Maggie Gallagher On Ayn Rand On Sex
Friday, August 27th, 2010Mark Wickens sent this article out to OHomos yesterday. It’s a brief post by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) president, Maggie Gallagher, on Ayn Rand’s view of sex. It’s on the National Review, so gird your loins.
I’ll let you read it on your own, but I want to call out two remarks she made:
Ayn Rand’s “depiction of sex is anything but a “release of biological desire” between sexually marketable equals.”
and
“It has never been quite clear to me why in Rand’s world the most desirable men don’t sleep with other achieving men (even though Rand would be appalled by the idea)”
The first statement seems innocuous and accurate enough on the surface, I guess. My understanding of Objectivism and the power of my own eyes, though, leads me to be confused about Gallagher’s apparent disagreement with that view.
The phrase “sexually marketable equals” is confusing, but I want to point something out to you that make shock and disturb you. (I was shocked and disturbed when I found out.) Please take a seat if you are not already so positioned.
Ready?
Ok. So: Men have penises and women have vaginas. And by “vagina” I mean that they don’t have penises. Also, women have squishy parts affixed to their torso called “breasts” and those organs are usually very apparent when you observe them next to males.
These facts and others less apparent lead me to this conclusion: Men and Women are not sexually interchangeable creatures. I know that if you swapped my beau’s brain into a woman’s body I would be quite upset and I would not be inclined to have sex with him. I feel confident that Ms. Gallagher would agree with me here.
So, Ayn Rand was unmistakably clear about the roles of men and women in sex and, consonant with the physical reality that is the difference between men and women, those roles are different but compatible. Ms. Gallagher’s summary of those roles is reasonably good for a non-Objectivist, I think.
I also think that in this Post Brown vs. The Board of Education world, it is easy to understand why she would leap to the conclusion that Rand’s view of men and women are not “equal” given the fact that Ayn Rand insists on pointing out that they are different from one another.
But if you ask me whether or not I like men or women more, sexually, I will consistently tell you that I like men. Does that not state clearly that I think men are more valuable than women in a sexual context? I sure hope it does. I don’t think it would help anyone to be confused on that point. Maggie is a straight woman, so she must hold similar values.
Holding those values and understanding the source of those values is not a claim to any objective superiority, though. Rand didn’t think women were sexually inferior to men. She thought they were sexually compatible with (straight) men by virtue of their physical nature as women.
So, the underlying premise that the hateful, mistaken, and rude Ms. Gallagher is operating under is that of an inapt sexual egalitarianism.
That leads me to her second comment.
When I first discovered Ayn Rand’s work, I was also confused about why the men in her books didn’t have sex with other men because they were so amazing and handsome and strong and smart and cool and everything good.
Well, the reason is simple: they’re men.
Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged is NOT “just, you know, a pretty competent railroad executive — for a woman.” The novel is eleventy million pages of examples of how Dagny Taggart is the most competent railroad executive in existence. There is no railroad executive in the book better than her. Sure, she has equals as a businessperson in other industries, but when it comes to running a railroad there is not a man alive in Atlas Shrugged who could hold a candle to her.
Also, Dagny Taggart is smart. She’s smarter and more mentally capable than a good number of the men in the book. I’d say the only man in the book who could be argued to be smarter than she is is John Galt, actually. She seems clearly on par with D’Anconia and Rearden in the brains department.
Ayn Rand took care to show us Dagny in a number of contexts. She talks to scientists. She talks to presidents. She works with other business executives. She talks to composers. She flies a damn plane into the mountains by herself! She does all kinds of things that show that Dagny Taggart is as good, if not better, than most of the men you see in the novel.
But she is a woman. And there is only one context in which her being a woman has any direct importance: sex.
Rand’s view of men and women in sex is perhaps not readily apparent to the modern eye. If you hold that men and women are inherently equal, they’re also infinitely interchangeable in every single way, then you certainly will not be able to comprehend why Rand didn’t have Rearden and D’Anconia in a sweaty, rough-and-tumble embrace, each struggling to overpower the other by taking him to ever higher levels of pleasure until one of them submits and loses himself completely to the erotic prowess of his partner and becomes the quivering, panting instrument of his satisfaction– even though I TOTALLY wanted that to happen, like, several times.
That’s where the contradiction in Gallagher’s view is. On one hand, she scorns Rand for pointing out that men and women are different biologically and that means they hold different sexual values because, in Gallagher’s eyes, that means that men are superior to women and we ought to see men and women as undifferentiated equals in sex as well as other contexts. But on the other hand she argues that men and women are not interchangeable — which is what we would necessarily conclude if we held that men and women were undifferentiated equals — when it comes to sex. Why? Because, according to Gallagher, they’re different biologically and that should mean they hold different values sexually and that’s why men should only marry women.
The problem with Gallagher’s view — and that of so many others today — is that there is some sort of inability to differentiate between the relevant facts in particular contexts. When it comes to sex, the difference between men and women are really, really important. Elsewhere, those differences are not important at all even if they do affect how the individual behaves within those contexts. But Gallagher doesn’t seem to know why and rejects Rand’s explanation out of hand because it doesn’t jive with her view of men and woman in other contexts, like business.
Gallagher is also rabidly, ignorantly, hatefully, and stupidly opposed to gay marriage. Why? Because contrary to her views on “equality in sexual marketing” (Seriously, what does that even mean?) she contends that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.
There’s an ironic inversion there. When it comes to sex, Gallagher seems to want to say that men and women are equals, but when it comes to politics, marriage as seen by the government, she vehemently holds that men and women are not equals.
Note: Gallagher is certainly aware of the physical differences between men and women, but she refuses to draw any conclusions about how those concrete differences might affect behavior and sexual values. So, I’m forced to say that she sees men and women as equals but since she offers no indication of what it means in reality to be “equal” it remains a bland, meaningless concept in her use of the term. If she did offer up any such indications, it would draw her closer toward Rand’s view of men and women in sex. My use of the term “equal” in the second part of the above statement refers to civil rights and recognition by the government in defense of their individual rights.
If men and women were equal in the eyes of the government — where the concrete difference between their sexes are irrelevant — then they would be able to marry either other men or other women as they may so choose.
That’s the beauty of Rand’s view. Ayn Rand held that men and women are equals in every way — in sex they are different, but complementary elements to one another in very particular ways, but still “equal” in the metaphysical sense of the term. Therefore, Rand also held that they should be equals in the eyes of the law, each having the same rights and are entitled to the same level of defense from the government. She held that for both gay and straight people as well.
Maggie Gallagher, unfortunately, is confused and, as a result, sexist.
