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Female Sexuality

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Dear Objectivists,

I am an aspiring novelist, and I have a romance in mind between two characters. The problem is, due to my upbringing as a christian mystic, I am still trying to straighten out my own sexuality, let alone the seemingly mystical realm of what happens in a female's mind and body. I'm going to be frank and open about what I know, and what I don't know, and I promise you that I will not be sarcastic without noting so immediately. If I ask a question here, its not intended to inflame, its that I failed to fully understand your response.

I understand that the essence of female sexuality is 'hero worship'. Is the hero different for every woman? Does she consciously/subconsciously program what hero qualities she is or isn't attracted to, or is it the other way around (I.E. she is attracted to them, therefore she adds them to the proverbial list)

What is the essence of male sexuality? AR constantly paints the heroes of her books as effectual and strong willed men, but what exactly is it that drives a man's mind and body? (Or does she or Dr. Peikoff ever cover that?)

I have about umpty-bajillion other questions on this topic, but I think that until we resolve these, it would probably be a waste of time.

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I am an aspiring novelist, and I have a romance in mind between two characters. The problem is, ... ...
You cannot write fiction that will be a convincing, based on abstractions like "hero-worship" or "confidence".

Suppose you need to set some part of a story in an airport, but you've never seen one. If someone tells you about the functions of an airport in a very abstract way, you would probably depict it all wrong. What you need is: lots of concrete observations. As an author, you can use those observations to make your story real. Also, you can select from amongst the observations in such a way that the reader focuses on some particular aspect. For instance, if you want to give the impression that an airport is bedlam, you might choose a certain set of observations and report those. Alternatively, if you want to show that it works like clockwork, you can choose a different set of observations. Unless the things you select and report are real and concrete, they will not "click" for the reader.

Compared to describing an airport scene, depicting a romantic relationship is even more difficult to do. In the typical story, the description of the airport might be secondary, and the reader might zip past anything that is not concrete.

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You need to be careful about the distinction between 'female' and 'woman.' Female relates to the biological being and woman as a social construct. Rand didn't say the essence of being a female was hero-worship, she said that femininity was about hero-worship. And, the degree of femininity and masculinity varies between individuals. For example, there are effeminate women as there are more masculine women, and other cultures might have different standards of what roles a male and female plays. Rand, in her lexicon under femininity (http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/femininity.html), explains that a woman can have femininity in different degrees of strength, and the stronger her femininity, the more demanding her standards for masculinity in her partner. (An inverse relationship.)

I understand that the essence of female sexuality is 'hero worship'. Is the hero different for every woman? Does she consciously/subconsciously program what hero qualities she is or isn't attracted to, or is it the other way around (I.E. she is attracted to them, therefore she adds them to the proverbial list)
I'm not an expert on Objectivism, so correct my mistakes, but I think that to understand what those heroic qualities could be for a woman, we can say that it is a value. And, a woman will have different standards for heroic qualities depending on her values. These values come from analyzing reality and determining her best course of action that will satisfy her. Therefore, a woman's heroic taste depends on what she wants and her surroundings, like who is, or could be, available to her. Ideally, she, or anybody, would choose the partner that is considered to be the most virtuous choice.

What is the essence of male sexuality? AR constantly paints the heroes of her books as effectual and strong willed men, but what exactly is it that drives a man's mind and body?
I think this can be easily understood if we look at the case of femininity but in reverse.

Hope that wasn't too confusing, and that someone will correct my errors. So, in context to your romance story, I think you need to think about what your characters value and then maybe extrapolate how they would interact from that?

Edited by Dingbat
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What SoftwareNerd and Maximus said. You're never going to get anywhere as a writer trying to construct situations that fit abstractions. Instead, go out and see romance in action and form conclusions about it. Introspect when you are having romantic feelings of your own. Fantasize. Then and only then should you be asking questions like "what is hero-worship?" etc . . . and it won't take you much to arrive at a satisfactory answer because you'll have plenty of material to work from.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I'm agree to that it told. You won't understand female sexuality by basing you on abstractions. To understand, it's necessary to observe. If you want to understand the women, observe reality and meet, no? Or go in a station, sociologically, it's interesting.

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Although it's true that you cannot write from floating abstractions, it is not true that you have to experience, yourself, personally, everything that you write about.

Suppose you write a story about Thomas Jefferson; do you have to have personally met him? No, but you do have to know something about him, such as can be learned from his writings, and from writings he may have read, and from writings of others about him, and the general atmosphere of the time.

Suppose you write a story about space travel. Do you have to have personally experienced space travel? No, but you might be able to learn a lot about it by studying the relevant laws of physics, and recent scientific discoveries (of NASA and other space agencies), and the writings of people who have experienced space travel.

The same thing applies if you want to write about romance. It would certainly be helpful to have a romance of your own, if you can get one, but even if you do have one, you need to be able to consider other romances in order to prevent your fictitious ones from all being clones of your real one. (Also it will help to have some idea of what you are getting into when you start a real one!) You have to consider a large number of romances, so that you can see the possible variations, and that means almost all of them will not be your own. You can consider the romances of other people you know, people you don't know, historical figures, even fictional characters.

When you have an abundance of that kind of information -- and only when you have it -- you can use your imagination. Imagination only rearranges, and it has to have something to rearrange.

But you don't have to commit a murder to write a murder mystery...

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