pam Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 i get the idea from reading her books (ok i dont just get the idea it screams at me lol) that a r wasnt a feminist but wasnt dagny a feminist role model ? i think so her acquiescence to rearden was annoying but it made sense in context it is also a bit off putting that all the big "speeches" in her books were made by men SHE wrote them and she was i think (lol) female so what the heck? pam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eriatarka Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 (edited) It depends what you mean by 'feminist' - there are a lot of different and conflicting viewpoints that get thrown under that general label. She obviously agreed that men and women should be treated equally in the eyes of the law, but then that type of feminism is so mainstream these days that it would be hard to find anyone who disagreed. However she believed that discrimination by private individuals/companies should be legal since it wasnt the government's place to intervene. And her fiction makes it clear that she believed that men and women were fundamentally different in terms of how they should approach life and relationships in particular, with the highest virtue for a woman being to submit herself to a powerful man [1] (she once claimed that it would be immoral for a woman to be president/prime-minister since they wouldnt have anyone to submit to [2]). Its not clear where she thought that this fundamental difference between men and women came from though, or why it was unchangable - she believed it was a 'metaphysical fact' but she didnt really know anything about genetics/evolution [3] so I'm not sure what the basis for this was. [1] http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/femininity.html [2] http://forum.ObjectivismOnline.com/index.php?showtopic=597 [3] http://www.solohq.org/Articles/Parille/Ayn...Evolution.shtml Edited July 15, 2008 by eriatarka Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D'kian Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 i get the idea from reading her books (ok i dont just get the idea it screams at me lol) that a r wasnt a feminist What do you mean by feminist? Because seeing as how today's feminism is mostly an amalgam of collectivisma dn mysticims, it would be odd to expect Rand to have embraced it. From her fiction you do get the idea she accepted no limit on how high a woman could climb. Kira in "We The Living" studied engineering, Dominique in "The Fountainhead" was a newspaper columnist, and Dagny in AS ran a railroad. Speaking of Dagny, there's a scene in a flschback conerning her youth. She realizes, while making plans to one day run Taggart Transcontinental, that women do not run railroads. She then dismisses the fact as irrelevant. She is qualified to run a railroad because of her talent, skill and dedication, regardless of her gender. it is also a bit off putting that all the big "speeches" in her books were made by men Kira has the big speeches in WTL. But then it was her one novel where the woman was the hero. In AS Dagny is the central character, we see the story develop through her (and through Rearden, Eddie and Jim to a lesser extent), but the hero is John Galt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pam Posted July 15, 2008 Author Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 (edited) Thank you for the replies, I will read "We the Living" before posting back. Edited July 15, 2008 by pam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D'kian Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 Thank you for the replies, I will read "We the Living" before posting back. Kira doesn't have a long speech like Galt's radio address or Roark's summation, but insofar as a character articulates Rand's views it's Kira. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
themadkat Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 It depends what you mean by 'feminist' - there are a lot of different and conflicting viewpoints that get thrown under that general label. Yes, and therein lies the rub. First you have to figure out which feminists you're talking about. I like to call myself the "feminist that feminists love to hate". That's because I am a feminist but also have these pesky views about an "atomistic conception" of the individual, the supremacy of reason, and the total rejection of group rights. To me, feminism is "the outrageous suggestion that women are people". And it is about helping women, but helping them because they're valuable individuals, not because they're women per se, on the presumption that larger society often overlooks the talents of women (a presumption which, in my experience, I have often found to be true). But in my Women's Studies classes, for instance, some of the students must have thought me a terror LOL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~Sophia~ Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 (edited) with the highest virtue for a woman being to submit herself to a powerful man... You are mistaken. Cardinal virtues are the same for men and women and they are not social meaning they don't require the presence of another. Edited July 15, 2008 by ~Sophia~ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Publius Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 (she once claimed that it would be immoral for a woman to be president/prime-minister since they wouldnt have anyone to submit to I have also read this before and never understood its meaning. I read that Rand did not think women should seek power, that they are not equipped to handle it so it would be irrational, or something. I don't know how Objectivist women feel about this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMeganSnow Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 Read "About A Woman President" reprinted in The Voice of Reason to see Ayn Rand's own account and to decide whether you agree with her. I *don't* agree with her, in short because I disagree with her premise that the President can be considered, even psychologically, to have no equals. Heck, the President is specifically addressed as "Mister President" to establish his equal status. For a woman (and possibly a man--AR and I both can't speculate on that because we aren't men), living in a world with no equals is HELLISH. It has nothing to do with having someone to subordinate yourself to or being a subordinate, it's a psychological issue of loneliness when surrounded by subordinates. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jake Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 For a woman (and possibly a man--AR and I both can't speculate on that because we aren't men), living in a world with no equals is HELLISH.It's the same for a man. The benefits of being ranked highly among peers or receiving recognition are quickly rendered null by the pain of dealing with people who don't understand you, carrying their dead weight, and general frustration at having to fight them to accomplish anything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pam Posted July 20, 2008 Author Report Share Posted July 20, 2008 (edited) This has nothing to do with feminism or any ism I tried to read "We the Living" but it did not interest me, and I do NOT mean this with any sort of attitude, after a few pages I just did not want to continue. I felt that way a BIT when I started Atlas way back when but the book won me over big time. My favorite I know now is The Fountainhead, it enraptured me from the start and it still does. I am rereading it again. It is like butter on a burn. Pam Edited July 20, 2008 by pam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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