Love, Sex and Romance
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 1 hour, 39 minutes
This wide-ranging question and answer session features Dr. Leonard Peikoff exploring crucial ideas about love, sex, and romance. He covers a variety of topics including the nature of masculinity and femininity, pornography, homosexuality, friendship versus love, and much more.
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 3:22 | What is the relationship between friendship and love? |
| 6:06 | Can Platonic love between opposite sexes exist? |
| 7:55 | Is it wrong to have friendships—a relationship in which you habitually go out to eat, etc. alone with your friend—with members of the opposite sex once you’re in a committed relationship? |
| 10:03 | Is there a proper sexual role for a third person in a sexual relationship between two committed, rational people? |
| 16:18 | What do you think about multiple relationships, on the grounds that each person represents your values? |
| 20:28 | In your book you said that pleasures in bed must be reality-oriented and should not involve faking. What about using fantasy in sex? Are there some sexual acts that would constitute faking? |
| 23:59 | Are there some sexual acts that would constitute faking? |
| 25:50 | What, in your view, is the essence of masculinity? Do you know if Miss Rand had an explicit view on this? |
| 31:34 | Is masturbation a form of sex and did Ayn Rand ever comment on this topic? |
| 34:56 | You were mentioning on your radio show that President Clinton shouldn’t be impeached for what he’s done. But you also said that we should know what he’s done. But what about the idea of privacy? |
| 36:25 | Is the total power of a president because of the fact that he’s a power luster, or is it in the nature of the presidency as such? |
| 37:49 | Is the enjoyment of pornography immoral, or is there a context in which pornography can be useful to a rational man or woman? |
| 40:25 | There are so many gratuitous sex scenes in movies now. Pornography it seems is becoming accepted by our culture. What do you think? |
| 43:12 | Why do you think so many Objectivists have a prudish attitude toward sex? |
| 46:41 | Is “talking dirty” proper? |
| 48:06 | Absent this particular conference, over the years I’ve noticed that Objectivism seems to attract a lot more men than women. Of the points that you’ve been making, do you think there are any that are particularly relevant to this? |
| 49:55 | What is the importance of family—mother, father, and siblings and wife and children—in a rational man’s life? |
| 52:48 | So many Objectivists seem to decide not to have children. What should one consider when making such a decision? |
| 54:48 | How can you determine the right balance between productive activity, romance, children, and other values? |
| 58:58 | Do you have a view on strip-tease? Can it legitimately provide an entertainment or fantasy value? |
| 1:03:36 | What is your view of nude beaches? Aren’t our bodies such an intimate value that we wouldn’t want to expose ourselves publicly? |
| 1:06:41 | What about the athletes in Greece, all the males who mutually admired each other’s bodies? |
| 1:08:54 | A lot of Objectivists choose to live together instead of choosing marriage sanctioned by the state, referring to each other as husband and wife, are happy, and so on. Is state-sanctioned marriage necessary to a love relationship? Isn’t a private commitment enough? Are they being dishonest in referring to themselves as husband and wife since they don’t have a license? |
| 1:13:00 | Regarding a question about emotions, mood, and temperament… |
| 1:13:25 | Is homosexuality immoral and, if not, is it okay? |
| 1:22:13 | What do you think about faking orgasms? |
| 1:24:08 | What is the minimum set of philosophic congruence needed for a successful sexual relationship? |
| 1:27:44 | How do two people with differing levels of desire meet each other’s needs without succumbing to duty or sacrifice? |
| 1:31:08 | Men buy flowers. Men arrange mystery trips, etc. What romantic things should a woman do for her man besides sex? |
| 1:32:49 | If admiration and respect for someone is the source of one’s sexual desire, explain Dominique’s immediate attraction to Roark the first time she sees him at the quarry, when she has no idea who he is. |
| 1:34:24 | If a romantic couple sets a mutual goal for continuously increasing the pleasure each of them experiences individually, what additional ways can they take action other than the following: 1) each party acts selfish, 2) each partner openly states what they want from the relationship, 3) they think of new and interesting things to enjoy together? |
| 1:35:34 | Wasn’t Ayn Rand inconsistent because she said following her husband’s death that she had lost her top value… but nevertheless she referred to her career as her highest value? So which was really her highest value? |