jbgotmar

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LEGACIES
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calls for government to redress discrimination, when it was not government
itself that had created the problem. She wrote, “The notion that a
woman’s place is in the home . . . is an ancient, primitive evil, supported
and perpetuated by women as much as, or more than, by men.” What
infuriated Rand the most was that feminism, as she saw it, was a claim
based on weakness, a rebellion “against strength as such, by those who
neither attempt nor intend to develop it.” Feminists elevated their gender
above their individuality and intelligence and then expected unearned
success, to be enforced by government quotas and regulations. Rand was
also withering in her personal scorn for feminists, “sloppy, bedraggled,
unfocused females stomping down the streets.” 51 Feminists reminded
her of Comrade Sonja, a brash, masculine Communist from We the
Living.
In turn, Susan Brownmiller attacked Rand as “a traitor to her sex”
in her feminist classic Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape.
Brownmiller considered Rand alongside the psychologists Helene
Deutsch and Karen Horney as women who contributed to “the male
ideology of rape.” She argued The Fountainhead’s infamous rape scene
“romanticized” the rape victim through its depiction of Dominique,
who reveled in Roark’s sexual attack on her. By portraying rape as
“grand passion,” Rand cast an unrealistic patina over sexual violence
and furthered the dangerous idea that women desired to be raped. The
worst of it was that Rand could even convince other women that rape
was romantic. Brownmiller remembered, “The Fountainhead heated my
virgin blood more than 20 years ago and may still be performing that
service for schoolgirls today.” 52 When she visited the library to check out
Rand’s novel Brownmiller was discouraged to fi nd its pages fell open to
the rape scene, effectively indexed by other readers. Like the conservatives
of National Review, Brownmiller recognized Rand’s work was both
appealing and ideologically dangerous.
Similarly, a writer for Ms. magazine warned women against Rand’s
infl uence, calling her work “fun-bad.” Ms. noted that Rand’s call to selfishness
and independence might justifi ably appeal to women, who had
been taught to always place others before themselves. In reality, though,
her work offered a seductive, destructive fantasy: “a strong dominant
women who is subdued by an even stronger, more dominant male . . . the
independent woman who must, to preserve her integrity, capitulate to a
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