Rand's gender hierarchy


Xray

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Barbara Branden, The Passion of Ayn Rand, p. 18:

"Man, she [A. Rand] would say, is defined by his relationship to reality - woman, by her relationship to man."

Any female Objectivists here who would like to comment on this? I'm very interested in their opinion.

And what do the others think of Rand's opinion?

[Edited for correction purposes: the poster who had been the source of my original post here (where it says "universe" instead of "reality"), got the quote wrong.

The above is the correct verbatim quote from BB's book.

The correction does not alter the contents of the discussion though.]

Edited by Xray
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Rand: "A man is defined by his relationship to the universe, a woman by her relationship to a man."

Any female Ojectivists here who would like to comment on this? I'm very interested in their opinion.

And what do the others think of Rand's statement?

I've never been comfortable with Rand's assessment here, and my immediate reaction was similar to MSK's, however, considering this more it might have something to it.

In Objectivist ethics, the standard of morality is life qua man, however, this is life qua humans, not man as a gender. The standard of morality for a man is actually life qua man, that is, all those things proper to a rational being that wishes to live that has the identity of a human male. Similarly, for woman, it is life qua woman. Considering our evolutionary history and the psychological implications that has had, a man's role historical as a human male (for over 100,000 years) was the front line for survival against the universe, man's (human male) nature is much more closely bound to the aspects of the physical world which threaten or support his life. Because he is the stronger and larger of the two sexes, it made evolutionary sense to have him deal with the things that most requires strength and size, the physical confrontation of the universe. With that role handled, but having the necessity to continue on the species, woman's existence was dependent on the successful struggle against nature by the man which supports her, in order to care for both their children. Happiness (as a fulfilling life) is possible only to a being that is abiding by it's nature with life as it's standard qua it's identity, which suggests that happiness is possible only to a woman when she sets her nature and identity as her standard of ethics, and to a man only when he sets his nature and identity as his standard.

However, by this standard, a woman is defined by her relationship to a man because man provides existence for her, but he provides that so she can raise and care for children. He does not provide that for her just because she’s lazy and doesn’t want to face the challenges of the world – so in this case, a woman would be defined by her relationship to a man AND her children, no? But if her man is not conquering nature for her, concerns of children fall flat, so perhaps it is proper to say that fundamentally her relationship to a man defines her according to her nature and her identity. These roles and ‘definitions’ are no longer applicable now that man’s (human’s) existence is not defined by a perpetual struggle to just barely survive – so that rigorous gender based division of labor is not necessary.

For this to be applicable at all, though, one has to acknowledge the role and influence that evolutionary influenced psychological aspects currently has on human psychology, which Rand and Objectivists in general seem to balk a little bit at, but sometimes acknowledge. Man is a ‘blank slate’ according to Objectivism but they also have a nature that must be abided by in order to have a fulfilling life – seemingly contradictory. I know that ‘blank slate’ was in reference to innate knowledge, but it is also implied about behavioral influences, consider from Galt’s speech the comments about man having a ‘tendency’ toward evil, the same objections could be said of a tendency toward anything. I think combining Rand’s ‘blank slate’ and having one’s nature as a standard in ethics for happiness can only make sense when the blank slate is considered as figurative.

In that I concur with Aristotle’s amazingly prescient general sentiment on human behavior, that it is a complicated mix of chance, nature, habit, and choice. Rand wrote that the most basic choice is to choose to think or not, and in application to human behavior, while our genes and environment and social indoctrination do influence our behavior, ultimately all of it can be over-written by choices we make.

So it might make more sense than to say that man’s primary definition is his relationship with the universe, but ultimately he can choose to define himself in any manner he sees fit. To the extent which our nature though is ‘hard written’ (perhaps to a very small degree?) Happiness can not be possible to someone who tries to define himself in a way that contradicts his nature as a human male, and is definitely not possible when contradicting your nature as a rational being. Similarly a woman’s primary definition might be of her relation to her man - since everyone must exist, our primary concern is our confronting existence, and historically to a woman that was her man’s role. But perhaps that primary definition is born only of tradition and pragmatic circumstance and in today’s world of material well being and convenience and safety, a woman can just as easily define herself in her relationship to the universe instead of to a man. But perhaps some portion of that is deeply hard wired, and at some level a woman must define herself in relation to a man, even though it’s not necessary now, it was so important for millennia that the resulting impulse remains.

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Angela, thoughts from some men:

Notes A, B.

"Who Is Dagny Taggart?" by Charles Wieder

Stephen, I would like to make a small donation ($20) to support your web site. I am glad to see that Objectivity has been preserved.

Also, you are storing all the pages as JPEG images. This is very bandwidth intensive. If you could convert them into PDF's, we could access them easier. And it would save you on the cost of bandwidth.

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Also, you are storing all the pages as JPEG images. This is very bandwidth intensive. If you could convert them into PDF's, we could access them easier. And it would save you on the cost of bandwidth.

Yes, those images take forever to load but converting to pdf is not going to be easy. He will need an OCR program to convert to text. I am curious, did these images start as paper copies of articles?

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Angela, thoughts from some men:

Notes A, B.

"Who Is Dagny Taggart?" by Charles Wieder

Stephen, I would like to make a small donation ($20) to support your web site. I am glad to see that Objectivity has been preserved.

Also, you are storing all the pages as JPEG images. This is very bandwidth intensive. If you could convert them into PDF's, we could access them easier. And it would save you on the cost of bandwidth.

Ahh so that is why! Thank you. I am such a dunce sometimes [open shot for you xray!] with simple computer tasks. I am still trying to understand the "indent" which a fellow member nicely suggested to me in an e-mail.

Also figured out the signature after seeing Michele's clever changeover.

Edited by Selene
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I just tried to use my OCR program (Abbyy Finereader) on one of those jpg files. Unfortunately the resolution of those images is too low for a good recognition, resulting in too many errors (you still can read the text very well, but it looks a bit sloppy). If there also exist high-resolution pictures of the same text, converting to text (for example html) will be fairly easy, and you can choose to retain the original layout. Only parts with formulas will probably be more demanding (treating the formulas as little pictures, which may need human intervention), but straight text will be no problem, perhaps just a few corrections here and there.

Edited by Dragonfly
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Chris, thanks for the offer and sentiment, but it is a passive site and does not cost anything to keep. I just pay a very small amount each year to whoever or whatever keeps the site in existence. I don't know anything about website things. After we published the final issue of Objectivity in 1998, the typesetter-layout person, Gloria Ball, made sure I had diskettes of all the issues in their final form. She died a few years ago. As I recall, it would be from those diskettes that she would have printed the sheets to be sent to the printer. We could not read those disks, but gave them to Walter's elder son, who knows some IT things and people. From those diskettes,, electronically, he made the Objectivity Archive site as an after-hours job and to learn some new things.

I wanted it to look just like the original hardcopy, which it does. I have some more hard copies. If any one would like to have a hard-copy set, or if you are missing any issues from your original subscription set, just let me know through the email feature of Objectivist Living, and I will get them to you without charge.

"Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man."

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Rand: "A man is defined by his relationship to the universe, a woman by her relationship to a man."

Any female Objectivists here who would like to comment on this? I'm very interested in their opinion.

And what do the others think of Rand's statement?

GRRRR!!!

Barbara

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Thanks Matus for your detailed # 4 post where you approached the topic taking many important variables into account.

I had to smile when reading in your signature:

"Reality is my God, Rationality is my Altar, Reason is my Religion, Passion is my Method, Life is my Purpose"

But doesn't this actually provide "ammuniton" for theists who always argue that man can't live without a god? :)

Imo Rand replaced "God" with "Man".

Edited by Xray
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Rand: "A man is defined by his relationship to the universe, a woman by her relationship to a man."

Any female Objectivists here who would like to comment on this? I'm very interested in their opinion.

And what do the others think of Rand's statement?

GRRRR!!!

Barbara

Barbara,

correction of the quote since the poster who was my orginal source got it wrong - here is the verbatim quote from your book p. 18:

"Man, she [A. Rand] would say, is defined by his relationship to reality - woman, by her relationship to man."

Edited by Xray
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Rand was wrong.

:)

There. Feel better?

:)

Michael

No. Still got toothache, have a dentist's appointment today where I'll get Xrayed. :D

Re the quote: so per Rand, her husband Frank was defined by his relationship to reality*, and she was defined by her relationship to Frank.

I suppose even Randists will concede that something just does not fit together there. :)

Again, Rand treated a category ("man" = all men), lumping all individual male entities together under a label.

But statements regarding a category are only valid if they apply to every single member of the category (e. g. "man is mortal").

[* see the correction in my edited # 1 post]

Edited by Xray
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When Rand used man/men she was referring to women too--that is man/men,women. Her particulars got a little screwy.

--Brant

Brant,

I was referring to this statement by Rand where she clearly does make the disctinction:

BB's book, p. 18:

"Man, she [A. Rand] would say, is defined by his relationship to reality - woman, by her relationship to man."

That's why she called e. g. Dominique the ideal woman, the "perfect priestess" for Howard Roark (whom in her opinion she created "as man should be")

Whereas in "life proper to man" she meant men+women.

But there is no "life proper to man" since "man" as an infinite category is no finite entity. Disregarding the principle of entity identity lies at the root of many epistemological fallacies.

Edited by Xray
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I just tried to use my OCR program (Abbyy Finereader) on one of those jpg files. Unfortunately the resolution of those images is too low for a good recognition, resulting in too many errors (you still can read the text very well, but it looks a bit sloppy). If there also exist high-resolution pictures of the same text, converting to text (for example html) will be fairly easy, and you can choose to retain the original layout. Only parts with formulas will probably be more demanding (treating the formulas as little pictures, which may need human intervention), but straight text will be no problem, perhaps just a few corrections here and there.

This is a little off topic, but I was wondering whether you paid for your OCR program or obtained a free copy from somewhere. If I were to write an OCR program that would work on that website, would you pay $10 for it? $5? $1? I see that the retail price of Abbyy Finereader is $99. Anyway, I'm just wondering if there is a market. If there is, I've always wanted to write such a program.

Darrell

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"Man, she [A. Rand] would say, is defined by his relationship to reality - woman, by her relationship to man." (BB's book p. 18)

Like in life proper to "man", there's another illusion of categoral identity Rand succumbs to: man = each man; woman = each woman; "reality (abstract, non definitve, no entity).

A man is defined by a specific set of differentiating characteristics. A man has no relationship "to reality" because there

is no "reality" as an entity. A man's relationship to any particular entity depends on his differentiating set of characteristics and the differentiating set of the characteristics of the other entity.

The same is true of "woman by her relationship to man." Abstract without meaning. Without each specific entity identity of THE woman and THE man, it's meaningless. It's just more of the illusion of categorical identity.

How much of Rand's work would be left standing if we removed all that is dependent upon the illusion of categorical identity?

Edited by Xray
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This is a little off topic, but I was wondering whether you paid for your OCR program or obtained a free copy from somewhere. If I were to write an OCR program that would work on that website, would you pay $10 for it? $5? $1? I see that the retail price of Abbyy Finereader is $99. Anyway, I'm just wondering if there is a market. If there is, I've always wanted to write such a program.

I paid for it and I think it's worth every cent. It can also be used to convert pdf files to Word files that can be edited. I don't think it will be easy to write a program that can compete with existing programs like Finereader. They're now at version 9 and the program has definitely improved in the course of the years, it's the result of a lot of experience and expertise. To recognize well defined and crisp images is one thing, but it becomes something different when the image is not perfect, think for example of the curved and often shadowed parts of scans of thick books. And then the problem of converting it to a text file with approximately the same layout (if desired) can be quite difficult too (think of text in two columns, not to mention complex layouts with pictures, headings etc.).

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I ask myself how e. g. literature professor Mimi Gladstein who recommended e.g. Dagny Taggart to her female students as a "role model", could have been so blind to Rand's male-female hierarchy which also is so obvious in her novels.

It looks like Mimi G. and her students let themselves be dazzled by Dagny being a finacially independent businesswoman, but wore blinders in terms of her subservience to the male heros.

Edited by Xray
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Xray, you should hide your excitement about this topic a little bit. It's indecent.

That said, Dagny Taggart is one of the best role-models for women that you'll find in modern literature. She is not "subservient" to the men in the novel. Most of Rand's hero-worship rubbish is left out of ATLAS SHRUGGED, anyway.

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quote name='Michelle R' date='16 July 2009 - 02:22 PM' timestamp='1247772152' post='75386']

Xray, you should hide your excitement about this topic a little bit. It's indecent.

You sound a bit prim, Michelle. "Indecent", lol. Are we in Sunday school here? :D

Ayn Rand's gender hierarchy is also evident in her novels, surely you won't dispute this?

But it looks like bringing this up always causes vehement emotional reactions.

That said, Dagny Taggart is one of the best role-models for women that you'll find in modern literature. She is not "subservient" to the men in the novel. Most of Rand's hero-worship rubbish is left out of ATLAS SHRUGGED, anyway.

Dagny Taggart is a subservient hero worshiper if there ever was one. Remember how for example she voluntarily offers her services to John Galt as his "cook and housemaid", feeling the "eager, desperate, tremulous hope of the a young girl on her first job: the hope that she would be able to deserve it."

Remember Rand explicity said she had modeled Dagny after herself, so it was only natural that she would make her a hero worshiper too.

As for the male heros in her novels - they all were more or less recreations of "Cyrus", a fantasy adventure story hero Rand got infatuated with as a young girl, mixed with traits of "Leo", the unresponsive real-life object of her desire.

Have you read Barbara Branden's book "The Passion of Ayn Rand"?

As for picking role models from fiction: do you think this serves to develop one's individuality?

Edited by Xray
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This is a little off topic, but I was wondering whether you paid for your OCR program or obtained a free copy from somewhere. If I were to write an OCR program that would work on that website, would you pay $10 for it? $5? $1? I see that the retail price of Abbyy Finereader is $99. Anyway, I'm just wondering if there is a market. If there is, I've always wanted to write such a program.

I paid for it and I think it's worth every cent. It can also be used to convert pdf files to Word files that can be edited. I don't think it will be easy to write a program that can compete with existing programs like Finereader. They're now at version 9 and the program has definitely improved in the course of the years, it's the result of a lot of experience and expertise. To recognize well defined and crisp images is one thing, but it becomes something different when the image is not perfect, think for example of the curved and often shadowed parts of scans of thick books. And then the problem of converting it to a text file with approximately the same layout (if desired) can be quite difficult too (think of text in two columns, not to mention complex layouts with pictures, headings etc.).

I like a challenge. Do you think it would be harder than recovering the fingerprint in this image including marking the ridge endings and bifurcations? That's what I do for a living. (Note: I'm not saying they are all recoverable. The words do get in the way, among other things.)

NIST27_b127l6i_07.jpg

Darrell

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quote name='Michelle R' date='16 July 2009 - 02:22 PM' timestamp='1247772152' post='75386']

Xray, you should hide your excitement about this topic a little bit. It's indecent.

You sound a bit prim, Michelle. "Indecent", lol. Are we in Sunday school here? :D

Ayn Rand's gender hierarchy is also evident in her novels, surely you won't dispute this?

But it looks like bringing this up always causes vehement emotional reactions.

That said, Dagny Taggart is one of the best role-models for women that you'll find in modern literature. She is not "subservient" to the men in the novel. Most of Rand's hero-worship rubbish is left out of ATLAS SHRUGGED, anyway.

Dagny Taggart is a subservient hero worshiper if there ever was one. Remember how for example she voluntarily offers her services to John Galt as his "cook and housemaid", feeling the "eager, desperate, tremulous hope of the a young girl on her first job: the hope that she would be able to deserve it."

Remember Rand explicity said she had modeled Dagny after herself, so it was only natural that she would make her a hero worshiper too.

As for the male heros in her novels - they all were more or less recreations of "Cyrus", a fantasy adventure story hero Rand got infatuated with as a young girl, mixed with traits of "Leo", the unresponsive real-life object of her desire.

Have you read Barbara Branden's book "The Passion of Ayn Rand"?

As for picking role models from fiction: do you think this serves to develop one's individuality?

Oh? Does one stop being a lady when one no longer attends Sunday School? :lol:

Cut the pseudo-psych. Dagny is certainly not "subservient." John Galt, to Dagny, is the perfect man. And this perfect creatures saves her life. Of course she's going to be respectful and slightly awed in his presence, and offer her services to him. Or are you one of those people who thinks that domestic activity degrades a woman? It's not like she becomes his loyal housewife (although, if this is what she wanted, what would there be wrong in that?). She sets about rebuilding her railroad at the end of the novel. Dagny is not subservient or docile.

My reaction to John Galt would be a bit different. I'd be feeling around his head for the battery case.

I didn't say one should adopt fictional role-models. I said: Dagny Taggart is one of the best role-models for women that you'll find in modern literature

Edited by Michelle R
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