galedekarios · 6 months ago
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people need to start understanding that blocking someone is a way to curate your online experience in a mature and healthy way.
it's not a moral or a character failing to block someone.
it's not "aggressive", it's not "bizarre", it's not a "lack of respect", it's not "throwing a fit", it doesn't mean you can't respect different opinions and it doesn't mean you should get "off the internet" to "get some air".
it's simply a 'i don't vibe with your content and don't want to see more from you.'
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bookofmirth · 3 years ago
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I saw your recent response to an anon where you mentioned the drama that occurred the other day based around bookprofessor’s post. Obviously you don’t have to respond to this or publish it if you do not wish but I just wanted to bring up that while it is important to focus on the real life issues at hand, the OP was hypocritical in her post which is why people were getting upset. She was preaching against ableism while simultaneously flaunting her IQ and degree which is a form of ableism. She was speaking out against racism while ending her post using the racial slur “cracker” when talking about the possibly Caucasian Twitter elriels.
Obviously she had some important points but it was completely overshadowed by her participation in the hate speech and prejudice that she was speaking out against.
This does not in any way justify the nasty messages she received but on the same hand, I do not blame anyone that called her out for her hypocrisy. I hope you can understand why her post was so negatively received and how flawed it was. My hope is that one day everyone can just ignore the negativity, report those who are being racist/prejudiced in any way, and block those who are just being loud and who you don’t wish to see content from. But unfortunately I do not see that happening any time soon.
There are a few things I want to address in this because I think it's a good moment for the fandom to step back and reflect on how we treat one another, how we react to such issues, and how we behave moving forward.
First off, thanks for explaining your point of view without being antagonistic. I do think that everyone's emotional reactions to the post were valid. I do NOT think their responses, in terms of words and actions, were valid. Now before I move forward, I want to clarify that when I use the word "you", I am referring to anyone who may have had the response I am describing - not you personally, anon. Also please don’t freak out about how long this is, as a majority of it is a response to the fandom in general, not you in particular.
What was - and wasn’t - said in the original post
In this post, there were completely valid criticisms of the way that people in this fandom behave, and it wasn’t “generalizing” a certain group, it was literal, actual proof of things that had been said, by multiple people. I’m not going to get too into what Alyssa argued because her critiques of those tweets was flawless. The original post had very valid criticisms of what was happening on Twitter. Alyssa exposed the actually racist, homophobic, and imperialistic underpinnings of those tweets.
However, a lot of people are stuck on the bits before and after those critiques. @bookprofessor apologized for different aspects of her post in a few different asks. There were perhaps better ways that some of those things could have been phrased, some things that could have been left out. And she apologized. People can accept that apology or not but we can’t act like it didn’t happen. Like she didn’t reflect and learn to do better.
However, the people she was calling out have not done the same thing, and if anything, comments that focus more on Alyssa’s tone than why she wrote the post in the first place lets those people off the hook.
On cracker - Using the word "cracker" is not racist in the same way that using racial slurs against POC is. Is it prejudiced? Yes. But you cannot say that it is the same thing when that is demonstrably untrue, given centuries of oppressive history. No one has been oppressed for being white. Those are not the same. Reverse racism is not a thing because a white person punching down on POC is NOT AT ALL the same thing as a POC punching up at white people. The actions look the same, but the impact is so unequal it’s not even funny.
Racism is a systemic, institutionalized problem. It is not defined by individual actions, though those actions can either support or challenge racism. When someone calls a white person a cracker, there isn’t centuries of oppression giving power to and reinforcing that statement. That is not a “gotcha” moment.
Saying “I have x IQ” or “I have X degrees” is not ableist. I’m sorry to whoever told you it was ableist (again, not you specifically anon but people who had read the “aw shucks guys” vagueblogs about it), but it’s not. Those are facts. I have no idea what my IQ is, but I have five degrees from institutions of higher education. Me saying that is in no way ableist. 
Often, people mention those things to be elitist, yes. Sometimes, they can be used to say “hey I know more about this than you”. They can be used in a way that tries to make themselves feel superior. I suspect that this is the impression that a lot of people got of the post. However, there is a fine line between saying “hey that’s elitist” and professing anti intellectualism. Which is perhaps a side issue so I’ll let that go for now.
Another reason that people mention their degrees or qualifications is to establish their background knowledge and credibility. If I were to say “hey y’all I have two MA degrees” (which is true) I am not being ableist! It is a fact! It is factual! And I worked my ass off for those, I will be in student loan debt until I die for those, I have every right to mention them if I want to, and often I do so in order to establish my credibility, to explain the position I am coming from. And my prior knowledge of these topics is relevant when we are talking about literature since that’s what my degrees were on - literature and linguistics. That is why Alyssa mentioned her background, though she did pair it with comments about other people, for which she has apologized.
My final point about this is that I 1000% understand feeling insecure or less than because of educational attainment. I dropped out of high school. I had a complex about that for a long, long time. But I also know that if I took offense at someone else saying they had a PhD, then that offense is about me, not them. Someone else’s inferiority complex is not reason for people to pretend to be less than they are.
If those two comments are what overshadowed the bigger, more important issue for a lot of the readers of that post, then y’all allowed them to overshadow those more important issues. I am 99% sure that someone right now is reading this and thinking “but Leslie, it was the way that she said it!” Boy have I got some news for you!
How we react
This next section is not specific to this ask; instead, it is a discussion of how the fandom responded. If it were only one person who had said “but her tone” then I wouldn’t need to make this point. The fact that multiple people are exhibiting the behavior explained below is what makes this a cultural problem within the acotar fandom.
The main argument I saw on the post itself, and indeed any time I see people bring up how nasty Twitter can be, is that “it was a joke” and “that’s how stan Twitter works”.
No.
Those responses were quite useful for this post, though! So buckle up everyone, because I am going to talk about gaslighting, racism, respectability politics, and tone policing. While I understand that some people might have taken personal offense to what was said, there is a much bigger issue at stake that has nothing to do with individual feelings, and everything to do with ensuring that POC stay silenced and white supremacy is upheld. 
Back to the “but it’s a joke” thing. Thanks for gaslighting! Great example of that, person I’m not going to tag! Gaslighting is when you make someone question their experiences, when you try to make them think “wait, did I really feel that way? Is my feeling about that valid? Do I need to re-evaluate my response to this?? Am I blowing this out of proportion???” And saying “it’s just a joke” is a perfect way to do that. Did I say something accidentally sexist? It’s just a joke, nbd! Now you’re the problem, because you didn’t understand my joke and laugh!!! 
Saying “it’s a joke” or “oh they are old/young/ignorant, they will learn” is not a good response to... anything. It takes the responsibility off the people who are doing the harm, and putting it onto the people who were hurt. And in this case, anyone who read those tweets and found them harmful (which should be everyone?) is completely valid. You aren’t lesser for being angry or emotional or for seeing a problem where other people saw a joke. The people who see those things as acceptable jokes are the ones in the wrong.
This is a tactic that is used against women all the time. Any time a woman is sexually harassed at work or online, for example, and she gets upset about it, and someone chimes in with “oh they weren’t serious, can’t you take a joke?” So you can imagine what this is like for women of color.
It is a very, very common tactic for people of color to be silenced via tone policing and respectability politics. Tone policing and respectability politics are very closely related, especially in this context. The idea is that if Alyssa had just written that post in just the right way, it would have been more palatable to white people, and therefore okay to write. The idea that if she had tried to be “understanding” or “see it from their perspective” or understand that it’s “just a joke” are all ways to silence and de-legitimize any accurate, valid criticisms that were made of those tweets. It effectively re-routes the conversation away from the real issues, and to the person trying to bring them up. It’s essentially an ad hominem attack in disguise. 
We see respectability politics in media when people of color who act or dress or speak like white people are afforded more respect. Or any time that a person of color is pulled over and people say, “well if they had just done what the police officer asked...” There is a pervasive idea that if people just “act” properly, aka if you act white, then the police won’t feel antagonized and try to kill arrest you. If we are nice enough, meek enough, smile enough, etc. then we will be accepted.
When we tone police, we refuse to allow marginalized people the right to be angry. We say that "hey, we can only have this discussion if you leave emotion, which you rightfully feel, at the door, and we can only continue this discussion if you behave in a way that makes me feel comfortable." But guess what? It isn’t about you! These discussions are often highly uncomfortable. There is no nice way to tell someone they are being racist. And yet somehow, that is the ever-moving goalpost. It seems reasonable, right? “Just be civil, be nice, don’t insult each other!” And there is that. But those criteria change constantly, to the point where anyone (white) at any time can say “WHOA WHOA THIS IS MAKE ME UNCOMFORTABLE???” Then we find ourselves at zero, and suddenly the focus of attention has shifted away from the actual problem.
Before we go further, I want to say this: people have a right to be angry. They do not need to make their anger palatable or tasteful for the consumption of others (read: white people). 
We saw this last summer, and I’m not sure how the message didn’t get across. But people are rightfully angry about racism. They are angry about the murder of people of color by police, they are angry about lack of quality education, or clean water, of centuries of oppression that have led to this very moment when all of that ceases to matter because a white woman’s feelings got hurt one time. 
And that is what pisses me off so much. There is no way in this world that we could criticize tweets like those that everyone would agree with, and that everyone would “approve” of, that would be “nice” enough and yet still be impactful and make the authors of those tweets understand the gravity of what they have done. 
The least we can do is allow one another to express our anger, our outrage, because it’s highly likely that those people know exactly what the fuck they are doing, and they do not fucking care. By criticizing a woman of color for the way in which she chose to engage with this topic, we are avoiding the issue and letting the people in those tweets off the hook. 
There were many responses to that post that were positive, that agreed with Alyssa. There are a ton of people who disagree with those tweets, who find them disgusting, who understand exactly how and why they are problematic. That should be what we are talking about. Getting to the core of the argument, on that post or any about racism or other problematic behavior in fandom, requires getting past our own egos. It requires us to be able to step back, say “hm this thing is frustrating but there is a bigger picture here”. It’s not easy, and I recognize that. 
The fact that it is a common tactic though? To say “hey this hurt me personally and so I’m going to ignore any valid points you made?” That feeds directly into centuries of white supremacy because it, once again, silences POC and makes them try to play a losing game. And they will always lose, because no matter how hard they try to play the white game, the goalposts are constantly shifting. So you know what? Fuck the game, and fuck respectability politics, and fuck tone policing and “uwu be nice guys” because when it comes to things like racism and sexism, I don’t expect the people who deserve to be criticized to be nice. In fact, trying to be nice only serves to fuck POC over in the end.
Indeed, in response to that post, certain blogs have taken the opportunity to position themselves as “the nice ones” or “the ones who would never” or “uwu let’s be nice guys” while completely ignoring the fact that a woman of color was attacked for calling out racism. And yes - that was the point of her post. People getting hung up on mentions of her degree are (intentionally or not, it doesn’t matter) completely obfuscating the fact that that is not what her post was about, which was to call out disgusting behavior. idk how many words the post actually was, but essentially, people are focusing on 5% of it to the detriment of the 95% that was actually really important shit. These types of vagueblog posts about the issue fall into exactly what I am talking about - these are people who have decided to look at this issue, see how Alyssa (and anyone else who dares speak up) has approached it, and intentionally try to act like they are “better” because they can be “rational” and “kind”. Newsflash, if you don’t have something to be angry about, then being “nice” about racism isn’t that much of a flex. If it didn’t bother you, then congratulations. That doesn’t make you better than people it did bother. You just got lucky this time, and decided to use that to your advantage to look like the good guy.
I am not saying that all calls for peace are doing this. Obviously it’s what we all want. This is the worst I have seen this fandom in the 4+ years I’ve been here. But we cannot have that by ignoring the real problems and pretending that if we are all just nice to each other, then we will solve racism and sexism and all bullying in the fandom will stop. 
So combining all of this - the gaslighting, the tone policing, and what do you get? You get a fandom that refuses to actually engage critically with its own problems and take accountability for them. You get a fandom that decides that it’s easier to be distracted by this one mean comment over here than it is to engage in the fact that you know what, the culture in this fandom has actually turned incredibly disgusting and a lot of people are just okay with it. You’ve got a fandom that is using the tools of white supremacy to avoid the discussions that should actually be taking place. Maybe people don’t realize that that’s what they are doing. But if someone still thinks that after reading this post, then godspeed my friend, I hope you enjoy Twitter.
Okay so my last thing I want to say is that I didn’t come to all of this knowledge fresh from the womb. I do a lot of work, in my personal life and my professional life, to be better. So here is a list of books that I have found particularly helpful:
How to Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America also by Ibram X. Kendi
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo (side note, I was kinda meh about this one but the chapter “White Women’s Tears” is particularly helpful)
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins
I’m not going to talk specifically about Alyssa’s post anymore, but if anyone wants to continue talking about these broader issues going on in the fandom, I am game. (I really should be grading papers though, so it might take a bit.)
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ikemensengokufandom · 4 years ago
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I have no intention to reblog her post on tumblr but you guys can see how self-entitled this woman is.
Firstly, the way you phrased "I have my rights to voice out my opinions as a whaler." You DID NOT indicated that "how unnatural it looks" or "angle seems odd" from the beginning.
FYI, you're the one who started this comment thread?
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^ Need a reminder? Here you go 🙂
Secondly, you said you spent money on the game, but not to be passed off with such manner with the art. Excuse me, did you even know what's the baseline and how does it actually works within the industry? Your first respond was "They photoshopped it" instead of what you explained about the unnatural pose etc.
Firstly, not just PAPER but in EVERY aspect of the gaming industry, reuse of material is somehow the norm. One way is to save cost, time just so that the developers are able to quickly produce the product.
No, I'm not siding the developer on this. But do note that they are a company themselves and it's their job to milk consumers' money, and they're not the only company that are doing that. And to justify the pricing based just on artwork just shows how plain ignorant you are because you don't just fuckin' compare the pricing based on artwork. Developers in general have to be constantly active with different servers, and not to mention the new functions they added on etc? That's how you see whether if a game is worth paying for.
And to you being a whaler and spending 10k gems and all, it's your choice whether to spend or not to spend the money. PAPER did not force anyone of the players to spend couple of hundred bucks on their game. If you have problem with it, you can don't spend any dime on it, or just give up on the event right? 🙂 sure, we all know how shit PAPER are in terms on how they treated their consumers lmfao, trust me even I have problems with them but did I rudely shut off the others just so I can argue my point to prove that I'm right just because "I'm a whaler and I spent hell lot of money so I'm the king everyone must bow down to me?" Excuse me, you are not the only spender in that game.
The reason why the admin were pissed is because you acted on your own accord with your superiority complex and pissed off the other members. Ouch, you do know that CN and EN fandom are of different culture and opinions right? The admin were not being rude towards you at the beginning, it is you who 作死 that couldn't tolerate the facts that they cared for other members in the group.
Oh and please don't use criticism as an excuse, because your first response towards the other member(s) who disagree with you was "If my comment bothers you, you may skip it." Criticsm and nick-picking are whole lot of different meaning, but instead of criticsm and learn how to tackle with it, you got salty because not all of the members accepted your so-called criticism.
While you told others to skip your comment, you on the other hand didn't follow what you've preached and in fact somehow stalked Yume's account just because she removed your comments and what you did was "Fuck you" while she is just doing her job as an admin, aka SHE CREATED THE GROUP. So what, she has no rights to rant on her OWN FACEBOOK TIMELINE RIGHT AFTER YOU CUSSED AT HER RUDELY? 🤷‍♀️
So you're salty just because she did her job and prioritize the members instead of saying "yes" to the big whaler? What logic is this excuse me? 🤷‍♀️
And FYI to the group rules:
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RESPECT EVERYONE'S LIKE: Lol you didn't seem to respect other people's views and opinions from the way you spoke. You told people to skip your comment yet you have rights to voice out, like wow as if the others' opinions are inferior 🙄
NO HATE SPEECH OR BULLYING: You just told admin to "Fuck you" and had proceed to stalk her facebook timeline and posted it on public 🙂
And now you're trying to victimize yourself just so you can mislead the others? Oh no, you're not getting away for that 🙂 You started the thread, you disregard other people's view while you expect the others to respct yours with that self-entitled attitude of yours. For someone who's from Singapore like me, older than anyone of us AND a long-time player, you should be ashamed of yourself.
And one last thing I would like to add on; you argued your point AS A CONSUMER while SHE ARGUED HERS AS AN ARTIST HERSELF. You claimed that they only take side to people who followed their scared rules, so does this sound like she's taking any sides?
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Oh nooo.... Don't try to get me into "don't twist my words" and "I sabotage you" or calling others "crazy, delusional" etc once you lost an argument. That bullshit and attitude of yours has been lingering for YEARS until 都看的出来了. I honestly do not want to give a shit about this, or even write a tumblr post to rebuke yours as I do not want to get involved with you again. However, after 5-6 years you still have that shit self-centered fragile heart that still wants to twist the tales and portray yourself a better person? Sorry, you don't do that towards my friends.
This is not what you did few years ago anymore. Nobody's a young, ignorant dumbfuck anymore and your same old "twist the tales" methods ain't gonna work anymore. A few members are already pissed off with you way before this minor issue, and the admins themselves have high tolerance to bear with you and not kicking you out.
Sure, leave the group, nobody cares 😂 we are thankful for that lols.
And yeah Yume blocked you because unlike you, we can just simply delete someone like you from our life instead of being vengeful as fuck. Go ahead, continue to write a long-ass twisted tales about how shit you got treated in that group, or stalk someone's facebook timeline to justify yourself. If you can rant in your platform, so can us 🙂
奉劝您老人家一句,做人善良一点。 您别气坏了身子啊~ 不然就像您所说的,容颜会越来越老的,不是吗?
您要活在您自己的世界,那请便。我们这种人对您来说只会把您的地盘弄脏了~ 这样莫须有的罪名,老娘们可承担不起啊~💁‍♀️
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avelera · 7 years ago
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On Criticsm, Deserved and Undeserved, of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”
This latest tragic Amtrak derailment has me thinking about, of all things, the book “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. In part because, in that book, the increase of train derailments was a sign of the nation’s crumble into communism due to the theft and control by low-achieving but powerful thieves in government and the brain drain of John Galt’s movement. 
I grew up in a conservative household so naturally I was introduced to this book. It is, in essence, a near-future sci-fi novel which meant I could both read something mildly interesting and something my father approved of me reading, so it was a win-win. I ended up reading it twice in my lifetime, though both times I skipped the 60 page speech at the end in favor of getting back to the character drama. It wasn’t until adulthood that I came to understand how reviled the book was by the Left and it was a little after that when I understood why, and began to see the book’s flaws. 
It’s been on my mind on and off for awhile to compile my thoughts on that book, because I actually feel that while much of the criticism for it is valid, and I will address that too, there are some places where the vitriol of the criticism feels... well, rather sexist. For a young woman, there actually were some valid lessons I took away from the book which I see constantly ignored, usually by people who have not read it. By contrast, I find it darkly amusing at best and offensive at worst how many people who claim to love and live that book, especially in the right wing, are precisely what the book was preaching against, something they would know if they had actually read it, or had spent even a millisecond of their time on self reflection. There are also elements of the book I will touch on briefly which make the book’s overall application to real life--as so many conservatives have-- utterly ludicrous, because the book itself doesn’t interact with real life, and yet they still use it to justify their world view. This is the more common criticism of the novel, but I’d still like to add my spin on it without the usual venom it receives because of the critic’s loathing of the book’s “fandom”, rather than its content. 
I don’t expect many people to read this essay. Most people in my audience have not read Atlas Shrugged, and if they’ve even heard of it their ideas tend to be fixed whether or not they’ve read it based on their political upbringing. I was in a strange place of being completely politically uninvolved when I first read it (at age 14) and somewhat in the middle politically when I read it again years later. It’s also an 1,000 page long book, which is why I think both its promoters and its critics will often pay lip service to having read it, when they’re really only parroting another’s analysis (and that analysis inevitably leaves out huge swathes of the book’s content in order to promote a certain agenda and reading). 
First, I’d like to mention the good in this book, only because it is the aspect I see most ignored by both sides. Atlas Shrugged actually has a strong feminist message, which the Left tends to ignore in favor of criticizing its overall hyper-capitalist message, and which the Right tends to ignore because they don’t want to think about the fact that Ayn Rand was also pro-abortion, anti-religion, and called Ronald Reagan a communist. She at one point wanted to have a “good” priest be one of the POV characters in the novel, but ultimately found that she could not find a single spin on the character that would actually fit her world view. I’m very glad she didn’t, as I think it would have only poured gasoline on the fire of the current right wing theocracy. 
But back to its feminist message, in which we’re going to need to invoke death-of-the-author and let the text read for itself. Given Rand’s own dislike of the Feminist movement, I find it ironic how much she embodied it. Another side-effect of growing up in a conservative household was assumptions around gender roles. Even while growing up in a relatively non-religious household, and encouraged in my studies, there was just as much pervasive patriarchy as anywhere else. Certain feminine roles were assumed. This included endless selflessness as a virtue on the part of women. 
Dagny Taggart is the unquestioned main character of Atlas Shrugged. While other male characters like Hank Rearden, Francisco D’Anconia, and John Galt may make appearances, its always comes back to Dagny’s journey. This alone does not seem to get mentioned very often by either side. This central novel of conservative thinking is by a woman and about a woman, with the men in it as supporting characters. This alone of course does not excuse a book, but Dagny’s journey is also about freeing women from the shackles of the utter self-destruction by selflessness that the world demands of them to this day. One more reason Ayn Rand would be horrified to see what the small men of the right wing have used her novel to justify-- namely, the legal infringement of any kind onto the personal life of an adult or on the relationship between consenting adults.
For a young woman who had every corner of the world telling her that the greatest thing in life is to grow into a role of self-sacrifice, be it for the man in her life, or for children, or that being a caretaker was the most noble role she could ever hope to achieve even at the expense of any personal dreams, Dagny Taggart was a role model. She was a railway executive who had climbed her way up through the ranks from childhood to adulthood, spending long hours and working hard because it was what she wanted to do. This wasn’t a traditionally feminine industry either. Unlike Sex in the City, which was popular at the time I was re-reading the novel, I remember pointing out that even in such a female-centric show which was deemed progressive in how it showcased working women, they were still largely in roles deemed acceptable for modern women. Fashion, PR, art, and even certain practices of law wouldn’t cause even the most raging chauvinist to necessarily bat an eyelash if it’s where a woman ends up (before she meets her man and settles down to raise a family). But Dagny had no interest in a family, she took lovers as interested her without even a flicker of shame, did not sacrifice herself or her happiness for them and actively rejected those who asked her to give up what she loved for them. But most inspiring of all, she worked in railways, because she loved it and she couldn’t imagine any other life. 
What Ayn Rand had to say to women about denying selflessness and self-sacrifice in favor of personal and career self-actualization seems to be the one element no one wants to talk about. She gave a role model for young women interested in working, and more than most literature to this day, gave a role model for if they wanted to work outside traditionally feminine fields. She told them not to sacrifice themselves for the men or the families in their lives just because it was expected of them. She told them they could and should take lovers without shame, without sacrificing themselves just because some man wants to turn them into their personal domestic slave. She gave a roadmap for denying those men so you could live your own life. I find the Left curiously silent on this point, I can only assume as I said above because they haven’t actually read the book. The Right is silent on this point too, though I imagine for different reasons, like their male dominance and the number of them that seem to curiously think Rearden or Galt (who barely appears in the novel) are the main characters. 
That, however, is where my praise of the novel ends. I think as a woman in a man’s world, Ayn Rand had the authority to speak as a professional, a writer, a refugee, and an intellectual on the topic of Dagny. She could provide that role model for other women. Her knowledge of economics and markets, however, leaves something to be desired despite the fact the so-called economy obsessed right wing would put her worldview on a pedestal. 
I called Atlas Shrugged a sci-fi novel for a reason. That it is not shelved as one is unfortunate. In a sci-fi novel if you ignore sweeping aspects of the real world in favor of making your point or creating your alternate world, the reader generally understands that and the world and author don’t generally try to pretend that is is actually realistic and representative beyond its key points. For some baffling reason, conservatives think that the economy in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” has even a passing acquaintance with reality, and that it could somehow be mapped onto reality. As I said above, I think that Ayn Rand has some profound things to say to young, unattached women looking to establish themselves in the world. I’m not sure what she has to say to everyone else.
The world of Atlas Shrugged cannot possibly represent the real world because it doesn’t actually contain major elements of the real world which are key to its own worldview of a hyper capitalist society. All the industries represented are commodities and utilities, such as copper and steel, transportation and energy. There are little to no references to structural cultural barriers. Indeed, culture in general is limited and only to prove the point. I cannot speak to all industries but the most damning absences from the narrative to me are the absence of marketing, the global economy, and of children.
I may not work in a commodities or utilities, but I have worked in marketing. Ayn Rand dreams of a world where the best product wins, unless an unfair government is putting its finger on the scale. And that might be true, again if we were only talking about commodities and utilities. But there is no mention of consumer products. There is no mention of how the sophistry of marketing and advertising can be used to make the lesser product seem the better one. There’s no mention of how humans may be convinced through lies and half-truths as to which product is higher quality. There’s little mention of food quality control, or the fact that it’s all well and good to say the market will prevent people from putting out poison products, but that doesn’t really help to boycott a company in the future if your baby just died from spoiled milk. She does not at all reference that successful titans of industry can become successful and stay successful by selling sub-par products that bury the higher quality products through cheaper production costs.
This is a huge oversight when you try to apply her world to ours. And it’s not like she couldn’t have known this, already products like Edison’s diamond-tip gramophone with its superior sound had been buried by cheaper-made models with the help of marketing. But the fact she doesn’t address it is fine as a sci-fi author, it’s not fine when right wing thinkers take her word as gospel. 
Atlas Shrugged also shares with many post-apocalyptic sci-fi stories the total absence of a wider world. Just as we asked in The Hunger Games why isn’t anyone intervening in the fallen U.S., where did everyone go, we’re wondering in Atlas Shrugged why no one is making cheaper products for import, even if it’s by slave labor. The case within the novel is that the whole world, the entire world has fallen back into the Dark Ages because of communism, with only the U.S. hanging by a thread. At the very least it’s western hemisphere-centric, with the only other action we actually see taking place in South America when Francisco D’Anconia’s mines get nationalized (and he murders people in retribution, let’s not forget that). 
But just as Rand doesn’t talk about marketing, she also doesn’t really talk about the availability of natural resources, or any kind of impact on the environment. Resources in her world are essentially infinite, if one is only a strong enough personality to go find them. There is no long-term damage that we can see. There are no toxic chemicals to be spilled and poison local communities. That’s because there are, in essence, no communities at all. Cities just sort of exist as a capitalist function, as do countries, there is no pooling of knowledge and resources for any other successful purpose than personal financial achievement. It ignores an endless amount of actual history (which is barely mentioned in her world), or anthropology, or the natural world, or sociology, which are usually only brought up in order to be dismissed.
But I think the most glaring and purposeful absence in her books are children. It’s because that’s where her world breaks down entirely. As a childless unmarried intellectual, Ayn Rand didn’t move in many circles where children were central. It allowed her to write a book where children and infants are occasionally glimpsed in order to make a point about poisoning the next generation, but the actual work of childrearing goes largely ignored. It may be one more reason that the men of the right wing don’t even see how much these books don’t work in the real world, because they’re still allowed to sit outside that process and treat their ability to do so as a personal achievement rather than a privilege.
None of the men or women in Ayn Rand’s book worry about the capitalist market poisoning their children. They don’t have to worry about maternal leave, or sexism towards pregnant women. They don’t have to take the time out of their day for pre or post natal care, or take their kids to school, or take a day off from work when their children are sick. As said above, there are no communities in her world. Presumably, everyone makes enough to have a nanny to tend their children, but how does the nanny make enough? Rand is silent on these points. And I must assume she knows what she’s doing, because she knew that to show the natural “communism” of the family unit would be to water down her message.
And let me reiterate, as a sci-fi author it’s fine if you don’t show every aspect of the real world if it would water down the point your sci-fi novel is trying to achieve. I can’t help but notice that Rand is fairly unique in the criticism she receives for not creating an exhaustively complete alternate universe, that there are flaws in her argument when you show that the world of Atlas Shrugged is not rigorously functional. Asimov, Rodenberry, and Heinlein don’t get nearly as much flack. (I can’t help but notice the gender of these writers, and I think the Left needs to be a little more self-reflective of why Rand is allowed to be gleefully torn down with such vitriol, whereas many male writers on the same topic are given respectful consideration.) But then again, those male writers are shelved under sci-fi, whereas Rand is one of those rare “lucky” sci-fi writers who was graduated from that “lower” genre to the vaults of literature because we arbitrarily decided her book is important enough to belong there. Despite the fact it literally contains magical machines, sonic bombs, futuristic metals, and a post-apocalyptic global wasteland that wouldn’t be out of place in any number of zombie apocalypses.
I could go on to discuss the fact that many right wing thinkers in government more closely match the jowly, spoiled, ignorant villains of her book than they do the titans of industry that are her protagonists. Someday I’ll put together a proper analysis along with sources and a more recent re-read pointing out just how many of the people who thump Atlas Shrugged as if it were their Bible fit exactly into the archetype Rand was denouncing, while they in turn denounce those who fit her vision. But that’s not Rand’s fault, that’s her fandom’s fault. 
The more important lesson is, people can’t continue to treat the sci-fi world of Atlas Shrugged as some sort of model for the real world, any more than they should do so with Asimov’s Foundation, or Herbert’s Dune. Those were contemporary sci-fi works talking about their own time periods. For goodness sake, Ayn Rand doesn’t even predict America’s trucking or aviation dependency, the fact that the world takes place in what can only be termed locomotive-punk should alone disqualify it as a model. But I do think we are unfair to her about the topics that she was qualified to pontificate on, and for that I give credit to the whole rambling, sprawling, pseudo-researched mess for giving me Dagny Taggart, the first an only unapologetic female titan of a male-dominated industry main character I’ve seen to this day.
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