Feminists Rail on Playboy Hugh Hefner for a Lifetime Spent Objectifying Women

While tributes from Hollywood and beyond pour in on Twitter, feminists are using the social media platform to voice their view: Hefner built an empire by objectifying women, plain and simple.

"Hugh Hefner is rightly remembered for rebelling against right wing moralism before most people, but please don't forget he treated women like garbage to do it," feminist author Jessica Valenti tweeted.

Sophie Walker, the leader of the Women's Equality Party in the United Kingdom, criticized a BBC reporter for calling Hefner "the father of sexual liberation. "Word they were looking for was exploitation, I think," she tweeted.

And it's not just women who see Hefner's accomplishments as problematic. Movie critic Scott Weinberg, for example, faulted the pornography icon for questionable ethics in publishing.

"Everyone saying awesome stuff about Hugh Hefner... wasn't he among the first to publish nude photos women didn't want published? (charlize)," he tweeted.

On Thursday morning, Glamour published an opinion piece written by Claire Heuchan, who argued celebrations of Hefner's life and work "gloss over the sexism that was the foundation of Hefner's company."

"Hugh Hefner is now being celebrated as a 'cultural icon who helped change the world' – and he did change the world, but not for the better," Heuchan wrote. "Hefner normalised the sexual objectification of women and paved the way to porn culture. Hefner's legacy is selling male fantasies of women's bodies and women's sexuality as 'freedom'. But really, it's just more of the same old misogyny."

Take a look at what people are saying about Hefner from a feminist perspective: