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POLYANDRY

                                               Written: mid-1980s.    
                                           Rev: January 31, 2007

                                                    (Why didn't I 
                                                     call this "polyrandry"?
I thought this would be a good                       Not like me to 
dig at Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_:                  miss a bad pun.)
Why don't her iconoclastic, non-
conformist geniuses ever consider
abandoning monogamy, since the
male to female ratio in her
utopian community (Atlantis) seems         In fact, you might wonder
to be about 10 to 1?                       the same thing about
                                           Silicon Valley, since it
Reading                                    seems to have a similar
_The Passion of Ayn Rand_                  ratio.
by Barbara Branden, I                         
discovered that she                        It would seem like the
actually did                               ideal resolution to        
deviate from monogamy                      any romantic triangle,      
in the way she lived.                      but I only know of one
                                           story that uses it:   
                                           a 1932 play by Noel             
When she was about 40 or so,               Coward, appropriately           
She set up an open affair                  enough, titled "Design 
between her and a guy in                   for Living". 
his twenties, Nathaniel 
Branden (Barbara's husband),                             (There's a small 
while she was still married                              reference to this 
to Frank (a man closer to her                            play in the 
age, forties I think).          My reaction:             Fountainhead... 
                                "All right Ayn!          A snide newspaper 
The reaction of the other       She went for it!         columnist uses the 
three people concerned was                               phrase to accuse   
not at all good, if you                                  the main characters
believe Barbara.  No one                                 of a menage et     
really wanted it this way                                trois.)            
except Ayn, and when             
Nathaniel finally broke up                                        
with *both* Ayn and            So, sometimes it
Barbara to go with some        doesn't work.           
third woman, Ayn seriously                             
freaked.                                               
                                                       
                                               ((Might site examples of    
                                               actual polyandrous cultures,
                                               e.g. The Nyimba of Tibet.)) 
                                

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