Someone Posted Something on Facebook & Actually Changed My Mind

So Hugh Hefner died this week.  He was 91.  I found out he died when I turned my phone on after my flight landed.  I just arrived home from two very long days of travel and meetings and I was pretty dang tired.  I posted this:

I suppose I romanticized him when I heard he had died because I immediately realized he was the same age as my Nanny that died this year.  Anyways, I saw the news when I turned on my phone as soon as we landed and then posted this while the airplane was rolling to the gate, so obviously I put exactly zero thought into him, his life or my own real opinions on the matter.  I just liked the quote and thought it was fitting for someone that had just crossed over to the other side.


The following day, a Facebook friend posted this:

(I cropped this to protect her privacy)

And I thought, holy shit, she's right.  I'm totally a hypocrite.  I sat on these feelings for a day and now I want to come clean.  I take back my romanticized notion of him empowering women and place him just a few notches above our President ...someone that doesn't really respect women for more than a hot piece of ass.  Sad to me that one of the most successful media moguls in modern times and the fucking President of the United States of America would both only give my daughters the time of day if they were perceived to be hot enough.  Gross.  

The reason I place him slightly above the President in terms of "women friendliness" is because he did help normalize sexuality.  He made it more acceptable for women to own their sexiness.  Some may argue otherwise, but to put it out there the way he did had an obvious impact on the sexual revolution.  He also supported sex education, women's reproductive rights and the movement to normalize and make birth control available to the masses.  We could argue that these were self serving initiatives (his ladies learned how to give blowies and couldn't get knocked up) but regardless of the motivation, these BIG controversial topics needed an advocate and his voice and the weight of his influence certainly didn't hurt matters.  

Anyways, the point of this little write up is to thank my for FB friend for posting what she did (you know who you are) and to say that, although it doesn't happen often, I CAN admit when I'm wrong.  And in this case it felt important to eat crow publicly.  Facebook posts almost never make anyone change their minds in matters of politics, religion or social matters, but in this case that's exactly what happened.