Atomic Nerds

We’ve commented in the past on Playboy’s decline from a moderately amusing/titillating skin magazine* to a tired parade of functionally identical airbrushed pneumatic models and increasingly frothy liberal posturing. They apparently made the notion that conservatives don’t like sex an official business decision some time ago- despite the fact that the letters column was frequently half “Why the hell are you bashing all over us, we like naked women too and that’s supposed to be the point of your magazine”- so insanely over-the-top left-wing screeds aren’t really a surprise coming from them.

It may sound really strange for me to say that outright misogyny IS a surprise, though, but it is to me. They’ve always defended what they do by saying they “empower” women by allowing them to display their sexuality if they so choose, which I’ve always thought is a complete load of horseshit, but I read the magazine for years (Stingray had a subscription, I didn’t object, and I’ll read anything within arm’s reach when temporarily undistracted) and never really got any vibe about women other than the affectionate. I’m not one of those that believes men being unapologetically heterosexual is offensive or threatening, and that’s about as far as- so far as I could see- the magazine ever went. Occasionally a little bit skeezy in a dirty-old-man kind of way? Ever so often. I blame Hef. But never anything that actually came anywhere near to actually offensive to me as a woman, as opposed to as a more-or-less conservative.

Well, in its continued drift to fully embracing the Left and all its tropes and conceits, Playboy managed to cross that line in grand style today, with a forum article entitled “So Wrong It’s Right”, on the weighty topic of ten conservative women the author would like to hate-fuck. I would love to link the original article for you, but it’s been flushed down the memory hole, and the magazine has issued neither explanation nor apology. A hell of a lot of people (including me- it got flushed while I was midread) read it before it disappeared, though, and they had plenty to say about it. While there were a few (universally male and leftist, so far as I saw) defenders who took the position “you crazy right-wingers and women just don’t understand male sexuality and don’t have a sense of humor”, this one pretty much pissed off everyone- even Salon.com, which was more than happy to host articles sliming Sarah Palin in all sorts of gender-degrading ways thought it went too far and wound up saying more about its author than it did about female conservatives, though they took the position that said conservative women had brought it upon themselves by sometimes dressing and acting sexy. (Because God knows being aggressively unsexual in dress and action has deferred all gender-based attacks on Hillary Clinton.)

The premise of the article pretty much says it all; author Guy Cimbalo (whose other articles can be found all over the Forum still) targets ten conservative female pundits that qualify as physically attractive and details just why he’d like to “hate-fuck”** them and just why that thought should be so horrifying as to make him want to cut off his dick. The format goes: the conservative woman, why you should know her (which for everybody but Michelle Malkin is condensed to “spews right-wing idiocy”), why she’s hot and obviously would be a total slut in bed, and then why you should feel repulsed about being attracted, with as much “bitch” and “harpy” and so on as possible. You can read some of the linked articles for direct quotes; my personal favorite one for specialness was, of Mary Katharine Ham, “You can get this one pregnant, and she stays pregnant. Karma’s a bitch.”

I’m sure Cimbalo thought he was being so over-the-top he was being ironic and that would make it okay- the usual half-logic is “this is how conservatives think of women, therefore I’m REALLY making fun of THEM”- but it mostly comes off as “these women are politically repulsive, so they’re totally fair game… and here’s what I’d REALLY like to do to mouthy bitches, amirite guys? Eh?”. It’s a little silly to impart an overall message to an article as throwaway dumb as this one was intended to be, but the fact that he wrote it and thought it would be fine to publish on Playboy and Playboy paid him for it and published it until the backfire hit DOES have a message- specifically, the message is “We love women and want them to be empowered, and we will respect you and pat you on the back- just as long as you’re saying what we want to hear. If not you’re meat.” And it takes being noticed by the hated other side and called out for it that it even occurs to them that there’s something wrong with that.

I’m not going to stand here and claim that the right is free from sexism. Far from it. But when I get shouted at from multiple angles on the left saying that I, as a woman, have to be either retarded, brainwashed, or insane to ever side with the right… you’re kidding, right? When the reaction of your men and half your women to a woman of any kind that frustrates them isn’t to make sex jokes about her or outright say rape would serve her right, then I’ll believe you care about women rather than about winning.

*With occasional surprisingly good short fiction. It was the first place I read Chuck Palahniuk’s “Guts”, and if you too have read that story, you’ll know what a GIANT FUCKING JAR that was after light-hearted articles on sex advice and cheesecake pictures.

**It doesn’t mean rape. It means having sex with someone you find physically attractive but personally abhorrent. Given that none of these women have expressed the slightest interest in HIM, however, it winds up only fractionally less creepy knowing that.

Posted current events, my furious genitals |