“For a woman qua woman, the essence of femininity is hero-worship – the desire to look up to man. “To look up” does not mean dependence, obedience, or anything implying inferiority. It means an intense kind of admiration; and admiration is an emotion that can be experienced only by a person of strong character and independent value-judgements. A “clinging vine” type of woman is not an admirer but an exploiter of men. Hero-worship is a demanding virtue: a woman has to be worthy of it and the hero she worships. Intellectually and morally, i.e., as a human being, she has to be his equal; then the object of her worship is specifically his masculinity, not any human virtue she might lack.”
- Ayn Rand: The Objectivist, December 1968