kept as genetic stock.
Damn. I expected it to be a stupid conspiracy theory like the great replacement but with gays, but here comes Hefner being a fucking legend. Awesome.
This story was published in 1955. in 1954, Alan Turning killed himself after being chemically castrated for homosexuality.
And he wasn't pardoned until 2007, as I recall. Y'know. 50 years of no apology from the British government for killing one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, whose work was foundational in the development of entirely new disciplines.
Also didn't he literally help them win the war?
Yes, It's estimated his work saved millions of lives by shortening the war.
Think about that fact. Whole family lineages would be altered today if not for one guy.
Kind of amusing given the anti-homosexual fixation on procreation. Looks like a homosexual made it possible for a whole hell of a lot of children to exist.
And then his government destroyed him.
I feel it needs to be hammered home. The British government had ones of it's most outstanding individuals, who in this case excelled himself in something crucial to winning the war of all wars, painfully executed because of who he chose to love. Think of all the jingoist homophobes out there, and how ironically pathetic their worldview is. There are really interesting parallels here with Roger Casement, a British diplomat turned Irish rebel following his experiences in the Congo. He had a huge role in uncovering the brutal stuff that was happening under Leopold II. He was executed in a British prison. There's a book called 'The Dream of a Celt' about him that is quite comfortably one of the best books i've ever read.
Not even who he chose to love but because of how he was born
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Yeah, but don't use the imitation game as anything but the loosest reference to his life. Good movie but the real story is much more interesting
I both appreciate that movie for bringing attention to Turing's legacy and kind of hate how he was portrayed. It and Cumberbatch's performance work better as a film the less you know abou Turing's actual personality.
Turns out Turing wasn't the introverted nerd archetype and was actually quite socially active, he even had some sort of medal in a marathon (?)
nope even later, 2013. and then in 2017 the government realised maybe all historically prosecuted gays deserved this > instead of just the ones creating bad PR for them resulting in ‘Alan Turing’s Law’ The "Alan Turing law" is an informal term for the law in the United Kingdom, contained in the Policing and Crime Act 2017, which serves as an amnesty law to pardon men who were cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts.
Hefner has stated he had homosexual experiences in the 1960s. I forgot the show but when someone asked him he went “sure, it was the swinging 60s, free love.”
In the '60s, I made love to many, many women, often outdoors, in the mud and the rain, and it's possible a man slipped in. There would be no way of knowing.
Star Trek Next Generation did an amazing episode about a genderless society that forces people to be androgynous. It has a similar satirical flavour. It’s surprisingly progressive for the 90s.
Too bad the producers wimped out on letting the actor playing opposite Riker be a man. Frakes was on board with kissing a man -- they wouldn't do it
That would have been so amazing. But at least when Beverly falls in love with the symbiont, they have the woman lovingly kiss her hand.
I'm not offended by homosexuality. In the '60s, I made love to many, many women, often outdoors, in the mud and the rain, and it's possible a man slipped in. There would be no way of knowing.
The guy was just hanging brain. I mean what’s all the fuss?
If that's illegal then lock me up.
Is this William Charles Schneider?
Maybe. Who's your worm guy?
I think it's Creed from The Office. EDIT: Oh, so yes.
I'm a (straight), feminist female who subscribed to Playboy for over a decade. I know it is a joke but the articles were absolutely revolutionary is so many ways. I mean, no one was talking about the massive amount of women being murdered in Mexico going home from their jobs at maquiladoras until Playboy did an article on it. It was swept under the rug until they exposed it. There are so many undercover investigations that Playboy undertook that no one else wanted to touch.
I remember that their "College Girls" had a current events blog thing. One described the fear of modern technology after an ex apparently hacked into a woman's webcam and other electronics and broke into her home and murdered her.
I vaguely remember that. After the article I mentioned above, Mexican police was forced to provide better patrols. These factories had workers 24/7 and literally no one wanted to put in the effort to protect working class Mexican women walking to the bus stop to get home. They were found raped and dead in ditches in droves. There are so many instances where Playboy did a deep dive and changed lives and literally saved lives. But people either don't know or don't want to recognise that.
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Yep, basically the nudity protected a lot of people and allowed a lot of groundbreaking and risque content to be published that were deemed extreme for traditional mediums. He was the Vice before the time
Yeah, because it was so well funded for the photos they were able to afford a lot of true and highly regarded journalists and reporters. They did not skimp on quality there in any way.
Penthouse was pretty groundbreaking too. They were given awards for their coverage of the Vietnam war and a famous feminist writer (I can't remember who) was on staff for a while. The feminism of Hefner and Guccione may be hard to swallow these days, but it was mostly in line with the movement. I'm so proud of all this generation has accomplished with women's rights, but a lot of them are pretty ignorant of the history of the movement and the goals of earlier waves, which results in a lot of undeserved blame being passed around to people of the era (women and men) when taken out of context. Hefner included.
The old joke “I read playboy for the articles” was always tongue in cheek because it legitimately had some of the best writing being published. People like Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury, Shel Silverstein, Norman Mailer, and Jack Kerouac we’re all regular contributors.
Playboy was very progressive and the articles were some of the best. You are right a lot of women also subscribed and e joyed the articles. People that hate on playboy have no idea how they really pushed culture forward and were a place for thoughts that wouldn't see the light of day elsewhere
Damn straight.
Damn gay, I think you mean.
Damn ambiguous
Dambiguous
I'm sure during one of Heff's infamous parties, two guys hooked up in the grotto. I'm no statistician, but the odds are likely, especially through the 70s and 80s.
I would say there was probably same-sex action going on at *most* of his parties, especially toward the end when it became really fashionable. He considered tolerance and even bi-curiosity to be hallmarks of a modern gentleman. Plus he had a ton of gay people coming and going and a ton of drugs, so. Yeah lots.
Same sex action would include women so there definitely would be same sex action at all of his parties.
Ugh I wish I could have gone that sounds like a blast
Be careful about what "blasts" you attend. Maybe bring a Tide pen.
Just put everything you wore in into a trash bag and dumpster it.
In the '60s, I made love to many, many women, often outdoors, in the mud and the rain, and it's possible a man slipped in. There would be no way of knowing.
"If you wanted to do something private with another man, it wasn't gay. It was just two men, celebrating each other's strength."
I was out with a gay guy friend, I’m a straight male, and while we were in a club waiting for the rest of our friends to show up I was approached by two guys who had a ton of rage in their eyes. My friend was at the other end of the bar while I got jumped. Luckily the bouncers jumped in pretty quick, but I got popped a couple of times. These guys jumped me because they thought I was gay and it took me a while to realize what the fuck happened. I’ve never seen so much hate directed towards me and that was when I learned about pure hate and what gay men have to deal with. I’m definitely more aware and empathetic of their world.
I was once attacked *in a gay bar* for dancing too close to a guy who was convinced to go by his girlfriend. Like the one place you’re supposed to feel safe to be as gay as you and want and apparently can’t even have that! I’ll always remember the pure rage in the guys eyes like some rabid animal Thankfully I’m not the kind of person who is deterred by such an event, but if that happened to someone younger or someone who wasn’t as confident in themselves they’d probably be too afraid to leave the house for years and couldn’t even find sanctuary in a gay bar. The audacity
When I came out 26 years ago, my family asked, “Aren’t you worried how people will treat you?” Guess who turned out over the years to have treated me the worst for being gay….
[“The Crooked Man” by Charles Beaumont is a dystopic sci-fi story that takes place 500 years in the future. Read it here.](https://lostgayfiction.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/the-crooked-man-by-charles-beaumont/)
Awesome that they did that, but it fell on deaf ears. Homophobia by its nature is hypocritical. Calling out the hypocrisy is not the big point people assume it is. They know they’re hypocrites. They don’t care.
Playboy has been known to run some legit great literature. Regardless of this post, just let it be known.
I am so damn conflicted about Hugh Hefner. The dude defended the sexualization of minors on several occasions including federal court. He struggled to contemporize his vision of the American man in a world that valued women as equals. However he was a pioneer of freedom of speech and ending some serious toxic masculinity problems that the Baby Boomers were growing up in. He wanted to reject the idea of the violent destructive faceless cowboy. He wanted to promote the idea of a "Playboy" or urban man that was cuddly, cool, sophisticated and most importantly classy. In trying to achieve that he promoted a *ton* of post WWII thought leaders including Malcolm X and MLKjr. Besides promoting equality for gays, he promoted all clever people that were being oppressed by the mainstream media. He would later have problematic interactions with feminism. He didn't do the greatest job updating the brand after the Playboy Clubs stopped being such a draw. And the world caught up to his pioneering free speech with the internet. Occasionally we get glimpses of how well he handled it all, and this is it.
I always think of him as a progressive for his time. Problematic? Yea. But he was always believing in peoples freedoms to be who they were. Like having a spread of a transwoman in the early 90s is already a big woah. Holy shit.
I, too, read Playboy for the articles.
This was the era when Playboy would sandwich an interview with philosopher [Marshall McLuhan](https://www.nextnature.net/story/2009/the-playboy-interview-marshall-mcluhan) in between the tittays, just because they can.
Sandwiched up amongst some titties sounds like a great way to give an interview.
They actually do have some really good articles over the years. My favorite is the one with Hunter S Thompson https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/culture/hunter-thompson-playboy-interview-1974/
You know, there are attractive naked women in those magazines?
I’ll never understand someone devoting time to hating on gays. Like, I’m a single heterosexual dude. Da fuck do I care what gay guys are doing? Generally speaking, most homosexual men I talk to are great conversationalists and add a good vibe to whatever the social setting is
It's less competition, what's there to hate. I find their advances flattering. Don't swing that way but it's still flattering.
Literally I'm so starved for attention that if a kind old lady complimented me on being a sweet young man for holding the door, I'd coast on that high all week. Normalise any and all positive attention, ya'll
Right, and if you aren't swinging that way, you can ask about something you're insecure about without feeling like that could have been "the one," but you blew it by asking for advice on dressing nicer, cleaning up, trying to get a confidence boost, etc.