Hugh Hefner roiled feminist sensibilities in a recent New York Daily News article this month in which he declared, “women are sex objects.”

The Women’s Media Center, a feminist organization, was outraged. “Hugh Hefner’s comment to the NY Daily News directly contradicts the politics of equality and freedom he claims to champion,” the Center wrote in a statement to the press. “It reveals that he doesn’t know the difference between ‘subject’ and ‘object,’ and doesn’t understand the dangers of objectifying human beings.”

Megan McGurk sarcastically lamented all the time she wasted in school at The Anti-Room, a feminist blog. “Hugh Hefner spared women the dignity of full person hood by declaring them sex objects for male gratification and the reproductive function,” McGurk wrote. “So all the years I spent in graduate school were for nothing.”

The feminist website, Feministing scoffed, “tell us what you really think Hugh.”

Despite the frustrations these women have, some attribute such oversexualized objectification of women to the feminist movement itself.

Founder of Collective Shout — a group which targets companies that use overly sexual images of girls –Melinda Tankard Reist struck a chord last week when she told a New Zealand audience that the over-sexualized nature of western society has set women back 50 years.

“Raunch culture has taken us back. It’s an absolute tragedy,” she said. “[Women’s] liberation has now come to be seen as the ability to wrap your legs around a pole, or flash your breasts in public, or send a sexual image of yourself to your boyfriend … Girls think that empowerment lies in their ability to be hot and sexy.”

Amy Siskind, co-founder of The New Agenda, an advocacy group for women, told The Daily Caller that while she wasn’t ready to attribute Hefner’s attitude to feminism, she did believe over-sexualized imagery to be a byproduct of third wave feminism gone awry.“The first wave of feminism got women the right to vote,” Siskind said. “The second wave, with women like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, gave women permission to make choices and enjoy sex. But the third wave — kind of the 1990s and on…was the idea that there is empowerment in being defined by our sexuality.”

While Siskind credits the third wave with the shift, even second wave feminist Betty Friedan, co-founder of the National Organization for Women and author of “The Feminine Mystique,” walked that fine line between liberation and objectification. In 1992, Friedan gave an interview to Playboy contributing editor, David Sheff, in which she told him that she did not have a problem with celebrating the female form in forums like Playboy, so long as it did not result in objectification.

“Playboy’s centerfold is fine,” Friedan told Sheff. “It’s holding onto your own anachronism and it is not pornographic, though many of my sisters would disagree. It’s harmless. I was amused to see that a recent graduate of Smith, my colleague, posed for a pictorial and defended herself by saying that she could celebrate her sexuality if she wanted to…At the same time, I don’t approve of anything that reduces women to sex objects, and I really disapprove of anything that degrades women or depicts them as the object of violence.