Wednesday, March 10, 2010
The Sexist Internal Affairs: How Ayn Rand Followers Rationalize “Welcomed” Rape
Posted by Amanda Hess on 03.10.10 at 06:02 PM
The recession has been good to Ayn Rand. And why shouldn’t it be? Rand created objectivism, a philosophy that champions laissez-faire capitalism, individualism, and utter selfishness—a powerful opposition ideology at a time when government is growing and welfare for everyone is on the agenda. Almost 30 years after Rand’s death, her casket marked by a gigantic floral arrangement in the shape of a U.S. dollar sign, her economic ideas are gaining plenty of traction.
But what about her ideas on sex? Not every passage in Rand’s work speaks to her campaign platform, which is abridged in her 1,000-page 1957 allegorical novel Atlas Shrugged: “My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”
Rand’s heroic man is also into some pretty coercive sex. Consider this scene, from Rand’s 1943 novel, The Fountainhead:
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I'm glad I stuck to the Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. P. Lovecraft when I was a kid.
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Dominique subsequently MARRIED Roark!
You conveniently omit all the (many) passages that demonstrated Dominique wanted to be taken violently--and that Roark knew this quite well. E.g.,
"She fought like an animal. But she made no sound. She did not call for help. . . . It was an act that could be performed in tenderness, as a seal of love, or in contempt, as a symbol of humiliation and conquest. It could be the act of a lover or the act of a soldier violating an enemy woman. He did it as an act of scorn. Not as love, but as defilement. And this made her lie still and submit. One gesture of tenderness from him--and she would have remained cold, untouched by the thing done to her body. But the act of a master taking shameful, contemptuous possession of her was the kind of rapture she had wanted. Then she felt him shaking with the agony of a pleasure unbearable even to him, she knew that she had given that to him, that it came from her, from her body, and she bit her lips and she knew what he had wanted her to know."
No one reading the whole set up for the sex act and the whole scene there and afterwards could imagine that it was rape.
The problem with this piece is there is no cultural reference. Ayn's first writing for hire was on POLA NEGRI, a silent film actress who had an affair with Rudolph Valentino. Ayn's fascination with Hollywood is well documented, long before she came here. Million sof women, Ayn included. If she went so far as to write on a girlfriend of Valentino, one need only look to THE SHEIK.
In the film, Valentino meets a woman who is remarkably free for the era. She denounces marriage, lives her own life as a traveller and adventuress. What is the response of Valentino? He abducts her and holds her hostage against her will. She finally escapes from this "paradise", but is then kidnapped by a far more ruthless, more homicidal man who is rescued by Valentino. The battle takes place on our heroines bed (!), and involves a very long dagger! Naturally she is on the bed as the two do battle. Rapist against rapist.
The question is not why did Hollywood make such a film. The question is why did hundreds of millions of women all over the world line up to see the film. Why was Valentino elevated to Love God status?
As a child I saw GONE WITH THE WIND and was shocked when Clark Gable clearly rapes Scarlett. Once again, women loved this scene, him carrying her up the staircase.
What I didn't know was this was the end of a type of scene which had existed in literature and film since THE SHEIK. Perhaps it was the idea that a good girl wouldn't give up her sexuality, perhaps it was a general discomfort with women that were "too strong". I don't know, I'm not a woman living from the 1920's to 1940. Ayn was.
After The Sheik came out, it was popular for men and women to give each other slave braclets. Look at those two words. SLAVE BRACELETS. Slavery as a romantic ideal!
Ayn was a product of her time- and while there are those who today are deeply offended by this symbollism, wouldn't they have lined up to see Valentino "take" the woman? Or even wear the slave bracelet? After the patriotic films of World War 2 an odd thing happened. Gone was the strong man raping the independent woman. Instead we have something new. The femme fatale. In countless film noir it is the man who is raped! Manipulated by beautiful women willing to use their sex to get what they want from the guy who has no clue what is going on until the end.
You have a beef with Rand fine. Want to critique her for being in ATLAS SHRUGGED dogmatic, or question why we have national health insurance if her ideas were so popular, fine. But ignoring our culture at the time is silly.
