Last night on the Colbert Report, I was introduced to The Atlasphere, a dating service for devotees of Ayn Rand’s novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Colbert did a funny bit about the website. He said, “The Atlasphere is the best place for Randians to find the one they love, other than their bathroom mirror.” But it all focused on the egomaniacal aspect of this group. I admit that this is the most defining aspect of the Rand’s movement. But when it comes to sexuality, it is not.
In both The Fountainhead and Night of January 16th, the hero rapes the heroine. Which begs the question: what sane woman would want to meet a man who loved The Fountainhead. A researcher in abnormal psychology? Somehow I doubt it will be a woman who holds “the values of reason, independence, hard work, and personal integrity.”
Yes, yes, Ayn Rand was a deeply troubled person. And it is her commitment to a bizarre mixture of fascism, anarchism, and Hollywood romanticism that makes her so popular among mostly ignorant aspirants. But like Christians, Randians have to do a lot of work to distinguish between what they like and what they don’t. And that’s just fine. You have to do that with any dogmatic system. (And Objectivism is certainly that!) But that doesn’t mean I’d trust anyone dating on the basis of Rand’s creepy pro-rape writings.
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We’ll never know for sure, but I think Rand struggled with the feeling that she was a male rapist trapped in a homely woman’s body.
@Andrea – Maybe Armstrong with that tiny testicle [i]is[/i] Ayn Rand!
Ha. I got really into “The Fountainhead” as a teen. It had an underappreciated genius (teen angst DING DING DING) and, if I recall, some harsh words about fake religious piety. I gave my copy to a girl I had a crush on, whose sensible response was “um, what’s with the rape part?”
Not that Andrea reads this site anymore (all blogs and lives I have any remote connection with burn to ashes) but Rand was even weirder than she imagined. Taibbi’s “Griftopia” had a stunning chapter on the Rand cult, which was actually a friggin’ cult (and Alan Greenspan was a member.) Rand thought any member of the cult should sleep with her if she commanded it (since fidelity to their partners was just more fake pious crap) but under no circumstances could they not be loyal to her. What a loon! Up there with Tim LaHaye or Idi Amin.
Incidentally, as the only worthwhile thing about Amin was Forrest Whittaker playing him in a movie, who would make a great Rand? I’d suggest Cate Blanchett or Julianne Moore, since they can both kill any role, but either one might be too pretty.
That was a big problem for Rand: as a fascist she was, she greatly respected beauty in women and she was not beautiful. Yes, Objectivism is a cult. I recall reading a book a long time ago on that very subject — part of my deprogramming. Not really from her, because I didn’t like her and never thought she was a good writer.
For the record, Andrea never read The Fountainhead. She read Atlas Shrugged and it scarred her for life. But she is right that it is a great title. That’s why she read it. She was a huge George Eliot fan, who’s kind of the anti-Rand.