re: #43 Romantic Heretic

Personally, I also think Rand was a sexual submissive. The female characters in her books don’t find fulfillment until they find a ‘Great Man’ to be their Lord and Master. Bad thing to build a philosophy around, and I’m speaking as a dominant.

Rand flipped out when her protege and lover Nathaniel Branden wanted to break up with her. She was married to someone else but Branden’s rejection of her destroyed her and she did her level best to destroy him for the crime of rejecting her.
The novel I mentioned does a good job on that. Rand’s whole idea about men and women was such that Branden wanting to move on, which technically in her own philosophy she should have supported, instead constituted a rejection not only of Objectivism but of herself in the most basic way.
Again, I must mention that she was married to someone else the whole time. Didn’t stop her kicking Branden out of her institute and trying to destroy him professionally.

A very sad and lonely woman at the end of her life, she died alone and fairly young, of lung cancer. She used to insist that her followers smoke because she did, and claimed it symbolised man’s conquering of the elements, the theft of promethean fire, or some other similar shit.
A sad woman all around.