A True Atlas Shrugs in Recognition

“A man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself. No matter what corruption he's taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment (...) an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and to accept his real ego as his standard of value. He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience or to fake a sense of self esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer- because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut(...) He does not seek to gain his value but to express it.

There is no conflict between the standards of his mind and the desires of his body. But the man who is convinced of his own worthlessness will be drawn to a woman he despises- because she will reflect his own secret self, she will release him from the objective reality in which he is a fraud, she will give him momentary illusion of his own value and a momentarily escape from the moral code that damns him. Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex lives- and observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy. One proceeds from the other. Love is our response to our highest values- and can be nothing else. Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess(...)that the noblest love is born, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values, but in response to flaws- and he will have cut himself in two (...)

Observe that most people are creatures cut in half who keep swinging desperately to one side or to the other. One kind of half is the man who despises money, factories, skyscrapers and his own body. He holds undefined emotions about non conceivable subjects as the meaning of life and as his claim to virtue. And he cries with despair, because he can feel nothing for the women he respects, but finds himself in bondage to an irresistible passion for a slut from the gutter. He is the man whom people call an idealist. The other kind of half is the man whom people call a practical, the man who despises principles, abstractions, art, philosophy, and his own mind. He regards the acquisition of material objects as the only goal of existence- and he laughs at the need to consider their purpose or their source. He expects them to give him pleasure- and he wonders why the more he gets, the less he feels. He is the man who spends his time chasing women. Observe the triple fraud which he perpetrates upon himself. He will not acknowledge his need of self esteem, since he scoffs at such a concept as moral values; yet he feels the profound self contempt which comes from believing that he is a piece of meat. He will not acknowledge, but he knows that sex is the physical expression of a tribute to personal values. So he tries, by going through the motions of effect, to acquire that which should have been the cause. He tries to gain a sense of his own value from the women who surrender to him- and he forgets that the women he picks have neither character nor judgment nor standard of value. It is the feeling of achievement that he seeks and never finds. What glory can there be in the conquest of a mindless body?”

Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand