A company can't change 180 degrees overnight. Playboy knows that most people still visit their site for a certain reason, and that reason isn't discussions of feminism. Credit goes to them for trying to introduce a more enlightened perspective to people who otherwise might not have encountered it.

Maybe I'm giving Playboy the benefit of the doubt, but I'd bet it's a left hand/right hand scenario. Playboy has always had this weird split personality of being a place of both intelligent writing and exploitative photography. Maybe it was more common back in the day, but Playboy's published stuff by Vonnegut, Mailer, Watts, Murakami, Heller, Atwood, Updike, Marquez and more (yes, I Googled up a list). That this piece on Cox was intelligent and thoughtful isn't surprising, in that regard. If anything, I think they're trying to reclaim the quality of writing they had before.

It's just that, such writing floats in the middle of a larger pool of institutional porn. Playboy was a girlie mag when it started, and is still a girlie mag (though now competing with online stuff to catch more male gaze).

Smart stuff will still be published in Playboy, and maybe even more of it and better. But I think it'll always be a porn site too, and we'll have to wade through that pool of porn to get to the good writing. ("We're just visiting the site for the articles.")

The porn industry has been selling itself with the rhetoric of sex-positive feminism for years now -- maybe even decades. A lot of feminists have bought into it too. And the vast majority of their product has remained the same dehumanizing misogynist garbage. So it's not all that surprising that Playboy would publish an article like this at the same time that they crassly advertise 45-year-old booty. Really, what's contrary to their interests in publishing a respectable editorial that argues that a nude photoshoot is empowering?

I can't bring myself to call a discussion on wether or not trans women are women feminist, but I see your point.

Well, regardless of the articles, I very much doubt that Playboy is going to change their internal politics. But on the other hand, they seem to be heading towards a female consumer base and since feminism is generally very bad at hearing sex workers, I'm fuzzy on what hurts and what helps. Guess we'll have to wait, let the sex workers talk, and see.

since the vast majority of mainstream pubs are not interested in reforming or interrogating larger systems of oppression, i'd say this is part of a larger trend. it's confusing and disconcerting - see two things alongside one another and feeling simultaneously uplifted/relieved/supported/inspired and also disappointed/annoyed/fatigued, etc. those with social justice twitter or tumblr feeds might know what i mean. for my part, the end result is delving further into the self, re-imagining the ego and trying to figure out where one fits personally. ultimately, it distracts from organizing work because it's so complex and you end up mentally compromising quite a bit. but it's reflective of real life...there will never be a space that feels completely...unproblematic. does that mean i support playboy...no. but i suppose that i could see myself 'liking' a playboy article,or at least having a conversation about it.

The certainly need an image makeover to prosper again.

Any discussion about the overlaying of "traditional" patriarchal pornography on otherwise sensitive, creative, thoughtful, or enlightened articles on feminism or any other important topic must of necessity remember that Playboy Corporation is , like any other business, an instrument for creating wealth. Sales of women creates wealth . The sale of transwomen has become profitable as well. The sale of black women has been profitable for 400 years. Presumably the sale of 45 year old women (or MILFS) continues to be profitable. The corporation merely saw an opportunity to sell black trans women and/or MILFS as a good market move. Transwomen are sold as alternatives as are MILFS to males who believe they cannot afford or are not sufficiently gifted to purchase younger more pornographically "classical" products. At some level there was probably the assumption made that men who read Playboy for the articles are "losers" who fall into this target market. If they want to read about black transwomen they will most likely settle for 45 year old women who are deemed pornworthy.
The men who read Playboy for the erotic content probably are not as good a target for the MILF content.
We can only assume that an Editor or some corporate equivalent reviewed and approved this content juxtaposition as good advertising placement, or was so inured to pornographic ubiquity as not to care.

So white feminists are more interested in rehashed conversations around Playboy being sexist or not (it is, indubitably) but not showing up when one of their own slandered Laverne Cox with transmisogynistic, anti-black rubbish?

Do not think people are not on to your sly undermining of the argument the article makes with "You don’t have to agree with all Berlatsky says to notice that he is no stranger to feminist theory".
The one question you could ask yourself (and other white feminists) is why Playboy of all things could find space for this article while much of online cis-white feminism continues being anti-black and transphobic.

Let me start by saying that I respect you as a person. I think your intelligent and make great points. However, I am also a straight male. I am physically attracted to women's curves. I don't let that override seeing someone as a person or believing women deal with discrimination. Sometimes all of us want to be objectified and objectify. What was different was once men held but decreasing less power to objectify. They could use that power to enforce beauty of their partners. As things have become relatively equal women are increasing their objectification as well, not both genders are decreasing it. With that I can't fault a straight men's magazine for both intelligent feminist critique and promoting physical attractive women, nor the same for a straight women's magazine for talking about masculinities but having a hot buns comparison. I think we all want to do who we think is "hot" we men just got/get to enforce it more.

My sense is that there's no contradiction here. I think you're attributing too much autonomy to the field of cultural production, and anthropomorphizing a social institution.

When a large for-profit corporation like Playboy Enterprises starts publishing some feminist content, this is not "what change looks like". This is, at best, a byproduct of actual changes in the configuration of power relations in society.

There's no question that Playboy Enterprises is trying to appropriate feminism. What else would would it do? It is a for-profit corporation, not a social movement organization or even a political party.

More broadly, as sociologists we should know that it's a mistake to attribute human qualities to social institutions.

An individual human being has a sense of self, and experiences unpleasant cognitive dissonance when their actions conflict with their self-image. Individual human beings also have an intuitive sense of moral obligation, of being in some way responsible to others for their actions.

Social institutions, on the other hand, despite being formed of human action, are emergent systems and thus are not themselves human. As such, social institutions generally do not have anything like a subjectivity, sense of self, or a conscience.

As a transwoman I have experienced being told I'm not attractive

Hey; I'm Noah, who wrote the playboy.com piece on Laverne Cox you're discussing here. Just wanted to say thank you for the piece. I think your ambivalence is entirely understandable, and this is a very fair piece. I appreciate taking the time to talk about it.

This article was published by Playboy because the corporation has a vested interest in demonstrating that any and every genre of female should pose nude because it makes them money. It has nothing to do with a social imperative of liberating women. If your "feminism" is consistent with the business model of a corporation premised on hetero male fantasy and sexual gratification, it's probably not feminism.

I'M SORRY, I didn't realize being attracted to attractive women was so "misogynistic," it's not like they're posing in sexy outfits because they want to. They may say otherwise, but they are just internalizing misogyny. Only a Misogynist would think that a woman could choose to enter a career
that pays her for being beautiful and possibly inspire people to learn more about her and her accomplishments. Accomplishments that the patriarchy let her have that are in no way based on her own merit as an individual. Don't you see how trans-phobic Playboy is? Lets see the kind of journalism that only a gender studies degree can get you.

It starts with an anecdote about being invited to write at Playboy, because multimillion dollar industries just pick the best Journalists, it's not like people send in a list of their merits and then only the most qualified is accepted for the job. Defiantly not a PR stunt to avoid being slandered by a group of marxist bigots by picking some talentless nobody from a random website run by said marxists.

Then there is a quote from a black transsexual star who agreed (forced by the patriarchy) to pose nude to promote sexuality. The quote is about how society never acknowledges black and trans women unless they meet a standard. Because no one else is held to standards.
And in no way is this taken out of context.

And then after our little group flashback about an unrelated article with the only connection being the fact that it was hosted on the site in question, we come to the sexist advertisement making the baseless claim that post-menopausal women still like sex.

In short, because something I took out of context supports my narrative was said by black tranny, It only reasonably follows that playboy hates women, transsexuals, as well as people with a high melanin count, and they support Hitler, ISIL, they're islamiphobic, and they have a giant satellite cannon that shoots aborted fetus on birth control who are rapists and gender roles and manspreading and privalge. Did I miss any thing?

I'm starting to feel that deliberate avoidance of topics is more important than unpleasantness being present. Playboy could simply not print content about feminism, it could stay within very rigidly defined ideological boundaries and it would be hard for anyone to pick up on this let alone protest it. Many news sources and forums do this. Playboys is not a magazine I have any interest in, but there are people who read it, and Playboy is exposing them to a wider range of ideas than they might otherwise encounter.

This is better and much easier article by the author who blatantly inverted and gas lighted the words of Megan Murphy.
It is a shame that people are now buying feminism from Playboy, a sexist and mysoginist corporation taht is obviously trying to coopt feminism and earn more money on womens oppression. Nice try, but we're not that stupid.

Q1. Who's in charge over there?

Hugh Hefner is the ed-in-chief of Playboy Magazine and Scott Flanders is the CEO of Playboy Enterprises.

So, in short: Men. Men who want to make money from objectifying women for visual consumption by other men.

Q2. What is their strategic plan

Playboy is fishing for feminist pieces to give its porn empire some political and ethical credit. This is because feminism is at its strongest in decades: we're making huge strides in challenging sexual objectification and the structural oppression of women. Playboy's usual unapologetic sexism is becoming a risky business strategy.

Q3. Are they trying to appropriate feminism?

Yes. And thank you - Lisa - for refusing to write for them. Shame on Noah Berlatsky. I too had to click through porny pop ups to read his article. I agree that he has important and valid points to make about the extent to which Laverne Cox's Allure photo shoot might be considered objectifying, but surely he can see the hypocrisy of writing about female objectification in a magazine built on the objectification of women. He's a sell out, plain and simple.