Obviously it’s personal prejudice. What, you think “being creepy” was suddenly enshrined into law?
I read the interview. Did you?
Again, you find a copy of the 20th anniversary edition and then tell me that’s not what he said.
The point in calling prejudice, which I know you did not miss, is to point out that it’s wrong to think that way. Your snark is not clever when you have to twist the meaning to make it work.
It could be funny, but if that was your intent, don’t quit your day job.
Smoke 'em if you got 'em!
I probably did. But I don’t remember what I read in 1973 and if I thought I did I wouldn’t trust those memories a billionth of a nanometer. Old memories are usually just plain wrong. I’ve learned to always - always - go back and check what my memories tell me.
Sorry, no. You’re telling us you’re relying on decades-old memories. I’m relying on hard print in authoritative histories. (Along with the entire Internet, all of which agrees with me.) If you want anyone to believe you you have to show us something better than decades-old memories. Until you do, you’ll get no credit from anyone.
Then what if I blithely started saying, “Homosexuality is creepy.” There’s a reason why unfounded personal prejudice based on sexual preferences is becoming unacceptable in our society. Unless someone is being harmed (incest, rape, pedophilia, etc.) it should be unacceptable to cast aspersions on other people’s sexual preferences. That goes double for one like Hefner’s that is pretty much ingrained in almost every man – any man who lives to be the age is now is going to be sexually attracted to young women. The only difference is that Hefner has something to attract them in return, ample monetary resources. Why else is almost every rich man involved with a younger woman?
It’s too bad The Girls Next Door is defunct. This foolishness would certainly make a pretty decent episode.
Can we start a campaign to get Hef’s long form birth certificate?
When Hugh Hefner first asked Barbi Benton out, she said, “Well, I’ve, uh, never dated anyone over 23 before.” Hef responded without hesitation, “That’s okay. Neither have I.”
:dubious: Emphasis added. You realize that you just torpedoed your own argument there, right?
What you’ve just admitted is that (as far as we can tell, at least) Hugh Hefner’s sexual/marital relationships are exclusively with women who feel so little spontaneous attraction to him that they would have nothing to do with him if he weren’t wealthy.
I don’t think there’s anything even the least little bit prejudiced or unacceptable about finding that situation “creepy”.
Mind you, that’s not an argument against outright paid sex work or prostitution itself. If an 86-year-old guy wants to buy a happy ending from a 25-year-old woman (and if her safety and rights as a worker and dignity are properly safeguarded, blah blah sex worker protection laws etc.), I don’t see a significant “creepiness factor” in that.
But to dress up your attraction to younger sex workers, who wouldn’t look twice at your wrinkly old ass if you weren’t offering them big bucks for it, as “romance” and “relationship” and “marriage”—yup, creep city. I don’t particularly care whether he’s deluding himself or just trying to delude the public, it’s a major eeewwwwww either way.
(And yes, elderly homosexual “chickenhawks” who form “relationships” with men more than 50 years younger than themselves are similarly considered creepy. This is not the same thing as being prejudiced against homosexuality per se.)
No, I didn’t torpedo the argument. I just said that the majority of men in Hefner’s position have the same desire. Thus, it can’t be creepy.
If you’re suggesting that the women in question are thus prostitutes, that’s a different argument, and it reflects on the women’s character.
But to one extent or another, most women consider the monetary value of the men that they partner with. It’s all just a matter of degree and it’s all just a part of the human instinct.
One might argue that the real difference, as in the old cliche, is whether the money is to persuade a woman to stay or to persuade her to leave. It’s the latter that’s the prostitute. The first is just a wife.
In your attempts to retrieve your self-torpedoed argument, all you’re managing to accomplish is to argue that all relationships are creepy.
Exchanging sexual services for money is prostitution. Pretending that such a transaction qualifies as a “relationship” or a “romance” or a “marriage” is creepy.
I don’t agree with your cynical assertion that relationships or marriages in general are fundamentally about exchanging sexual services for money, even if you dress it up with weasel words like “to one extent or another” or “just a matter of degree”. But if your assertion is true, then that doesn’t mean that Hefner’s “relationship” with a woman young enough to be his great-granddaughter, who by your own statement finds nothing in him to attract her except his money, isn’t creepy. It just means that relationships and marriages in general are creepy too.
If everything is creepy then nothing is creepy, but, yes, I look sideways at any adult who lives off of the earnings of another person, even a spouse, without also having a paying job.
Yeah, but you’re the only one who appears to be seriously maintaining that “everything is creepy”.
That is, most of the posters in this thread don’t buy into your implied argument that all relationships are fundamentally prostitution in disguise. This is the reason we find it creepy that Hefner is pursuing a relationship which by your own assertion is prostitution in disguise.
If you (or anyone else) were attempting to argue that Hefner and his young bunny had a genuine spontaneous love for each other based on personal sympathies, shared tastes, etc., that would be a different matter. I would completely agree that age differences should not count when weighed in the balance against real love.
But a “relationship” that you yourself concede is most likely nothing but the common combination of young fresh tits and an old sugar daddy, unconvincingly masquerading as love? I repeat: creepy.
Nope, I maintain that any consensual relationship between adults is not creepy.
“Young fresh tits” are the same regardless of who’s looking at them. And provider/physical beauty of men is to every woman a balance or a sliding scale. Each woman makes her own choice as to where the fulcrum fits.
And I’ve explained why people who disagree with you about that are not necessarily prejudiced or bigoted. It is not unfair discrimination to consider some types of relationships less ethically appealing than others.
In particular, it’s not unfair or morally unacceptable to respect relationships based on genuine mutual affection and attraction more highly than relationships which use the conventional social trappings of mutual affection and attraction to disguise the fact that one party is interested only in the physical assets of the other, who in turn is interested only in the financial assets of the first.
:dubious: You know, this may come as a surprise to you, but many women even make choices about men as relationship partners based on qualities other than the men’s physical beauty or monetary wealth. :eek:
But if you’re not familiar with this phenomenon, then I can certainly see why you would be inclined to argue that Hefner’s “romance” isn’t any creepier than relationships in general.
I don’t deny that there other factors, just that any one is intrinsically morally superior to the others. The scale I offered is simply simplified. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Rich men have young wives. They always have in human history and they always will. If it were creepy, it wouldn’t be so common. And the fact that there are other factors involved only proves the point that it isn’t creepy. If all those factors, even all the ones you consider non-creepy, are influential and important and rich men still have young wives, then it can’t be creepy, because there must be non-creepy factors playing a part.
Re: Hugh’s age-
The 1930 Census lists him as 4 years old (Cook County, IL, son of Glenn Hefner, age 37, and of Grace C. Hefner, age 34, and older brother of Keith, age 1 1/2).
steal 'em if you don’t … 
Some rich men have young wives. Very few rich men have wives more than 60 years younger than themselves.
The greater the age gap between partners, the more likely it is that the partnership is a straight sex-for-money transaction masquerading as a “relationship”. You yourself aren’t even attempting to argue that Hefner’s current “romance” is anything more than this.
And like it or not, old men who pay lovely young women to publicly simulate affection or attraction for them, when it’s evident that the only thing the women really like about them is their money, are bound to be perceived as “pathetic” and “creepy”.
If a man nearing extreme old age is so desperate for a beautiful girl to pretend to like him that he doesn’t even mind the obvious fact that his only attraction for her is his wealth, it’s kind of ridiculous to demand that that kind of relationship choice should be treated with the same respect as relationships founded on sincere mutual love.
Mind you, I’m certainly not arguing that such pathetic sugar-daddy “romances” should be in any way illegal, or even that it would be okay to call Hefner a creep to his face. Free country and all that. But in the context of anonymously gossiping about celebrity liaisons on an internet messageboard, there’s absolutely nothing wrong or inappropriate about flagging ancient sugar daddies who pay women to pretend to be attracted to them as “creepy”.