NancyLebovitz comments on The Fable of the Burning Branch - Less Wrong
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Well, first, I'll admit up front that I logged off and metaphorically hid for a day after posting this, so I would not be tempted to engage in a pointless argument in the comments. And yet, I was somehow still too optimistic about what I'd find when I looked.
First point of order, this isn't about me. I've been on this site a while, it should be obvious by now that I have no qualms sharing gooey personal details about myself. So. Stop making it about me. If it was about me, you'd know.
Second point of order, the pronouns assigned to the characters do not matter and I think it says more about you than me that you fixated on that. So. Stop making it about sexism. Perhaps I could have chosen some other combination of genders, but I had hoped that commenters here of all places would be egalitarian enough to see those genders as the placeholders they are.
Third point of order, the parable was never meant to reflect reality. If it seems one-sided, that's because it is. It is meant to reflect a generalized emotional journey that I think is valid for a lot of people, of all sexes and orientations, who are too scared to speak up because they, rightly, expect to get nothing but vitriol for doing so.
Fourthly, if the parable even has a moral, it is about prostitution and modern attitudes towards prostitution and not really anything else. If you think the parable is advocating anything else you don't like, that, again, says more about you than me. I am astounded that I have to explicitly point this out, but there is a difference between not actively helping a person and actively interfering with help reaching a person. So. Stop putting words in my mouth. We should be above that, here.
Thank you for your reply. This is not at all what I expected.
I think there's a rule for allegories that the symbols shouldn't be too much like the thing symbolized (in this case an allegory about sex shouldn't use real world genders). I also recommend updating about people's ability to interpret (especially about a fraught subject like sex) rather than complaining that they didn't understand things the way you hoped.
This being said, I agree with you about prostitution, though more from a libertarian /sympathy for the prostitutes who should be allowed to do their work in peace than sympathy for people who have trouble finding sexual partners.
I'm not sure what the emotional journey is supposed to be. Maybe going from thinking of something as a personal problem to realizing that there's a systemic problem?