What a week it's been!

I responded to an article on The Good Men's Project, written by the founder of that site, which was about how Hugh Hefner is gearing up to steamroll into the top TV-viewing slot on NBC this fall, usurping Mad Men, by unveiling his new series The Playboy Club.

I clicked on the youtube trailer for the new series and thought only, "Oh brother....here we go again" with the normalization and branding of pornography as cool, the thing to stay home and watch...

In my response to this piece about The Playboy Club, which the founder published as a featured article, I traveled back in time to when I was a Bunny myself, and recounted how the early seeds of my distaste for the effects of pornography were being sown back then.

In the week since my story was featured at Good Men Project, it was also picked up by other sites such as alternet, the hairpin (and others) where it gained popularity, as well.

The comments were surprising: I thought I'd be ridiculed for my old-fashioned attitudes of wanting a man to be faithful and for my stating that I thought pornography dishonored monogamous relationships, especially whenever secrecy is involved. But only one person said that.

Instead, the opinions expressed were all over the place, reflecting back to me the incredibly diverse nature of our reactions to topics on sexuality.

There were only a few pro-porn people (a huge surprise to me, given that Good Men Project is 72% male) and a few who thought I should offer up my first-born child to Hugh Hefner because he gave me a break by giving me the Bunny position in the first place. (um.....quid pro quo: I busted my near-naked butt in high heels to do that job extremely well!- and- the Playboy Club wasn't bringing Hugh Hefner buckets of money because they sold $5.00 pitchers of beer...it was because of the Bunnies that the men came in. So, I think I've more than repaid my debt of gratitude. There, I said it and I feel better!)

But there were two letters sent to me privately that both broke my heart, though in different ways:

One was from a woman writing to say she worked in the Miami Playboy Club at the same time as I worked in the New York club. Her life was pockmarked since then with relationships with men who only saw her as a sex doll. She medicated a lot with drugs and alcohol, then had a breakdown which I would reframe as a breakthrough since she got her life together after that. Then, just last year, her own daughter posed as a Centerfold for Playboy and the girl's life has never been the same.

Reason? Photos leaked out on the net and she is now constantly being sought out and followed by creeps who claim they're glad they can be "legal pedophiles" since she looks very young in the photos. The creepiness factor has thrown her into the kind of nightmare she couldn't imagine last year. This young woman's days are now haunted by her "lucky break" of posing nude for Playboy. Reading this mother's story was heartbreaking.

The other story that deeply moved me was from a young man with a 7 year old daughter. He told me that he writes lots of letters to his daughter (he has shared custody of her) and in them, he tells her anything he thinks a loving father should tell his precious daughter: all about life, about right and wrong, about being careful with friends that want you to try drugs, about being careful going out at night and all kinds of provisos for becoming an adult. The purpose of all these letters he was writing was to save them up and then give them to her on her Sweet 16! (*sigh*)

He wrote that my piece made him sob, that it made him worry so much for his own little girl, that he needed to convey to his daughter that no matter what she was faced with, she always had his love to carry her through. He sent me a photo plus some of the letters he was writing to her, and some of the bedtime stories he makes up for her, all of which conclude with her being his most precious Princess who was never more loved. This young man never got to know his own father,which saddened him deeply..He wanted to make sure his own child always knew he loved her, even if something happened to him.

Do I even need to tell you how moved I was? I was a mess, as was Terre, when we realized how very different our lives would have been had we been fathered like that.

So for every comment on the comment thread that was less than flattering or downright mean, I say: That's ok....bring it on!

If I get even one such letter back as the one from the young man, it was all worth it! There is now one more person in the world, loving his child better. Could I ask for more?