Ayn Rand Use Of Rape Is love

I noticed that Ayn Rand has her own section in the Rape Is Love trope page. Her 'heroes' have an odd habit of molesting the heroines and yet are still depicted in as a romantic light as possible.

Now normally I wouldn't bother questioning her kinks as neither that trope or her writings have any appeal to me. But it seems as her works are all about the sanctity, value and rights of the individual. Then rape by its very nature, shows a total contempt for the personal integrity and autonomy -the "ultimate violation of self- of an individual and should be an Moral Event Horizon for any character by her own philosophical world view. Not because of any inherent immorality to sexually assault but rather because it's unobjectivist.

edited 17th Jan '11 9:36:43 PM by joeyjojo

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There's a lot about Ayn Rand that's extremely contradictory.

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

Ah, but in an Objectivist utopia, you could rape anyone you wanted.

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

Ayn Rand's sexual politics were... pretty screwed up. I think she was a homophobe, for starters.

Now, I am not an expert at all on Objectivism, but this is what I've managed to gleam. Rand was utterly obsessed with the Selfish Man, who was completely devoid of any altruistic motives and looked for only himself (or "rational self-interest", as she liked to call it). You can see this in her protagonists, especially Howard Roark from The Fountainhead and John Galt in Atlas Shrugged. Perfect, shining examples of Objectivism. Superior to everyone else.

Including the female lead (let's not call them heroines). Roark essentially rapes Francon, and Dagny Taggart spends most of Atlas trying to find John Galt and his superhuman penis. Basically the Selfish Man is supposed to dominate everyone else, including their sexual partner(s), which is where the Rape Is Love bit comes in.

And both those women were into it, so it's okay. Taggart sleeps with essentially every other man in the book.

It's not over. Not yet.

I think Rand was actually aiming for a different trope altogether, but she fumbled the writing of it enough to leave fifty-five and a half kinds of Unfortunate Implications.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

And this, kiddies, is why you don't bring your Fetish Fuel into your philosophical treatises.

What's precedent ever done for us?

Tell that to Heinlein!

Does Heinlein even count?

Lady Chatterly's Lover, on the other hand...

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

Oh God, Heinlein...

Compare Space Cadet (teenager becomes member of the Space Police, has lots of wacky adventures and becomes a man) to anything involving Lazarus Long (Mary Sue has lots and lots sex with his mother, daughters, lives forever, is a genius, etc. etc. etc.)

edited 22nd Jan '11 3:27:21 PM by Medicus

It's not over. Not yet.

(snicker)

Oh fucking hell.

I am so glad Heinlein never had kids.

It's not over. Not yet.

He did have a mom...

edited 23rd Jan '11 7:00:14 AM by joeyjojo

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Give credit to Heinlein, he was advocating voluntary incest.

But if you raise your children with the belief that "having sex with mommy and daddy is ok", then it's not really voluntary, is it?

edited 23rd Jan '11 2:58:22 PM by Medicus

It's not over. Not yet.

Well that's true of every ideology ever when you think about it.

hashtagsarestupid

Richard Dawkins makes a similar point about religion.

But I think there's a difference between "there's an omnipotent, omniscient being that will reward you with eternal paradise after you die, as long as you are a good person in this life" and "yes yes, suck daddy's dick, it's not wrong at all, you're so fucking hot."

edited 23rd Jan '11 11:47:30 PM by Medicus

It's not over. Not yet.

See, that's similar to my problem with the Free-Love Future. Sex being accepted is a lower priority for me than sex being something you can choose, period.

edited 23rd Jan '11 9:44:11 PM by OOZE

I'm feeling strangely happy now, contented and serene. Oh don't you see, finally I'll be, somewhere that's green...

I Fail At Reading Comprehension Forever OOZE, could you elaborate?

It's not over. Not yet.

I'm saying that I see a Free-Love Future as being a society wide version of training your children to have sex with you.

I'm feeling strangely happy now, contented and serene. Oh don't you see, finally I'll be, somewhere that's green...

Are you really going to have that argument again

[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.

One would hope so D:

Anyway I'm going to give Heinlein the credit of the doubt and assume that it wasn't so much incest in itself he was promoting as a 'society where actives of consent adults were their own business'. Incest was just the logical extreme of that.

Ayn Rand making her heroes (hot!) rapists on the other hand outright contradicts her message of personal integrity.

edited 23rd Jan '11 11:48:18 PM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

Yeah, but those women were into it, so it's okay!

Heinlein's worlds were... pretty fucking bizarre, if you ask me. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is the only one that he wrote after Starship Troopers that I'd give a pass to, because the Lunar society actually had a reason for group marriages and stuff, and there was no real incest going on.

But that book was pretty dumb anyway. Seriously, you colonise the moon and you use it to grow food?

edited 23rd Jan '11 11:52:13 PM by Medicus

It's not over. Not yet.

TMIAHM was good (bizarre logistic aside) as he based his views on his world rather than his world on his views. Even his beloved Starship Troopers starts showing problems when the hero takes time off epic space battles to attend lectures about the importance of civic values. Flash forwards to his appropriately named twilight years when he wrote beyond the sunset and the universe seems to revolve around giving his Mary Sue a load of hot red headed relatives to bang. Including through time travel disturbingly his own mother.

Oh but don't worry about him knocking her up folks, she is already pregnant. With him. He have sex with his mother. While she was pregnant. With himself.

I fear at what would of happen if he arrived nine months later...

edited 17th Feb '11 10:20:01 AM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

I think the reason why Lazarus Long never fucked himself was that Heinlein would have to give up writing afterwards. Can't really top that.

Yeah, it was pretty clear the polyandry and line marriages were strictly because of the situation they were in. Hell, when Luna was first colonised the male:female ratio was 10:1, by the time the novel began it was 2:1 — in a few decades it'd be 1:1. And women had more rights, at least when it came to choosing partners, than they did on Earth. Not to mention the line marriage thing which was pretty bizarre. Apparently they're all married to each other (children excluded, he hadn't got there yet), but there's a "mother" and "father" that are the oldest ones in the marriage, and I seem to remember that inside the marriage individuals tended to group into couples of two people (male and female), but it was all pretty weird. At one point Mannie shares a bed with the marriage's "mother", though it's not implied they had sex.

Weird as hell, but it actually made sense it context. And there was no "this is better than what you do down there" proselytising, either.

To my great shame, I haven't been able to find Starship Troopers (I can't order anything online), so I'm only familiar with what I've read about it on the net and the movie. Not that the movie is close to it or anything.

Edit: You can almost forgive TMISA's bizarro logistics because it was made before there was definitive proof there was (almost?) no water on the moon. If the novel was written today they'd be sending back refined metal (most prominently iron, aluminium and titanium) and helium-3.

edited 26th Jan '11 11:05:05 PM by Medicus

It's not over. Not yet.

I think that this post on @everything@.com sums him up well.

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I have a genuine question about Ayn Rand. Does anybody outside of America know who the hell she is?

"Everyone wants an answer, don't they?... I hate things with answers." — Grant Morrison