Hugh Hefner was the ultimate enemy of women – no feminist anywhere will shed a tear at his death

To claim that Hefner was a sexual liberationist or free speech idol is like suggesting that Roman Polanski has contributed to child protection

On hearing that the pimp and pornographer Hugh Hefner had died this morning, I wished I believed in hell.

“The notion that Playboy turns women into sex objects is ridiculous,” said the sadistic pimp in 2010. “Women are sex objects… It’s the attraction between the sexes that makes the world go ‘round. That’s why women wear lipstick and short skirts.”

Hefner was responsible for turning porn into an industry. As Gail Dines writes in her searing expose of the porn industry, he took it from the back street to Wall Street and, thanks in large part to him, it is now a multibillion dollar a year industry. Hefner operated in a country where if you film any act of humiliation or torture – and if the victim is a woman – the film is both entertainment and it is protected speech.

He caused immeasurable damage by turning porn – and therefore the buying and selling of women’s bodies – into a legitimate business. Hefner hated women and referred to them as “dogs”.

In 1963, Gloria Steinem (then a freelance journalist) decided to go undercover as a Bunny Girl, spending two weeks in the role at the Playboy Mansion. What Steinem found was that the women working there were treated like dirt. Bunnies had to wear heels at least three inches high and corsets at least two inches too small everywhere except the bust, which came only with D-cups. Steinem described it as a form of torture. A sneeze could break the zip, and when peeled off their torsos were bright red and swollen.

Steinem found grotesque misogyny towards the women, and commented that they were “dehumanised” by the punters – who were, after all, following Hefner’s lead.

“These chicks [feminists] are our natural enemy. It is time to do battle with them,” wrote Hefner in a secret memo leaked to feminists by secretaries at Playboy. “It is time we do battle with them... What I want is a devastating piece that takes the militant feminists apart.” As a response, feminists began picketing his businesses.

Admitting that he could only orgasm by masturbating to pornography, Hefner was a sexual predator. The young women who worked at the Playboy Mansion have spoken of their disgust in having sex with him, but said it was, “part of the unspoken rules”. “It was almost as if we had to do it in return for all the things we had,” said one.

British twins Carla and Melissa Howe, who lived at Playboy Mansion for a time, told a newspaper in 2015 that security was so strict that it was “like being in prison”. They also said of the men that visit the Mansion: “They were really pervy; all the girls were fighting to run away.”

Described as “modern, trustworthy, clean, respectable” by Time magazine in March 1963, Hefner has been regularly rebranded as a type of cultural attache rather than the woman-hating sleazebag he was.

To claim that Hefner was a sexual liberationist or free speech idol is like suggesting that Roman Polanski has contributed to child protection.

I would imagine that silk pyjama manufacturers are mourning Hefner, but no feminist anywhere will shed a tear at his death. And the liberal leftists that wax lyrical about how Hefner was a supporter of anti-racist struggles should perhaps ask themselves how such a civil rights champion squared this with the millions he made from selling the most vile racism in much of his pornography.

As I was writing this, a flagship news programme asked if I would take part this evening in an item in Hefner’s legacy. “We’re looking to discuss whether he was a force for good or bad. Did Hefner revolutionise feminine sexuality, or encourage the degradation of women by constructing them merely as objects of desire?”

Now he is dead I would imagine the scores of women he abused will come forward and force his liberal supporters to see him for what he really was – sexist scum of the lowest order.