My Generation Fell Victim to Playboy

Pornography as Social Engineering

At age 69, I am only now beginning to appreciate the damage done to me

by my youth addiction to PLAYBOY.  I could not see women as they are,

as flawed and complex human beings. When you see someone in sexual terms, you

dehumanize them and paradoxically they become unapproachable.    

by Henry Makow Ph.D.

(Revised and updated from Nov. 2001.)

In the rearview mirror, it’s now clear porn is used as a form of political control. Get us to think about sex, and we won’t think about how our freedom is being taken away.

I doubt if women were always seen as sex objects. They had to sexualize women. PLAYBOY undressed the “girl next door.” That was for my generation. Now they are sexualizing children. 

PLAYBOY changed the habits of my (baby boomer) generation resulting in sexual chaos and broken families. 

PLAYBOY was presented as advanced thinking. But in retrospect, it was really sophisticated social engineering.  With messianic fervor, Playboy took its message of sexual freedom to the American male who, in the 1950′s and 1960′s, still consecrated sex for marriage. But the freedom was illusory. Playboy’s aim, the aim of all pornographers, was to hook men on the glossy fantasy.

To do this, they had to prevent them from finding true satisfaction in marriage. In Judith Reisman’s words, “Playboy was the first national magazine to exploit college men’s fears of women and family commitment. Playboy offered itself as a reliable, comforting substitute for monogamous heterosexual love.” (“Soft Porn Plays Hardball,” p 47)

MY EXPERIENCE

At the onset of puberty, at age 11 in 1961, magazine pictures of women showing cleavage or leg had a magical quality for me. Pretty soon, my friends were stealing PLAYBOY from newsstands and I was also tempted.

Instead, with some trepidation, I approached my father. In the spirit of the times, (“sex is natural, repression is bad”) and without any guidance, he bought me a copy. Pretty soon I was a subscriber.

My father’s decision vastly increased my trust and confidence in him. But as result lust took the place of love in my imagination. Sex was sublimated love. I imagined that sex was something sacred that took place between perfect creatures in secluded garrets. The beautiful buxom centerfolds filled me with near-religious wonder and awe.

PLAYBOY packaged this religion of sex. There was no interest in what women are really like as flawed human beings. The subjects of love, marriage, children, and aging were disparaged. There was nothing about true masculinity and femininity. The religion of sex was curiously asexual.

Nevertheless, it took over my subconscious. My erotic dreams often involved PLAYBOY pictures. I can relate, albeit in milder terms, to porn addict “Mike” who wrote on this site that he prefers packaged porn to real sex.

 REAL WOMEN INVISIBLE

Women who were not beautiful became invisible. I could not take them seriously. My first wife was average looking. She had spoken to me twice before we became carrel neighbors at the university library. I had absolutely no recollection of these encounters.

The fixation on physical beauty was psychologically emasculating. How did I approach someone when I saw only the surface? Attractive women remained mystical goddesses. I put them on a pedestal. I was too needy. I couldn’t relate to women as human beings.

I lost touch with my masculine identity, my feelings and critical faculties. I wanted love but didn’t know how to get it.

I was part of the (homo) sexual revolution, part of a generation of sexual fashion victims. Despite the example of my father, I didn’t grasp the eternal model of masculinity. In this model, a man leads and looks after the woman and children he loves.

Unconsciously, men and women are still looking for this kind of relationship. But with feminism, a lesbian philosophy, teaching women to be men, and vice-versa, both sexes are lost. I, for one, had no identity, goal, or motivation. I spent my time looking for them in social action and eastern religion.

I married the average looking woman because I was NOT obsessively attracted to her. I was tired of being ruled by my desires. She was a feminist and had a career, allowing me to pursue my own interests. Eventually, inevitably, I hungered for more.

I fell in love with an insecure young woman who played to my idealization of beauty by maintaining a facade. I divorced my wife and lived with this woman for six years. For a long time, she infatuated me. My love was totally giving, in the hope of securing her love. Mature love is demanding; she would have responded to that.

My book, “A Long Way to Go for a Date” chronicles my slow and painful emergence from immaturity and arrested development. I am now happily married because I belatedly discovered masculine identity. A man cannot be ruled by desire for sex and love. A man is God’s agent, creating a New World, the family. This is his duty, purpose and fulfillment. A woman’s fulfillment is to be his partner and means to this end.

I missed the opportunity to have a normal family. I have only one son by my first marriage. So the social engineers scored a victory with me, and countless other men like me.

NOW, WE’RE ALL SEX ADDICTS (TO SOME DEGREE)

In normal heterosexuality, sex is reserved for the courtship and procreation stage. With parenthood, sex becomes less important, and eventually becomes pretty irrelevant. Thanks to porn, we are being re-engineered to behave like homosexuals, never to marry or have children.

Instead of families, we have sex. Sex from cradle to grave with multiple partners. Sex. Everywhere you look. All the time. We suffer from arrested development with an adolescent fixation on our appearance and genitals. We remain stuck in courtship mode, never maturing and developing as intended. 

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Related — “Playboy and the (Homo) Sexual Revolution”

“Why All Porn is Gay”

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