Essay 4
Minimum of 3 sources for your MLA Works Cited page.
Choice A
Read Alexandra Sifferlin's "The Weight Loss Trap" and Harriet Brown's "The Weight of the Evidence" and develop an argumentative thesis that addresses their claim that losing weight is a nearly futile quest.
Choice B
Read Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Why I’m Giving Up on Preventative Care” and agree or disagree with her position to quit preventative maintenance.
Choice C
Read Ibram Kendi’s “What’s the Difference Between a Frat and a Gang?” and agree or disagree with the author’s contention that there is a double standard for exacting the law against these groups.
Choice D
Read “What Women Know About the Internet” by Emily Chang and agree or disagree with the author’s contention that regulations are more important than free speech for protecting women.
Choice E
Read the following: “Speaking Ill of Hugh Hefner,” “Why Hugh Hefner’s Haters Won’t Let Him Rest in Peace,” “Negative Obituaries Prove Hugh Hefner Was Right,” and 10-minute video Maher vs. Douthat. Then develop an argumentative thesis that addresses this question: Was Hefner a warrior for equal rights, free speech, and higher culture, or was he a selfish, salacious Peter Pan who denigrated women? Or a bit of both?
Choice F
Read Conor Friedersdorf’s “In Defense of Harvey Weinstein’s Harvard Lawyer” and agree or disagree with the contention that representing someone as monstrous and diabolical as Harvey Weinstein performs a civic good.
Choice G
Read Jelani Cobb’s “Black Like Her” and "I Refuse to Rubberneck Rachel Dolezal’s Train Wreck" by Kitanya Harrison and write an argumentative thesis that address the contention that it is morally objectionable for white woman Rachel Dolezal to fabricate an identity to pass as being black for several reasons, not the least of which she is appropriating blackness in the manner of a “culture vulture.” How do you address the counterargument that she is simply choosing her racial identity the way one has the right to choose one’s sexual identity? Is the comparison fair? Explain. You can also consult the parody of Rachel Dolezal in the Donald Glover’s Atlanta episode “B.A.N.” in which Paper Boi discusses “trans-racial” issues with Montague. You can also consult Netflix documentary The Rachel Divide.
Option H
Watch The Game Changers on Netflix and develop an argument that either supports the claim that the documentary makes a persuasive case for a plant-based vegan diet or the assertion that the documentary is a work of cheap propaganda.
The Game Changers Criticisms:
One. The producer is an investor in a pea protein factory.
Two. Some of the information is not as scientific as presented.
Three. Some of the vegans haven't adopted veganism long enough to make a credible appraisal of their results.
Four. There is no attention paid to long-term adherence since most people find a vegan diet to be punitive.
Five. They don't acknowledge that on a vegan diet you need to eat more protein than an animal diet because vegan protein doesn't assimilate inside the body as much as animal protein.
November 19 Go over Ibram Kendi’s “What’s the Difference Between a Frat and a Gang?” and agree or disagree with the author’s contention that there is a double standard for exacting the law against these groups.
Read “What Women Know About the Internet” by Emily Chang and agree or disagree with the author’s contention that regulations are more important than free speech for protecting women.
Homework #17: Read “Speaking Ill of Hugh Hefner,” “Why Hugh Hefner’s Haters Won’t Let Him Rest in Peace,” “Negative Obituaries Prove Hugh Hefner Was Right” and then explain in 200 words why Hugh Hefner is such a controversial figure.
November 21 We will examine the Hugh Hefner debate: Was Hefner a warrior for equal rights, free speech, and culture, or was he a selfish, salacious Peter Pan who denigrated women? Or a bit of both? We will study the following: “Speaking Ill of Hugh Hefner,” “Why Hugh Hefner’s Haters Won’t Let Him Rest in Peace,” “Negative Obituaries Prove Hugh Hefner Was Right,” and 10-minute video Maher vs. Douthat.
We will read Jelani Cobb’s “Black Like Her” and "I Refuse to Rubberneck Rachel Dolezal’s Train Wreck" by Kitanya Harrison and address the contention that it is morally objectionable for white woman Rachel Dolezal to fabricate an identity to pass as being black for several reasons, not the least of which she is appropriating blackness in the manner of a “culture vulture.” How do you address the counterargument that she is simply choosing her racial identity the way one has the right to choose one’s sexual identity? Is the comparison fair? Explain. You can also consult Netflix documentary The Rachel Divide.
Your homework #18 for next class: Read Conor Friedersdorf’s “In Defense of Harvey Weinstein’s Harvard Lawyer” and agree or disagree with the contention that representing someone as monstrous and diabolical as Harvey Weinstein performs a civic good.
November 26 Go over Conor Friedersdorf’s “In Defense of Harvey Weinstein’s Harvard Lawyer” and agree or disagree with the contention that representing someone as monstrous and diabolical as Harvey Weinstein performs a civic good.
November 28 Holiday
December 3 Chromebook In-Class Writing Objective: Write introduction, thesis, and first supporting paragraph.
December 5 Chromebook In-Class Writing Objective: Write supporting paragraphs and counterargument-rebuttal paragraph.
December 10 Chromebook In-Class Writing Objective: Write conclusion and MLA Works Cited and proofread entire essay.
December 12 Essay 4 due on turnitin. We will grade Portfolio #2, responses 10-18.
"Why I'm Giving Up on Preventative Care" by Barbara Ehrenreich
One. Is BE committing a Straw Man in the first paragraph? ("You don't have to get sick and die." Who promised that?)
In the last few years I have given up on the many medical measures—cancer screenings, annual exams, Pap smears, for example—expected of a responsible person with health insurance. This was not based on any suicidal impulse. It was barely even a decision, more like an accumulation of micro-decisions: to stay at my desk and meet a deadline or show up at the primary care office and submit to the latest test to gauge my biological sustainability; to spend the afternoon in faux-cozy corporate environment of a medical facility or to go for a walk. At first I criticized myself as a slacker and procrastinator, falling behind on the simple, obvious stuff that could prolong my life. After all, this is the great promise of modern scientific medicine: You do not have to get sick and die (at least not for a while), because problems can be detected “early” when they are readily treatable. Better to catch a tumor when it’s the size of an olive than that of a cantaloupe.
Counterargument
No one promises you that living a healthy life and taking precautions will insure that you won't get sick and die. Rather, the probabilities are in your favor if you get early detection and pursue preventative care.
Two. Is BE committing an either-or fallacy and non sequitur in second paragraph? (Does responsible preventative care exclude testing for lead? Are the two problems even related or is BE posing a non sequitur?)
I knew I was going against my own long-standing bias in favor of preventive medical care as opposed to expensive and invasive high-tech curative interventions. What could be more ridiculous than an inner-city hospital that offers a hyperbaric chamber but cannot bestir itself to get out in the neighborhood and test for lead poisoning? From a public health perspective, as well as a personal one, it makes far more sense to screen for preventable problems than to invest huge resources in the treatment of the very ill.
That BE's clinic offers dubious services such as a hyperbaric chamber and is not addressing lead poisoning in the community is a good point for an essay, but not this essay. She seems to be using a non sequitur that does not support her thesis, which is that preventive care is overrated and based on false promises.
Her thesis suffers in several ways. Here are two:
One, not all preventative care is the same. But to her defense, a lot of preventative care is corrupt.
Two, some people need more preventative care than others based on their family history.
Three. Does BE commit fallacies of ad hominem and Straw Man in third paragraph, and if so, what happens to her ethos? (Are people responsible for their preventative care "boasting" and delusional about living forever?)
I also understood that I was going against the grain for my particular demographic. Most of my educated, middle-class friends had begun to double down on their health-related efforts at the onset of middle age, if not earlier. They undertook exercise or yoga regimens; they filled their calendars with upcoming medical tests and exams; they boasted about their “good” and “bad” cholesterol counts, their heart rates and blood pressure. Mostly they understood they the task of aging to be self-denial, especially in the realm of diet, where one medical fad, one study or another, condemned fat and meat, carbs, gluten, dairy, or all animal-derived products. In the health-conscious mind-set that has prevailed among the world’s affluent people for about four decades now, health is indistinguishable from virtue, tasty foods are “sinfully delicious,” while healthful foods may taste good enough to be advertised as “guilt-free.” Those seeking to compensate for a lapse undertake punitive measures like fasts, purges, or diets composed of different juices carefully sequenced throughout the day.
BE uses some logical fallacies here: Not all health seekers behave the same. Some behave stupidly; others behave smartly. BE shouldn't lump them altogether with a few caricatures. For example, I exercise and watch what I eat, but I don't boast about my amazing healthy lifestyle. Nor do I think I will defy death.
Four. Does she commit another non sequitur in paragraphs four and five with her fatalism about death? (Since we are going to die and since there is so much we can do about the aging process, are we just supposed to say "the hell with it?" Does it follow that the inevitability of death compels us to give up on preventative medical care at some point?)
I had a different reaction to aging: I gradually came to realize that I was old enough to die, by which I am not suggesting that each of us bears an expiration date. There is of course no fixed age at which a person ceases to be worthy of further medical investment, whether aimed at prevention or cure. The military judges that a person is old enough to die—to put him or herself in the line of fire—at age 18. At the other end of life, many remain world leaders in their seventies or even older, without anyone questioning their need for lavish continuing testing and care. Zimbabwe’s former president, Robert Mugabe, recently turned 90, and has undergone multiple treatments for prostate cancer.
If we go by newspaper obituaries, however, we notice that there is an age at which death no longer requires much explanation. Although there is no general editorial rule on these matters, it is usually sufficient when the deceased is in their seventies or older for the obituary writer to invoke “natural causes.” It is sad when anyone dies, but no one can consider the death of a septuagenarian “tragic,” and there will be no demand for an investigation.
Just because BE feels "old enough to die," doesn't mean her position is embraced by everyone else. Her personal decision, in other words, is not some universal wisdom to be imposed on the rest of us. If you're done, BE, that's your business.
Five. While I see flaws in the beginning of the essay, there is a point where BE begins to win me over.
BE seems to be advocating a balance of quality of life and common sense vs. hyper vigilance or fanatical attention to one's health, which becomes oppressive.
BE makes the correct observation that there is a point where invasive medical procedures compromise our quality of life and offer little in the bargain; in fact, some procedures may present even more harm than good and cause us to question the medical establishment's financial incentives.
Once I realized I was old enough to die, I decided that I was also old enough not to incur any more suffering, annoyance, or boredom in the pursuit of a longer life. I eat well, meaning I choose foods that taste good and that will stave off hunger for as long as possible, like protein, fiber, and fats. I exercise—not because it will make me live longer but because it feels good when I do. As for medical care: I will seek help for an urgent problem, but I am no longer interested in looking for problems that remain undetectable to me. Ideally, the determination of when one is old enough to die should be a personal decision, based on a judgment of the likely benefits, if any, of medical care and—just as important at a certain age—how we choose to spend the time that remains to us.
Six. BE raise important question: Are health providers basing procedures on profit motive?
At the same time I had always questioned whatever procedures the health care providers recommended; in fact I am part of a generation of women who insisted on their right to raise questions without having the word “uncooperative,” or worse, written into their medical records. So when a few years ago my primary care physician told me that I needed a bone density scan, I of course asked him why: What could be done if the result was positive and my bones were found to be hollowed out by age? Fortunately, he replied, there was now a drug for that. I told him I was aware of the drug, both from its full-page magazine ads as well as from articles in the media questioning its safety and efficacy. Think of the alternative, he said, which might well be, say, a hip fracture, followed by a rapid descent to the nursing home.
Seven. Is health care industry wrongly calling natural conditions of old age "disease"?
So I grudgingly conceded that undergoing the test, which is noninvasive and covered by my insurance, might be preferable to immobility and institutionalization. The result was a diagnosis of “osteopenia,” or thinning of the bones, a condition that might have been alarming if I hadn’t found out that it is shared by nearly all women over the age of 35. Osteopenia is, in other words, not a disease but a normal feature of aging. A little further research, all into readily available sources, revealed that routine bone scanning had been heavily promoted and even subsidized by the drug’s manufacturer. Worse, the favored medication at the time of my diagnosis has turned out to cause some of the very problems it was supposed to prevent—bone degeneration and fractures. A cynic might conclude that preventive medicine exists to transform people into raw material for a profit-hungry medical-industrial complex.
My first major defection from the required screening regimen was precipitated by a mammogram. No one likes mammography, which amounts to a brute-force effort to render the breasts transparent. First, a breast is flattened between two plates, then it is bombarded with ionizing radiation, which is, incidentally, the only environmental factor known for sure to cause breast cancer. I’d been fairly dutiful about mammograms since having been treated for breast cancer at the turn of the millennium, and now, about 10 years later, the gynecologist’s office reported that I’d had a “bad mammogram.” I spent the next few anxious weeks undergoing further tests, in the midst of which I managed to earn a ticket for “distracted driving.” Naturally I was distracted—by the looming decision of whether I would undergo debilitating cancer treatments again, or just let the disease take its course this time.
It turned out, after I’d been through a sonogram and fought panic in a coffin-like MRI tube, that the “bad mammogram” was a false positive resulting from the highly sensitive new digital forms of imaging. That was my last mammogram. Lest this seem like a reckless decision, I was supported in it by a high-end big-city oncologist, who viewed all my medical images and said that there would be no need to see me again, which I interpreted as ever again.
After this, every medical or dental encounter seemed to end in a tussle. Dentists—and I have met a number of them in my moves around the country—always wanted a fresh set of X-rays, even if the only problem was a chip in the tip of a tooth. All I could think of was the X-ray machines every shoe store had offered in my youth, through which children were encouraged to peer at the bones of their feet while wiggling their toes. The fun ended in the 1970s, when these “fluoroscopes” were eventually banned as dangerous sources of radiation. So why should I routinely expose my mouth, which is much more cancer-prone than the feet, to high annual doses of roentgens? If there was some reason to suspect underlying structural problems, okay, but just to satisfy the dentist’s curiosity or meet some abstract “standard of care”—no.
In all these encounters, I was struck by the professionals’ dismissal of my subjective reports—usually along the lines of “I feel fine”—in favor of the occult findings of their equipment. One physician, unprompted by any obvious signs or symptoms, decided to measure my lung capacity with the new handheld instrument he’d acquired for this purpose. I breathed into it, as instructed, as hard as I could, but my breath did not register on his screen. He fiddled with the instrument, looking deeply perturbed, and told me I seemed to be suffering from a pulmonary obstruction. In my defense, I argued that I do at least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise a day, not counting ordinary walking, but I was too polite to demonstrate that I was still capable of vigorous oral argument.
Eight. BE makes convincing argument that in many cases medical industry subjects us to dangerous equipment and procedures that pose more risk than the very thing they're supposedly trying to find. This problem is explored in graphic detail in the Netflix documentary The Bleeding Edge.
It was my dentist, oddly enough, who suggested, during an ordinary filling, that I be tested for sleep apnea. How a dentist got involved in what is normally the domain of ear, nose, and throat specialists, I do not know, but she recommended that the screening be done at a “sleep center,” where I would attempt to sleep while heavily wired to monitoring devices, after which I could buy the treatment from her: a terrifying skull-shaped mask that would supposedly prevent sleep apnea and definitely extinguish any last possibility of sexual activity. But when I protested that there is no evidence I suffer from this disorder—no symptoms or detectable signs—the dentist said that I just might not be aware of it, adding that it could kill me in my sleep. This, I told her, is a prospect I can live with.
As soon as I reached the age of 50 physicians had begun to recommend—and in one case even plead—that I have a colonoscopy. As in the case of mammograms, the pressure to submit to a colonoscopy is hard to avoid. Celebrities promote them, comics snicker about them. During March, which is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, an eight-foot-high inflatable replica of a colon tours the country, allowing the anally curious to stroll through and inspect potentially cancerous polyps “from the inside.” But if mammography seems like a refined sort of sadism, colonoscopies mimic an actual sexual assault. First the patient is sedated—often with what is popularly known as the “date rape drug,” Versed—then a long flexible tube, bearing a camera on one end, is inserted into the rectum and all the way up through the colon. What repelled me even more than this kinky procedure was the day of fasting and laxatives that was supposed to precede it, in order to ensure that the little camera encounters something other than feces. I put this off from year to year, until I finally felt safe in the knowledge that since colon cancer is usually slow-growing, any cancerous polyps I contain are unlikely to flourish until I am already close to death from other causes.
Then my internist, the chief physician in a midsized group practice, sent out a letter announcing that he was suspending his ordinary practice in order to offer a new level of “concierge care” for those willing to cough up an extra $1,500 a year beyond what they already pay for insurance. The elite care would include 24-hour access to the doctor, leisurely visits, and, the letter promised, all kinds of tests and screenings in addition to the routine ones. This is when my decision crystallized: I made an appointment and told him face-to-face that, one, I was dismayed by his willingness to drop his less-than-affluent patients, who appeared to make up much of the waiting room population. And, two, I didn’t want more tests; I wanted a doctor who could protect me from unnecessary procedures. I would remain with the masses of ordinary, haphazardly screened patients.
Of course all this unnecessary screening and testing happens because doctors order it, but there is a growing rebellion within the medical profession. Over-diagnosis is beginning to be recognized as a public health problem, and is sometimes referred to as an “epidemic.” It is an appropriate subject for international medical conferences and evidence-laden books like Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health by H. Gilbert Welch and his Dartmouth colleagues Lisa Schwartz and Steve Woloshin. Even health columnist Jane Brody, long a cheerleader for standard preventive care, now recommends that we think twice before undergoing what were once routine screening procedures. Physician and blogger John M. Mandrola advises straightforwardly:
Rather than being fearful of not detecting disease, both patients and doctors should fear healthcare. The best way to avoid medical errors is to avoid medical care. The default should be: I am well. The way to stay that way is to keep making good choices—not to have my doctor look for problems.
With age, the cost/benefit analysis shifts. On the one hand, health care becomes more affordable—for Americans, anyway—at age 65, when a person is eligible for Medicare. Exhortations to undergo screenings and tests continue, with loved ones joining the chorus. But in my case, the appetite for medical interactions of any kind wanes with each passing week. Suppose that preventive care uncovered some condition that would require agonizing treatments or sacrifices on my part—disfiguring surgery, radiation, drastic lifestyle limitations. Maybe these measures would add years to my life, but it would be a painful and depleted life that they prolonged.
As it is now, preventive medicine often extends to the end of life: 75-year-olds are encouraged to undergo mammography; people already in the grip of one terminal disease may be subjected to screenings for others. At a medical meeting, someone reported that a 100-year-old woman had just had her first mammogram, causing the audience to break into a “loud cheer.”
One reason for the compulsive urge to test and screen and monitor is profit, and this is especially true in the United States, with its heavily private and often for-profit health system. How is a doctor—or hospital or drug company—to make money from essentially healthy patients? By subjecting them to tests and examinations that, in sufficient quantity, are bound to detect something wrong or at least worthy of follow-up. Gilbert and his coauthors offer a vivid analogy, borrowed from an expert in fractal geometry: “How many islands surround Britain’s coasts?” The answer of course depends on the resolution of the map you are using, as well as how you are defining an “island.” With high-resolution technologies like CT scans, the detection of tiny abnormalities is almost inevitable, leading to ever more tests, prescriptions, and doctor visits. And the tendency to over-test is amplified when the doctor who recommends the tests has a financial interest in the screening or imaging facility that he or she refers people to.
It’s not only a profit-hungry medical system that drives over-testing and over-diagnosis. Individual consumers, that is, former and potential patients, may demand the testing and even threaten a malpractice suit if they feel it is being withheld. In the last couple of decades, “patient advocacy” groups have sprung up to “brand” dozens of diseases and publicize the need for screening. Many have their own celebrity spokespersons—Katie Couric for colonoectal cancer, Rudy Giuliani for prostate cancer—and each sports its own distinctive colored ribbon—pink for breast cancer, purple for testicular cancer, black for melanoma, a “puzzle pattern” for autism, and so on—as well as special days or months for concentrated publicity and lobbying efforts. The goal of all this is generally “awareness,” meaning a willingness to undergo the appropriate screening, such as mammograms and PSA tests.
There are even sizable constituencies for discredited tests. When the US Preventive Services Task Force decided to withdraw its recommendation of routine mammograms for women under 50, even some feminist women’s health organizations, which I had expected to be more critical of conventional medical practices, spoke out in protest. A small band of women, identifying themselves as survivors of breast cancer, demonstrated on a highway outside the task force’s office, as if demanding that their breasts be squeezed. In 2008, the same task force gave PSA testing a grade of “D,” but advocates like Giuliani, who insisted that the test had saved his life, continued to press for it, as do most physicians.
Many physicians justify tests of dubious value by the “peace of mind” they supposedly confer— except of course on those who receive false positive results. Thyroid cancer is particularly vulnerable to over-diagnosis. With the introduction of more high-powered imaging techniques, doctors were able to detect many more tiny lumps in people’s necks and surgically remove them, whether surgery was warranted or not. An estimated 70 to 80 percent of thyroid cancer surgeries performed on US, French, and Italian women in the first decade of the 21st century are now judged to have been unnecessary. In South Korea, where doctors were especially conscientious about thyroid screening, the number rose to 90 percent (Men were also over-diagnosed, but in far lower numbers.) Patients pay a price for these surgeries, including a lifelong dependence on thyroid hormones, and since these are not always fully effective, the patient may be left chronically “depressed and sluggish.”
So far I can detect no stirrings of popular revolt against the regime of unnecessary and often harmful medical screening. Hardly anyone admits to personally rejecting tests, and one who did—science writer John Horgan in a Scientific American blog on why he will not undergo a colonoscopy—somewhat undercut his well-reasoned argument by describing himself as an “anti-testing nut.” Most people joke about the distastefulness of the recommended procedures, while gamely submitting to whatever is expected of them.
But there’s a significant rebellion brewing on another front. Increasingly, we read laments about the “medicalization of dying,” usually focused on a formerly frisky parent or grandparent who had made clear her request for a natural, nonmedical death, only to end up tethered by cables and tubes to an ICU bed. Physicians see this all the time—witty people silenced by ventilators, the fastidious rendered incontinent—and some are determined not to let the same thing happen to themselves. They may refuse care, knowing that it is more likely to lead to disability than health, like the orthopedist who upon receiving a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer immediately closed down his practice and went home to die in relative comfort and peace. A few physicians are more decisively proactive, and have themselves tattooed “NO CODE” or “DNR,” meaning “do not resuscitate.” They reject the same drastic end-of-life measures that they routinely inflict on their patients.
In giving up on preventive care, I’m just taking this line of thinking a step further: Not only do I reject the torment of a medicalized death, but I refuse to accept a medicalized life, and my determination only deepens with age. As the time that remains to me shrinks, each month and day becomes too precious to spend in windowless waiting rooms and under the cold scrutiny of machines. Being old enough to die is an achievement, not a defeat, and the freedom it brings is worth celebrating.
Sample Thesis Statements
Supporting BE
While BE's essay has a rocky beginning with some logical fallacies, her essay eventually makes the convincing case that the medical industry profits from promising unrealistic expectations about aging, subjecting us to invasive procedures that compromise the quality of our life, and packaging their "preventative care" to veil their true motive: profit.
Another Support of BE
While some medical care is invasive and unsafe, we can, like BE, do our due diligence to find the sweet spot of preventative care that works for us and repel those procedures that BE correctly observes are unsafe and profit-driven.
Refuting BE
While BE has resigned herself to dying and old age, it is irresponsible for her to play doctor and determine what procedures work and do not work for her and to then argue that we should follow her reckless behavior.
Choice E
Read the following: “Speaking Ill of Hugh Hefner,” “Why Hugh Hefner’s Haters Won’t Let Him Rest in Peace,” “Negative Obituaries Prove Hugh Hefner Was Right,” and 10-minute video Maher vs. Douthat. Then develop an argumentative thesis that addresses this question: Was Hefner a warrior for equal rights, free speech, and higher culture, or was he a selfish, salacious Peter Pan who denigrated women? Or a bit of both?
"Speaking Ill of Hugh Hefner" by Ross Douthat
Captions are my own
How do we elevate a predator and a misogynist who objectifies women?
Hugh Hefner, gone to his reward at the age of 91, was a pornographer and chauvinist who got rich on masturbation, consumerism and the exploitation of women, aged into a leering grotesque in a captain’s hat, and died a pack rat in a decaying manse where porn blared during his pathetic orgies.
Hefner was the epitome of drug-addicted dysfunction and arrested development, the most loathsome "role model."
Hef was the grinning pimp of the sexual revolution, with Quaaludes for the ladies and Viagra for himself — a father of smut addictions and eating disorders, abortions and divorce and syphilis, a pretentious huckster who published Updike stories no one read while doing flesh procurement for celebrities, a revolutionary whose revolution chiefly benefited men much like himself.
High culture like jazz and feminism were a pathetic facade for Hefner's real agenda: dealing sleaze.
The arc of his life vindicated his moral critics, conservative and feminist: What began with talk of jazz and Picasso and other signifiers of good taste ended in a sleazy decrepitude that would have been pitiable if it wasn’t still so exploitative.
Beneath Hefner's phony philosophy and prop of robe and pipe was a mentally deranged Peter Pan with nothing to offer other than sex addiction.
Early Hef had a pipe and suit and a highbrow reference for every occasion; he even claimed to have a philosophy, that final refuge of the scoundrel. But late Hef was a lecherous, low-brow Peter Pan, playing at perpetual boyhood — ice cream for breakfast, pajamas all day — while bodyguards shooed male celebrities away from his paid harem and the skull grinned beneath his papery skin.
Reality shows with a "cutesy" tone did little to hide the "desperation" and "boredom" of Hefner's life.
This late phase was prettied up by reality television’s “The Girls Next Door,” which kept the orgies offstage and relied on the girlfriends’ mix of desperation, boredom and charisma for its strange appeal. The behind-the-scenes accounts were rather grimmer: depression and drugs, “dirty hallway carpets and the curtains that smell like dog piss,” the chance to wait while Hef “picked the dog poo off the carpet — and then ask for our allowance.”
That Hefner championed literature, art, and culture does not negate his primary purpose: to sell sexual addiction and to get rich off this addiction.
Needless to say the obituaries for Hefner, even if they acknowledge the seaminess, have been full of encomia for his great deeds: Hef the vanquisher of puritanism, Hef the political progressive, Hef the great businessman and all the rest. There are even conservative appreciations, arguing that for all his faults Hef was an entrepreneur who appreciated the finer things in life and celebrated la différence.
What a lot of garbage. Sure, Hefner supported some good causes and published some good writers. But his good deeds and aesthetic aspirations were ultimately incidental to his legacy — a gloss over his flesh-peddling, smeared like Vaseline on a pornographer’s lens. The things that were distinctively Hefnerian, that made him influential and important, were all rotten, and to the extent they were part of stories that people tend to celebrate, they showed the rot in larger things as well.
His success as a businessman showed the rotten side of capitalism — the side that exploits appetites for money, that feeds leech-like on our vices, that dissolves family and religion while promising that consumption will fill the void they leave behind.
The social liberalism he championed was the rotten and self-interested sort, a liberalism of male and upper-class privilege, in which the strong and beautiful and rich take their pleasure at the expense of the vulnerable and poor and not-yet-born.
The online future his career anticipated was the rotten side of the internet — the realms of onanism and custom-tailored erotica, where the male vanity and entitlement he indulged has curdled into resentment and misogyny.
And his appreciation of male-female difference was rotten, too — the leering predatory sort of appreciation, the Cosby-Clinton-Trump sort, the sort that nicknames quaaludes “thigh openers” and expects the girls to laugh, the sort that prefers breast implants to female intellect and rents the charms of youth to escape the realities of age.
No doubt what Hefner offered America somebody else would have offered in his place, and the changes he helped hasten would have come rushing in without him.
But in every way that mattered he made those changes worse, our culture coarser and crueler and more sterile than liberalism or feminism or freedom of speech required. And in every way that mattered his life story proved that we were wrong to listen to him, because at the end of the long slide lay only a degraded, priapic senility, or the desperate gaiety of Prince Prospero’s court with the Red Death at the door.
Now that death has taken him, we should examine our own sins. Liberals should ask why their crusade for freedom and equality found itself with such a captain, and what his legacy says about their cause. Conservatives should ask how their crusade for faith and family and community ended up so Hefnerian itself — with a conservative news network that seems to have been run on Playboy Mansion principles and a conservative party that just elected a playboy as our president.
You can find these questions being asked, but they are counterpoints and minor themes. That this should be the case, that only prudish Christians and spoilsport feminists are willing to say that the man was obviously wicked and destructive, is itself a reminder that the rot Hugh Hefner spread goes very, very deep.
Example of Nuanced Response from Reader Comments Section:
I guess it's part and parcel of our current cultural polarization that one is expected to come down as pro or con with reference to Hefner. I refuse to do so. I appreciated Hef's breaking of sexually repressive attitudes, as well as his promotion of writers and topics that failed to find publication elsewhere, and his contributions to many valuable cultural projects, such as his support for film preservation. But none of that means I would endorse his objectification and stereotyping of women as sex objects, or look favorably upon his personal fetishism for women so much younger that himself. He was a kid in a candy store who moved in and never moved out, and I'm sure he left a lot of damaged people in his wake. The Playboy mansion was likely a den of cocaine and HIV dissemination in its day. So I am content to look at all of it - the good, the bad and the ugly - and acknowledge Hefner as a flawed person who had a powerful influence on his culture, both for better and for worse. Doesn't that sound like a lot of famous people that we've lost?
Reader Who Finds Hefner on Balance to be Evil Force
Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I’m a Baby Boomer who had to endure the influence of Hefner. Even though many of us have grown up and out of this oppressive period, I prefer the company of Millenials. The men and the women of this generation are appalled by Trump and Trumpians (Hefner supporters). That suits me. One of my high school classmates grew up in foster care. She was a pretty girl, average student. She disappeared for several months and then was back at school. Unbeknownst to me, she was pregnant and relinquished her baby for adoption. After high school she modeled for Hefner’s Playmate of the Month. Hefner exploited this woman’s troubled psyche and made millions off of others. Celebrating Hefner’s life is just plain creepy.
Political Opponent of Douthat Who Agrees with His Hefner Assessment
I am neither a prudish Christian or a spoilsport feminist, but a garden-variety progressive who never thought he would agree with anything written by Ross Douthat. Yet, here I am. No amount of mockery for Douthat's religiosity, or his conservative political and economic delusions, or his sometimes overblown language can rehabilitate Hugh Hefner. That anyone, at this late date, would defend the man who did his best to put a respectable visage on pornography, misogyny, and the exploitation of women is curious, indeed.
"Why Hugh Hefner Haters Won't Let Him Rest in Peace" by Lizzie Crocker
As of Monday afternoon, Ross Douthat’s post-death takedown of Hugh Hefner from The New York Times was still garnering praise on Twitter.
Amidst the encomiums for the late Playboy founder, Douthat delivered a masterful anti-obituary for “a wicked American,” arguing that his advancement of sexual mores and other cultural contributions are not worthy of tribute but rather “rotten” to the core.
“Hef the vanquisher of puritanism, Hef the political progressive, Hef the great businessman and all the rest... were ultimately incidental to his legacy—a gloss over his flesh-peddling, smeared like Vaseline on a pornographer’s lens,” Douthat wrote. “The things that were distinctively Hefnarian, that made him influential and important, were all rotten, and to the extent they were part of stories that people tend to celebrate, they showed the rot in larger things as well.”
As many have pointed out, the column was indeed a fantastic piece of prose that persuasively pushed back against a slew of Hefner hagiographies. And Douthat, one of the Times’ most socially conservative columnists, managed to win over people on the left and the right.
But Douthat’s relentless character assassination of a recently deceased Hefner also falls into a relatively new tradition of treating the deaths of public figures as opportunities to issue definitive judgments about whether they were Good or Bad. For whatever reason, the occasion of someone’s death tends to make us even more allergic to nuance than usual.
The same tradition applies contemporary political and cultural standards to the lives of people whose greatest cultural achievements were made in a different era, effectively underwriting their influence. But refusing to celebrate achievements considered progressive in their time because they’re no longer progressive today is absurd and anti-intellectual.
This has become a common refrain in recent years, amplified by social media and hot-take culture. When David Bowie passed away, a subset of feminists on Twitter finger-wagged about how he slept with underage women. Likewise after Prince died, some people insisted he wasn’t a queer icon because of controversial comments he made about gay rights toward the end of his life.
Why is it so hard for us to accept that these public figures are imperfect? Why is it so hard for us to accept their impact on social progress if it doesn’t conform to our standards of progress and social conduct today?
Nor can we pay tribute to his “appreciation of male-female difference” when it comes to sex, because it was a “leering predatory sort of appreciation, the Cosby-Clinton-Trump sort” that “prefers breast implants to female intellect and rents the charms of youth to escapes the realities of age.”
It’s hard to argue with some of Douthat’s observations about Hefner, particularly with his characterization of the Playboy publisher in his later years. As time marched on and sexual mores changed, Hefner evolved into a “low-brow Peter Pan, playing at perpetual boyhood” within his “paid harem” mansion.
But it’s absurdly black-and-white to insist that Hefner’s “good deeds” are overshadowed by the “degraded, priapic senility” that defined him in his later years.
By this logic, Hefner’s celebration of a more honest dialogue about sex in America is not worth mentioning in history books—unless it’s appended with a lengthy footnote decrying his own lacking morality. Fair enough, but at least make his obituaries as
encompassing as possible.
How should they be judged, and how should we judge? Answer: harshly.
This certainly applies to Douthat’s column on Hefner, which refuses to acknowledge a single positive contribution that the late Playboy founder left us with.
All the tributes about Hef as a civil rights pioneer and sexual revolutionary are discounted because the “social liberalism he championed” was the “self-interested sort... of male and upper-class privilege.” (It’s worth noting that attacking “male” and “upper-classs privilege” is generally not part of Douthat’s ideological repertoire as a columnist.)
The fiction and journalism in Playboy—the “[John] Updike stories no one read”—cannot be appreciated because it was printed next to porn. According to Douthat, it was all just a “pretentious” distraction dreamed up by the magazine’s lecherous publisher and “father of smut addiction.”
Suggested Outline:
Paragraph 1: Frame the debate by showing why people either elevate or scorn Hefner.
Paragraph 2: Make a claim that agrees, disagrees, or complicates Douthat's judgment.
Paragraphs 3-5: Supporting paragraphs.
Paragraph 6: Counterargument-rebuttal.
Paragraph 7: Conclusion, powerful restatement of your thesis.
"What Women Know About the Internet" by Emily Chang
Headings are mine.
Like too many women, I’ve been harassed online. The harasser described in explicit detail how he intended to violate me, though somehow his threats didn’t violate Twitter’s terms of service. Twitter, despite my repeated reports, did nothing.
So I did. I gradually tightened my privacy settings across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I mostly stopped sharing personal, nonwork-related updates and deleted photos of my children; I haven’t posted new pictures for more than a year.
I’m a tech journalist, so perhaps I am extra-sensitive to the dangers of the internet. But my concerns are widely shared by other women.
Several studies have found that women are more concerned about privacy risks online than men and are more likely to keep their profiles private and delete unwanted contacts. Female Italian college students are less likely to share their political views and relationship status than men and are more concerned about risks posed by other users and third parties. Norwegian women post fewer selfies than Norwegian men.
(In the digital age, privacy, misogyny, online violence, harassment, stalking, and other abuses create the need for new ways of looking at free speech)
In other words, digital privacy is a women’s issue. We just don’t think about it that way, or discuss it that way. Of course, privacy is a concern for everyone, but this is also an issue, like health care, on which women have a particular view. Women know, for example, what consent really means. It’s not scrolling through seemingly endless “terms of service” and then checking a box. Online consent, just as it is with our bodies, should be clear, informed and a requirement for online platforms.
(Internet is a dark alley for women, and they need protection, more than "terms of service.")
These views are shaped by the reality that women experience the internet differently, just as the experience of walking down a dark alley, or even a busy street, is different for women than it is for men. One Pew study found that women are far more likely to be sexually harassed online and describe these interactions as extremely upsetting. The Department of Justice reports that about 75 percent of the victims of stalking and cyberstalking are women. And so women look over our shoulders online, just as we do in real life.
(Internet is designed for men, not women.)
It isn’t just that real-life harassment also shows up online, it’s that the internet isn’t designed for women, even when the majority of users of some popular applications and platforms are women. In fact, some features of digital life have been constructed, intentionally or not, in ways that make women feel less safe.
(Women more vulnerable just bringing in their phone for repair, let alone going online.) (Also see Business Insider.)
For example, you can’t easily use Facebook’s WhatsApp messaging service without a phone number, which many women don’t want to share. Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has promised to build encrypted communication into all its platforms. Just as important is giving users the option to make their messages disappear, so that if a hostile ex somehow got into your phone there would be nothing to see.
Even well-meaning efforts at transparency
don’t always work that way for women. Lyft’s car pool service shares the registered names of passengers with everyone else in the car. The first name of an incoming passenger flashes in lights across the dashboard, a feature intended to let riders know they are in the right car. A privacy researcher told me that she once jumped into a Lyft shared ride wearing a sweatshirt with her company’s logo. The next day, she received an email from a male passenger saying, “I found you!” Clearly, he had been able to use her first name and the name of her company to track her down online.
(What's cute for someone, might be creepy for others.)
What he may have thought was cute, she thought was creepy. “Do I have any control over this interaction?” the researcher asked. “You want control over the self you’re putting online, just like you want control over your body.” Note to Lyft: Some passengers would be safer if they were anonymous.
(Central Argument)
With Congress considering whether to draft new privacy regulations, it is important that the specific concerns of women be taken into account now, while the rules are being debated.
California’s new privacy law is a case in point: It is a bold piece of legislation, but it falls short for women. In the event of a data breach, for example, consumers in California will have the right to sue if certain kinds of personally identifying information, like Social Security numbers or driver’s license numbers, are compromised. But that may not include material like intimate emails or explicit photos. The current iteration of the law is so murky that it’s not clear whether Jennifer Lawrence, the actress whose nude photos were stolen from her iCloud account in 2014 and made public, would have a case against Apple if a similar incident occurred after the law goes into effect next year.
California’s “right to be forgotten” also doesn’t go as far as Europe’s new privacy legislation, the most sweeping data reform in history. Under the California law, consumers have the right to delete information they personally provide to companies. But if someone else — say, an unhappy ex — posted something about me online, I would not be able to get that taken down. Under Europe’s new law, though, I would at least be able to request such a post be removed.
Although women’s groups have defended privacy as it pertains to abortion, they haven’t yet broadly taken up the issue of digital privacy. Among the few to do so publicly is a grass-roots effort called Catalina’s List, a backer of the California law. “Anything that gives big business an upper hand on individual choices is corrupting the idea of personal choice, freedom and privacy,” a co-founder of Catalina’s List, Bobbi Jo Chavarria, told me.
Weaker federal privacy legislation could eventually override the California law. Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft all contributed money to groups opposing the California law, and last year these companies and Apple spent more than $64 million lobbying Congress on privacy and other issues. Tech companies are pushing for what they want; as the research shows, that’s not necessarily what women want.
(More women need to be in power.)
So what can Americans do? First, we must elect more women to positions of power who can help write privacy legislation. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that two of the top digital policymakers in Europe are women, including Margrethe Vestager, the European Union’s competition commissioner, and Elizabeth Denham, Britain’s information commissioner.
The law, of course, will never be as fast as tech companies. They should build products and services that respect privacy by design. To do that, these companies need to hire and consult more women. Women hold just 25 percent of jobs across the tech industry and an even smaller percentage of prime engineering roles.
Most important, all of us must start thinking about privacy as a feminist issue. We cannot wait for women’s concerns to be addressed. The stakes for us are far too high.
Emily Chang (@emilychangtv) is an anchor at Bloomberg TV and the author of “Brotopia.”
Essay Outline
Paragraph 1: Summarize Chang's major points.
Paragraph 2: Support or refute Chang's thesis.
Paragraphs 3-5: Supporting paragraphs.
Paragraph 6: Counterargument-rebuttal (free speech argument).
Paragraph 7: Conclusion, restatement of your thesis.
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