I hardly know where to begin with this, my thoughts are so scattered and unfocused, and because this is Exactly What It Says On The Tin. Ayn Rand once had a breakup that went so badly she cursed the guy’s penis for the rest of his life and he moved across the entirety of America to Los Angeles to escape the Dick Curse of Ayn Rand, only it didn’t work because once Ayn Rand has it out for your genitals. you’re already dead.
So: Ayn Rand, Bad Dude is something I think we have all pretty well established, but I worry that sometimes we are less familiar than we could be with the glory that was her personal life. FOR EXAMPLE: were you aware that in 1999 Helen Mirren starred as Ayn Rand in a romantic TV movie called, actually, the title for real was and still is, The Passion of Ayn Rand? That happened.
You could be watching that movie right now. Why aren’t you? Because of your job? Explain to your boss what I just told you. They’ll understand.
So. Ayn Rand met her poor mealy-mouthed husband Frank O’Connor in 1926 when the were both extras on a Cecil B. Demille movie and she decided she liked his face, so she fucking tripped him. From the thought “I like this guy’s skull shape” to the action “I will make him fall over” there was not a moment of separation. What an asshole, but also credit where credit is due, I think this means she invented negging.
Cut to a bunch of years later and Nathaniel Blumenthal (who later changed his name to Nathaniel Branden so he could HAVE THE WORD RAND IN HIS NAME), a besotted teenage fan, writes Ayn a mash note in high school because he loved her work. A couple of years later, he ends up in New York City, and she calls him back. “Hi, teenage fan, you seem grown, what’s going on? Oh, getting married? Would you like, I don’t know, some witnesses to attend the ceremony?” So Ayn and Frank watch Nate get married, and then Ayn sits everyone down, and says, “So, it’s obvious that Nate and I are going to have an affair. And I think it’s fair if we ask for one afternoon and one evening a week. Just wanted to keep everything above board. We have the same principles, so…you know. Obviously we were going to have to do it.”
(Frank, by the way, drank himself to death. No reason.)
And that is how things went along for a long time! Until eventually, sometime around Ayn’s 60th birthday, she finds out that Nathaniel has taken up with a woman closer to his own age named Patrecia Scott Wynand. WYNAND. As in Gail Wynand from AYN RAND’S THE FOUNTAINHEAD. EVEN NATE’S NEW MISTRESS HAD NAMED HERSELF AFTER AN AYN RAND CHARACTER. THIS IS AN OUROBOROS OF FUCKERY.
So Ayn finds out about this other other woman, blames Nathaniel’s wife Barbara, then calls Nathaniel himself to the fucking mat in front of the rest of her inner circle for some good old-fashioned chewing out, and then Ayn Rand put a god damn curse on his dick:
If you have an ounce of morality left in you, an ounce of psychological health, you’ll be impotent for the next twenty years! And if you achieve any potency sooner, you’ll know it’s a sign of still worse moral degradation!
I would not lie to you about this, the Internet. The lady who wrote Atlas Shrugged was so mad at her married boyfriend for cheating on her that she put a curse on his penis when they broke up.
Ayn Rand: founder of Objectivism and also someone who cursed the penis of an adult man. Ayn Rand: she wrote Anthem and also one time with her human mouth told a fellow human that she wished his dick would break for two decades. AYN RAND DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO TAKE THE HIGH ROAD AND NEITHER SHOULD YOU. AYN RAND: EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING.
BY THE FUCKING BY, like a MONTH earlier Branden had tried to end his relationship with Rand by turning in an essay explaining that he no longer felt sexually attracted to her. Every aspect of this story gets more and more Randian the longer you examine it.
Anyhow, what can you do after Ayn Rand denounces your genitals? Branden had to move to LA with Patrecia (who, when she died fifteen years later in a freak drowning accident, everyone whispered was because of Ayn’s Curse) and spent the rest of his life writing books about how he used to sleep with Ayn Rand.
Oddly enough, Nate’s first wife Barbara kind of also spent the rest of her life writing books about how her husband used to sleep with Ayn Rand, in a manner that suggests she sort of wanted to sleep with Ayn, too:
I shall not forget my first sight of Ayn Rand. When the door to her home opened that spring afternoon in 1950, I found myself facing the most astonishing human being I had ever encountered. It was the eyes. The eyes were dark, too large for the face, fringed with dark lashes, alive with an intensity of intelligence I had never imagined human eyes could hold. They seemed the eyes of a human being who was composed of the power of sight.
It also makes Ayn Rand sound like an evil, flinty Betty Boop, which is kind of amazing. Anyhow, don’t cheat on Ayn Rand because she’ll put a fucking hex on your dick. This seems really basic. There are women you just don’t cheat on, and Ayn Rand is the Queen of Un-Fuck-Withable Jerks. She’ll trip you into getting married and if you ever try to get another girlfriend during her Affair Afternoons she will send a plague straight-up onto your genitals. God bless,
Mallory
Dammit, you just made me like Ayn Rand a little bit. It will pass, I’m sure, but still!
I so badly want to anonymously email this article to the girl that was formerly in my cohort who has an Atlas Shrugged tattoo and a “Who Is John Galt” sticker on her computer, but I don’t know if I can…
I must assume you mean “can” in the sense of “physically incapable,” because I am pretty certain that would be the absolute most perfect punishment.
(Like to be totally fair I am way too chicken to send it to *my* former Randian affiliates, but I heartily support you doing it!)
By which I mean to say, what are those people doing, even.
Though the truth is that I am quite sure they would either a) vehemently endorse every behavior in it or b) explain why it was all so very Logical to do it.
I apparently have a lot of Feelings about this, I think I may need to go examine them now.
This, all the time, always.
This gif is just so useful.
ah this was briefly tweeted about too early and then it wasn’t on the site and I was briefly sad but now am not sad anymore (about that at least)
Ouroboros of Fuckery.
So great.
No, but seriously!
“AN OUROBOROS OF FUCKERY”
*cackles into eternity*
Yes, this is the absolute best phrase of today!! I want to submit an essay to Mallory to be her minion for this.
Phrases the English language was invented for but did not as yet contain
Can we talk about how Ayn broke the news of the affair with this married man to her husband an his wife?
Basically they were all in the car going somewhere and it was done REAL CASUAL and the wife, in her book, was like WTFFFFFFFF and Frank just took it of course.
Just when I thought I was good on Rand for a while, this nugget presents itself.
This isn’t even a nugget, really. It’s more like a 20-piece chicken McNugget box, only instead of McNuggets they’re all Ouroboroses of Fuckery.
That explains how the taste was so perfectly preserved!
This is beautiful. Oh Dirtbag Ayn Rand, I would like you to change a little, but this? This never change.
The only thing missing from this story is an ode to trains.
Oh, this is lovely. “Be selfish, people! Except you Nathaniel. You’re being selfish in a way that inconveniences me so may your dick rot off.”
I just guffawed out loud at ‘AYN RAND DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO TAKE THE HIGH ROAD AND NEITHER SHOULD YOU. AYN RAND: EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING’ and my colleagues demanded to know what was so funny, and I realised in order to tell them I’d have to spend about an hour explaining so I just pretended it was a video of a cat. The end.
Like, this is peak misandry and I don’t hate it, which is making my brain hurt because UGH, stop giving me conflicting feelings, Ayn.
See, I can’t even get my sentences coherent anymore! Has the dick curse been transferred to my commenting abilities?
Ages ago, when I read somewhere about Ayn Rand having an affair, NEVER IN MY WILDEST DREAMS could I have imagined all of these…perfect, perfect details.
“Hi, I am here to witness your marriage and also boff your husband at regular intervals.”
“Yes, I received your ‘I find you unfuckable’ essay and I’m sorry to say it has been rejected.”
“NO, BUT YOU CAN’T BREAK UP WITH ME, MAYBE I’M ACTUALLY BABA YAGA, MAYBE I’LL CURSE YOUR DICK FOR TWO DECADES SPECIFICALLY.”
Everyone: My goodness, she’s such an evil, flinty Betty Boop. Let’s name ourselves and our children and possibly also our cats after her and write numerous books about how compelling she is.
Ayn Rand as Baba Yaga. This is an intriguing idea.
Later, Rand would go on to found the reddit red pill forum
Kind of related- has anyone ever ventured into the Red Pill Women subreddit? I can’t handle MRAs, but their wives? MY GOD. It is a fascinating corner of the Internet.
Too scary. Shudder.
Oh I’m pretty sure that’s mostly men pretending to be women online and jerking off about how GREAT all their madeup wives could be if women would just shut up for one minute and listen to them.
I vastly prefer this interpretation to the one in which they actually exist.
I am just so happy that we live in a world where all of these things are true, and Mallory can write about them so I can choke myself to death on chicken salad during my lunch break.
Truly a glorious time to be alive.
I have someone who I work with and actually consider a friend tell me this week that he loves Ayn Rand. I’m not quite sure how to deal with that.
By linking him to this article, obviously.
The way to deal is to warn him that his dick’s straight-up hexed now, as is the fate of all who love Ayn Rand, clearly!
Have you considered a dick curse?
Is he 19? Because in my experience most people grow out of it.
That’s true. I read her when I was 19 but after that I was pretty much done.
I fell for it from about 15-19, so, yep. Growing up is the best. A+ would do again.
I had a woman on a dating site tell me her favorite book was the Fountainhead.
But she didn’t like it for the politics. No, it was her favorite because of the prose.
Oh god, I thought my mother was the only one!
Those descriptions of Howard Roark ARE kind of hot…
what
It also makes Ayn Rand sound like an evil, flinty Betty Boop, which is kind of amazing.
I feel like a non-Ayn Rand version of this would be my new role model.
There were so many things in this essay but the main thing. The main thing. It was this link: http://www.barbarabranden.com/book.html
which led to this passage:
“As the years passed, I was to observe all the many changes of expression of those incredible eyes. I saw them ferocious with concentration on a new idea or question that had not occurred to her before, on a difficult passage in Atlas Shrugged, with a single-minded intensity that seemed as if it might set fire to the person or page she was addressing. I saw them cold, so icily, inhumanly cold that they froze one’s heart and mind. I saw them radiant with the uninhibited delight of a child — I saw them menacing with anger at any hint of what she considered the irrational in human action — I saw them helpless and womanly when she gazed at her husband — I saw them bitter, resentful, and full of pain — I saw them glow with the special, earnest charm that was uniquely hers, and that no one who met her was immune to — I saw them pulled tight with loathing, wild with uncontrollable rage — I saw them kind, touchingly kind, tender with the desire to help and to protect — I saw the merciless, accusing eyes of the moralist, judging, condemning, unforgiving, the power of her reason becoming a whip to scourge the heretic — I saw them shyly solemn like a young girl when a boy, my husband, took her hand. But I never saw those eyes without the light of a vast, consuming intelligence, the light of a ruthless intellect that was at once cold and passionate; this was the core of her life, the motor of her soul.”
Soooo… Barbara Branden/ Ayn Rand f/f 100-150K? Anybody got any recs?
My only question here is who got writing tips from whom, because wow.
The motor of her soul.
I am the master of my fate
I am the motor of my soul
Ayn Rand: She Had Eyes And Facial Expressions
Yep honestly this is all I’m hearing.
Yeah, wow. Mallory wasn’t exaggerating even a bit about how into Ayn Barbara was.
My ex-boyfriend definitely moved across the country to be no where near me (and it’s awesome) but I do wish I had put a hex on his dick. Pretty sure Ayn was actually a sorceress of the highest order, and she continues to hold men in thrall through her dumb books. Maybe she’s alive somewhere. Maybe that’s what’s keeping her alive.
it’s never too late to put a hex on someone’s dick!
Maybe this would have kept my ex from procreating! Ah, dream of the misandrist power.
she continues to hold men in thrall through her dumb books. Maybe she’s alive somewhere. Maybe that’s what’s keeping her alive.
She put a piece of her soul in each of her book, and now they’re like Tom Riddle’s diary, anchoring her to our world.
If you shave Trump’s hair, you’ll find Ayn Rand’s face on the back of his skull, Quirell-style. She possessed him to counter Clinton, because she said there would never be a woman president and she won’t be proven wrong, dammit!
This makes so much sense.
this is my headcanon for reality now.
My ex-boyfriend moved to the other side of the world.
Actual quote: ‘I just don’t feel like I can stay in this country [he was born here and has never lived anywhere else] after this relationship. You should think about what that says.’
(Spoiler: It says that he is an incurable man-child desperate to run from responsibility and blame everybody else for his problems.)
I haven’t cursed his dick, and I actually wish he’d come back long enough to finalise our property settlement, but I can’t pretend I’m not at least a little proud to have driven a man across continents with the power of my not-wanting-to-be-in-this-relationship-anymore-ness.
You should be proud and make note of that in your personal witch statement.
so, missing a #heroes tag here?
I’ve always wondered which Ayn Rand Toast article I should send to my high school boyfriend, and NOW I KNOW.
Oh god why do I related to this so hard
*as if from depths of a cave and deep down the lungs*: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssssssssssd
AN OUROBOROS OF FUCKERY would be an excellent name for a rock band. I love everything about this.
Helen Mirren was also in Caligula, so this doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. She is a brave woman and the best part of Red and Red 2 (honorable mention John Malkovich).
Helen Mirren is actually the best part of any movie in which she appears.
my introduction to Ayn Rand’s EXISTENCE was finding The Passion of Ayn Rand in a dusty cellar bookcase when I was a pre-teen who still believed that every book had something rare to teach me and if I couldn’t tell what it was it was because I hadn’t read it intelligently and receptively enough. I’m still not sure which of my parents it originally belonged to and I hope never to find out
Ayn Rand is basically real life Darth Vader: yes, she is objectively (heh) evil, but dammit I want to be her so bad.
Frank, by the way, drank himself to death.
This is really the only reasonable thing to do when faced with extended exposure to Ayn Rand.
That, and since Rand was all, “No, no, Nathaniel and I can’t get our own love nest because then unenlightened people might find out about our affair and they just wouldn’t understand, we’re going to bang in our place, which means you have to be somewhere else, Frank.” “Somewhere else” usually ended up being a bar.
And she sold the house where he had happily gardened. UGH AYN.
She was just so amazingly committed to being the actual worst. Like someone told her she could be anything and she decided she was going to be The Wooooooooorst and she threw herself into the pursuit thereof every day of her life.
Black-hole level douchebaggery: put Ayn Rand and George McClellan together.
I feel like this is all great fodder for the @polyhorror twitter account.
I want to check out that account but at the same time I vehemently do not.
It amuses me. There’s a fair bit of unicorn-hunter content, of course, but also some great gems.
OMG YES. Send it to them. DO IT.
Going to pour cold water on some people’s girl-crush here: Ayn Rand was sexist as shit, to the extent of calling herself a male chauvinist. When asked about whether she’d vote for a female head of state, she presented such gems as “the essence of femininity is hero-worship”, “a properly feminine woman does not treat men as if she were their pal, sister, mother—or leader”, and “For a woman to seek or desire the presidency is, in fact, so terrible a prospect of spiritual self-immolation that the woman who would seek it is psychologically unworthy of the job.”
Does. Not. Appeal.
I think that a good portion of our delighted amusement with Ayn Rand involves her gleeful disregard of her own stated beliefs when it came to restricting her own actions.
For instance, that she collected social security.
I do not think in the slightest that this could be construed as Mallory – or any of us – crushing on Ayn Rand. It’s just an incredible nugget of ouroboros fuckery to entertain us on this Thursday.
I think everyone here is united in dislike of her and her opinions. It’s just that everyone is very fair-minded and we give credit where credit is due, and someone who curses her ex-boyfriend’s dick gets credit.
Also, the fact that this bizarre story involves Ayn Rand of all people (and not one of The Toast’s official girlfriends) and that makes it even weirder.
Oh yeah, Ayn Rand is an ongoing theme around here parts. We hate her but we appreciate her ability to describe a fancy dress and, well, now dick cursing.
I feel that your dislike for Ayn Rand is strong.
And I feel like if you go exploring the other things Mallory has written about Ayn Rand you will find them to be delicious and will make you smile.
yes, we are (I think) all aware. that is why it is funny that, in contrast to her books’ heterosexual models, which are very explicit and unyielding on the absolute requirement of male dominance and violence in order to have a satisfyingly rational erotic liaison, in her real life she went around commanding weak young men to do her bidding with not much more than a flashing gaze and and endless capacity to dominate an argument. because she was just that much of a natural leader and men are just that erotically susceptible to a powerful older woman who is stronger than they are in every way, no matter how devoted she was to pretending that the opposite was true.
it has always bugged me that when people want to discredit her, as if all of her own books hadn’t already done that, they whip out the thing about how she had a crush on a serial killer one time and never mention her bullying affairs with young men, which actually happened and were not mere fantasies. But the killer infatuation thing is unremarkable and right in line with the rest of her ideology re: dominant men, whereas her real private life actually does something to blatantly undermine that ideology. but I suppose a lot of Ayn Rand-haters are men who have no particular objection to that aspect of her philosophy. Personally I am grateful for it, because the sexism is the only thing standing in the way of every 13-year-old girl in the country becoming an Objectivist. Not that I think it would hurt them any as long as they stop by high school.
Personally I am grateful for it, because the sexism is the only thing standing in the way of every 13-year-old girl in the country becoming an Objectivist.
Hee!
Haha what? A serial killer?
oh so it was never a secret but it momentarily became a big thing a couple of years ago when people first noticed it (I think in her journals?) and there were shocked articles in Salon and places like that. This guy, I forget the guy’s name but he abducted and murdered a child and good old Ayn Rand thought that — hang on I will Google it, I am a professional researcher — his statement that “what is good for me is right” was “The best and strongest expression of a real man’s psychology [she had] heard.” she took notes on him as a model for some character, she was particularly interested in how other people basically did not exist for him.
anyway objectivists get very pissy about people bringing this up because, as they point out, she specifically said that her hero was meant to be modelled on this sociopathic child butcher only “without the degeneracy” and nobody ever quotes that part of her journals.
and I mean, sure, fair point I guess, is it really so bad to be a monstrous psychopath if you don’t do any sex murders? many people would say yes because they are slaves to conventional morality but not our Ayn.
Warning on this link, as it describes the murder of a child.
I think the perverse fascination a lot of us feel about Rand might be termed a “hate-crush”. She was so, so terrible, but in a way that it’s hard to look away from.
THAT’S IT! Hate-crush. You are a genius.
I mean, she’s pretty much the worst we have but even SHE didn’t start a cult, ala Warren Jeffs (sp?). Lol.
eta: she totally could’ve, I am convinced after reading that essay on her eyeballs
When I first made a Facebook account, one of my suggested friends was Nathaniel Branden. The same Nathaniel Branden? I checked, yes, same guy.
I have no idea why this happened.
You know, I saw that movie. It was on TV, my mom said it looked good (she saw a minute from the end and then rewinded) so we watched it. It was not good. It wasn’t even funny bad, because I already knew about rand’s bonker objectivist affair. Also, the movie describes like, I don’t know, twenty years? but they never tried to make the actors look older? what?
Mallory Ortberg please be my Ayn Rand.
“Ayn Rand: she wrote Anthem and also one time with her human mouth told a fellow human that she wished his dick would break for two decades”: LOL, AYN RAND, YOU ARE THE ACTUAL WORST, but also that is some A+++ misandry right there. Shittiness is a rich tapestry indeed.
Also, though, I can’t help feeling that Nathaniel Blumenthal walked into that particular buzzsaw of assholery eyes-open and therefore deserved whatever he got–? Nathaniel B-Randin’ INDEED, fucko!
THIS IS AN OUROBOROS OF FUCKERY
BEST SENTENCE EVER Y/Y?
“Coincidence placed her on a street corner where she saw Cecile B. DeMille who noticed her intense stare and invited her to view some shootings. He would later offer her a job as an extra.”
Super-intense stare, that’s what we’re looking for in an extra, mm-hmm, yeah.
“On the set of ‘The King of Kings’ Rand tripped Frank O’Connor whom she had spotted on a bus and to whom she was attracted because of his face.”
lol omg that book
The lack of commas only adds to the bat-shittery. Like if you read these sentences fast enough, you won’t notice that they’re completely insane.
“to whom she was attracted because of his face”
Not “whom she found attractive,” not “whose looks she liked,” not “who she wished to pursue romantically,” but “to whom she was attracted because of his face.”
yesterday I momentarily confused Ayn Rand and Anne Rice, another noted dick witch
“Dick Witch”. By no small coincidence, also the name of my new specialty sausage sandwich shop.
That must have been a heady experience.
Types of witches, a taxonomy: pocket witch, dick witch, ???
ETA: this was meant as a reply to crawlkill!! oops
hedge-witch
village witch
Baba Yaga, but only reminding myself I want a hut with chicken legs
pocket sand witch!
This is why I think it’s useful for teenage girls to go through an Ayn Rand phase. (Like… 18 months, tops.) It’s like a vaccine against male fuckery or something. Still working on fleshing out this theory.
I totally agree. I feel somewhat strange writing this, but reading Rand as a teen was really important for my self-confidence, both in general and sexually. It was literally the first time that this chubby nerd girl read that someone could find another person attractive because of their intelligence and accomplishments. There’s a lot of other, less laudable sexual politics going on in those books, but I will still thank Ayn Rand for making me realize that others might find me valuable and lovable for reasons other than physical attractiveness.
An Ouroboros of fuckery, it has consumed itself and now hunts for other things to devour endlessly, so strong is the fuckery that it is made of
It’s a dick-cursing wendigo.
I never really had an Ayn Rand phase (I apparently came out of the womb finding her to be a racist, childish, hypocritical bag of dicks) but I’ll be damned if I didn’t find this to be hilarious. Good job, Mallory!
I can’t help but admire* her unwavering dedication to being a complete and utter bastard every second of her life.
*is this what fascism feels like? (yes)
What got me out of my Ayn Rand phase was reading “The Passion of Ayn Rand,” and gradually realizing just how fucked these people were. “Ouroboros of fuckery” is right.
I didn’t know much about Devers Branden, a.k.a. sister-wife #3 of Nathaniel Branden, which prompted me to read this: http://mol.redbarn.org/objectivism/Writing/Nathan… This is an account of the time 3rd sister-wife goes to confront the ol’ Aynster, like something out of General Hospital:
“I wanted to cut that off, so I stood up and said I was thirsty and did she mind if I helped myself to a drink of water or juice. Then I walked into the kitchen. ‘What are you doing?’ she cried, following me. I opened the refrigerator, located a glass, and was pouring myself fruit juice. She protested that I was a guest in her house and that if I wanted juice, she would serve it to me. I told her I didn’t want to bother her. She could see that all her shouting meant nothing to me.”
Who even *are* these people? Who does shit like that? Oh, right, totally *self-reliant* Uber-mensch type people.
AN OUROBOROS OF FUCKERY. just marry me, mallory.
It’s a testament to the talent of the Toast that I still get a great deal of entertainment from these articles, despite never having read anything by Ayn Rand. All of my high school/university peers were straight up socialists and, following countless hours playing Civ I, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Communism could work.
Black-hole level douchebaggery: put Ayn Rand and George McClellan together.
Yeah, wow. Mallory wasn't exaggerating even a bit about how into Ayn Barbara was.