the OP isn't about you [...] You're just not that important.

None of the criticism of the OP, however intemperate, looks to me as if it's based in the idea that "the OP is about you"; quite the opposite. The basis of the criticism is that (e.g.) the OP is about women, or the OP is about rape, or the OP is about sex. I don't think you can say "just not that important" about those.

I'm interested to know if anyone would have considered voting this up if the attempted rape portion of the metaphor had been omitted and the story had been ended just before then?

2nd to last paragraph.

OP Upvoted.

It's been stated elsewhere that a long standing member of the LW community was leaving because of this post. Well, to counterbalance that, I'm also strongly considering leaving LW, but it's not because of the OP. It's because of these comment threads.

In particular, the comments have shown me just how far the LW community has fallen. I'd really rather not be around people who both get offended so easily and are so willing to mindkill themselves should the slightest opportunity present itself. FYI, the OP isn't about you. It's not about your pet projects. It's not insulting everything you stand for. You're just not that important.

Five years ago, this post would likely have died a simple, unglorious death by being too vague or poorly written to be upvoted. Today it causes a political shitstorm as the community decides to interpret it in a way directly contrary to the stated goal of author. Five years ago, it would have been discussed rationally, the writer would have received tips and suggestions, and quite likely some good would have been drawn out of it. Today, it causes mass mindkilling because people feel that their identity is being attacked.

Those are the kinds of people I don't wish to be around.

Why isn't there another forest that traps girls?

Why aren't there some people immune to falling branches?

Why can't some boys be freed by boys?

But more generally, why bend over backwards to invent some convoluted justification for rape?

The metaphor doesn't even make sense, assuming it's about sex. If the burning branch represents virginity, then it would be possible to pay a girl to free the boy from the branch, but it would not be possible for another girl to put him under again. If the branch represents "having regular sex", then it would be possible for a girl to put him under the branch again, but it would also mean that the girl given the gold nugget has to be given a continuous stream of gold nuggets or she would also put the boy under the branch again.

Also, dragging someone under the burning branch to free yourself doesn't make sense even as rape. Rapists do not turn other people into virgins.

This post just doesn't really reflect real life. Well, not for all sides involved.

If anyone got to the pq-system part of GEB, can we get some various interpretations here? Because what I think the burning branches are, apart from crude violations of the laws of physics, are basically defeatism on the boy's part.

You might not like reading it but I ran a search and it seems like to only have been posted here and despite being a badly written story that doesn't really reflect reality I think that you have one thing going and that is story-writing and you should work on that and not dump it. Now for the part you won't like: I think you should start taking responsibility for yourself and your actions. I don't mean it in those stupid "you said bad things about women, go stand in the corner and think about elementary school" unhelpful rhetorical you're probably used to hear but because you're old enough to be able to do it. So let's try something better than putting you in a corner:

Can you think of an instance where you might be wrong? Can you think of something that, if it were to change a little, would affect your views drastically? Is there anything you think your view is missing?

It's just a bad metaphor no matter how you explain it. It's very contrived, it elevates sexual choices to life-and-death, and it really doesn't illuminate anything about any of the problems it might be targeted toward.

I suspect it's a mind-killing topic that just can't be discussed well here, but even if you want to try, don't use long, obtuse, pointless stories. Use either personal truths or rational analysis, so there's something to support or discuss.

I had hoped that commenters here of all places would be egalitarian enough to see those genders as the placeholders they are.

If you had a modicum of sense in you as you were considering this, you would have flipped the genders. I assume you have a modicum of sense, so I must conclude you just didn't think about it; you defaulted as much as the people you're complaining about, because you were, in fact, thinking of a specific situation.

Your comment about the real point of the story being the immorality of the opposition to prostitution is fair, and well-supported by your story.

Your complaint about people putting words in your mouth is not. You bludgeon the reader with the metaphor, you stretch it to insane and untenable places, and then complain when readers observe that the plaintext reading of the metaphor suggests attempted rape? I'm perfectly willing to ascribe that to bad writing, but it isn't -unfair- for somebody to ascribe it to your intent, when your intent is so heavily dumped all over the rest of the story.

Sure, I'm the copy.

In other words, I could make you believe that you were either the original or the copy simply by telling you you were the original/the copy. This means that before I told you which one you were, you would have been equally comfortable with the prospect of being either one (here I'm using "comfortable" in an epistemic sense--you don't feel as though one possibility is "privileged" over the other). I could have even made you waffle back and forth by repeatedly telling you that I lied. What a strange situation to find yourself in--every possible piece of information about your internal experience is available to you, yet you seem unable to make up your mind about a very simple fact!

The pattern theorists answer this by denying this so-called "simple" fact's existence: the one says, "There is no fact of the matter as to which one I am, because until our experiences diverge, I am both." You, on the other hand, have no such recourse, because you claim there is a fact of the matter. Why, then, is the information necessary to determine this fact seemingly unavailable to you and available to me, even though it's a fact about your consciousness, not mine?