Uh. Wow. Very illustrative.

i think the idea of the hate fuck is a way to talk about raping someone without the stigma of the word 'rape'. 'i want to hate fuck them', i mean, what does that mean? because you don't want to give them pleasure, i assume. i suppose it might have something to do with the idea of 'angry sex' that people seem so into, though i think that has to do with getting our passions confused. if you are passionately angry at someone, you might have really passionate sex. but it's not because you are passionate about the sex, which for me means i don't want to have angry sex. but i think the hate fuck is more about (more) socially acceptable rape talk.

but i don't think that using 'fuck' to mean 'fuck someone up' and 'have sex with' is necesarily illustrative of our fucked up relationship to sex (i don't deny the relationship is fucked up). 'fuck' actually has a hundred meanings, and it's most frequently a fairly meaningless expletive. a term like 'mother fucker' is unlikely to have arisen from the idea of someone who fucks mothers (fathers?), or hurts mothers, and more from the irrational combination of offensive words we resort to when angry. (my nephew when he was little, used to use the term 'fucker sucker asshole' all the time. it has no real meaning, it's just a combination of curse words. and he wasn't using it in a little kid just using the words he isn't supposed to way, that was what he said when he was really upset.) (invoking a mother is generally considered crass, though i've always wondered how much of that is related to mary, mother of jesus, and not about insulting our own mothers.)

we use the terms "jesus christ" and "fucking A" to mean exactly the same thing, expletively, but i don't think that has to do with our having a messed up relationship between sex and jesus, you know? though again, i can't deny that relationship is fairly fucked up.

i also think it's hysterical that playboy would set itself up as 'liberal'.

I think the term hate fuck is shorthand for rape. Period, full stop.

I do NOT think hate fuck is shorthand for rape.

First of all, to me "Fuck" in the sexual term is at the end of a spectrum, the middle of which lies "have sex" and the other side of which lies "make love". "Fuck" is sex wholly divorced for love. "Fuck" is sex for animalistic, hedonistic, non procreative reasons.

Hate fuck means you hate this person, but you would fuck them, because on the level that "Fuck" operates, you do indeed want to have sex with them if you divorce their ideology and personality from their body and sexuality. Similar to the terms "sympathy fuck" or "mercy fuck", where, you hate/sympathize with/have mercy on this person, and then you fuck them.

However, this does speak to gender issues in the sense that for men, I think that having these (questionably) socially and sexually conservative, religious women reduced from "the goddess" to "the whore" because they are so drunk with lust they're willing to fuck across the ideological spectrum reinforces male sexual hegemony.

Wow, I think Playboy just set a new standard for fauxgressives.

Amias, interesting that you place hedonistic and non-procreative under the functions of "fucking". Does one then "have sex" solely in order to make babies? To me, this isn't a matter of the differences between terms used to describe a series of acts. I think that the term fucking can be used for a lot of things, but I agree with lisa that it is disturbing that it carries two distinct connotations.

I really don't think the term hate fuck can be defended in any way. As others have said, it just seems like a way to get around using the word rape. To me, it's a crystal-clear reflection of a particular view of sexuality, where men are "taking" from women and pulling one over on them -- sex is supposed to be humilating and degrading for the women who are tricked or coerced into it.

I really don't get a "rape" sense from it, personally. To my mind (and I'm a straight male, which means on the one hand privilege, but on the other hand means I'm sadly kind of near Playboy's target audience), "hate fuck" means "fuck her even though you hate her", possibly even "fuck her even though you hate yourself for doing it". There's no implication in there that the fucking would be in any way nonconsensual.

Now, with that said, the slideshow is reprehensible for so many other reasons, including the idea of judging a woman on her appearance rather than on her political views, even when the woman in question is known for the latter rather than the former. And that's a fairly deep problem with the way women are treated in US politics. It's hard to imagine saying this about something as shameless as Playboy, but they should really be ashamed of themselves.

Biohazard have a particularly catchy tune entitled "hate fuck fight kill". Other songs on the album (according to Wikipedia) are "Sex and violence", "Trap", and "Domination" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncivilization)

What was Playboy thinking?!

That is one of the most disgusting things I have ever encountered. As a Republican and a female (albeit not a neocon), I find this depiction perhaps even more offensive than Playboy's usual content (which I am not a fan of in the first place).

However, I understand this was presented for sociological purposes, so back to that point. I find it curious how Playboy would single out conservatives and thus potentially alienate some of their readers - surely Rachel Maddow and other liberal female talking heads could have been included on a piece on attractive pundits, for example.

"Hate fuck" is certainly an interesting term and I've never heard it before. From the sounds of it, I do not think it refers to rape - rather, I agree with the above commenter that it's like "pity fuck," etc. It certainly does bring a degree of violence and, well, hatred, to the equation, and sociologically it is very bizarre to consider that people would consider doing procreative acts with people that they despised.

It's a not uncommon practice;
http://simantics-thelist.blogspot.com/2009/06/michelle-malkin.html

I haven't come across a Playboy in years (pardon the pun), so someone remind me - isn't it still a PORNO mag?

Because my impression was that the whole point of the magazine's photo spreads was to cater to its readers' fantasies about fucking women. That's why they bought it in the first place. For that reason, I'm actually a little impressed that they slipped so much political content into that context. The Dana Perino bit was especially funny - it used the magazine's usual misogyny and locker-room humor as a device to take a broad swipe at the whole Republican agenda.

Also, aside from the use of a really dubious term like "hate fuck," I'm not sure that the message goes quite as far as "these women deserve to be raped." It's more like "you want to fuck these evil bitches for their looks, but they're so vile that they're unworthy of your cock." No more or less repugnant than the stuff people buy the magazine for, I suppose.

In portuguese the equivalent of Fuck, the verb "Foder" works in similar ways. At the same time that it is a dirty word for sex it is also a word that means harming someone. And has a whole bunch of other uses, it is a very versatile word, much like "fuck".

My guess is that the equivalent of the word fuck is used in many other languages the same way. I don't think it is cultural, it is deeper than that. Just check profanity in other languages, you'll see that sex, god and excrement are a common theme.

"To me, there’s a lot more to being progressive than toeing the line of political correctness. If, for you, it’s about magically suppressing laughter when the joke is tasteless, respect for art whose creators you disagree with, or arousal at images that aren’t gender-utopian, then I’m afraid you’ll have a very difficult time finding enough “real progressives” in the human race to affect any real social change."

Wow, the old "humourless feminists" trope? I don't think I said anything of the sort. I said that laughing at sexual degradation and mocking women for being women is sexist. In other words, there's a difference between saying "Ann Coulter is a mean-spirited person with shitty ideas" and "Ann Coulter is a frosty bitch." The latter doesn't contribute, and if you're using it to affirm your liberal views, it falls flat.

Can you explain why you find the article funny if not for its sexist character?

Seems the hate-fuckees all possess a semblance of the physical attributes sought for Playboy playmates, so the desire to fuck 'em comes from the shallowest of attributes: blond hair, skinny, big breasts, big wide toothy smile, a fullness of the lips and a certain slackness about the jaw, etc...

Embodying some combination of those characteristics triggers the robotic "she's a possible sex partner" response in males programmed to respond to such, even if there's no possible chance of a real encounter (like politics, it takes place entirely in our minds). Playboy has worked tirelessly for decades to reinforce that programming, and the women appearing in it rarely speak or express themselves beyond mentioning how much they like football and beer too or something equally inane. A woman expressing opinions about health care reform or whatever is not going to be perceived as being as easy to get into bed as one who is already naked and likes whatever I say I like and won't talk out loud (or so the fantasy goes, I suppose), and if a guy doesn't really give a damn about politics (and couldn't respond to her arguments even if he did) then he can show everyone she ain't better than him by fuckin' her. Yeah, she might know quantum physics and was elected to Congress and stuff, but I fucked her!

So, maybe this 'hate-fuck' thing comes from the confusion caused in some men by a woman who looks a little tiny bit like a centerfold but unlike centerfolds she expresses her knowledge or opinions out loud (whether they are really her opinions or not is another issue). It's not so much about the actual opinions being expressed as it is the fact that by expressing them these women are clearly not going to be sitting quietly and safely in the background looking decorative. Well, there's an old-school way to fix that! I got yer counter-argument right here, baby! If it was about the opinions then women with the 'correct' ones would be well regarded independently of their appearance.

It's especially ironic considering that these particular women are advocating a 'conservative' political position that's become so intertwined with religion that it would (if sufficiently empowered and taken to its logical conclusion) ultimately result in them being told to be quiet and to get back in the kitchen. Hell, I don't find any of these women attractive (I cannot separate bodies from minds) or the hate-fuck stuff funny so I guess I'm the most confused of all.

Oh, and why don't women get together and talk about hate-fucking Dick Cheney or Karl Rove? (that's a rhetorical question!) Or for that matter, why don't men dry-hump the men they defeat in political debates or other conflicts like wolves do? It's a very effective way to eliminate ambiguity about one's status and no one would argue that wolves are acting "gay" when they do it.

Then again, maybe I'm looking too deep and I should just write this off as a men's magazine equivalent of a Cosmopolitan article that reveals more about its author than anything else.