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.
I also inferred rape from the story. It was the part about how in desperation, he reached out and grabbed at her ankle. And then he was imprisoned in response to that.
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.
Plaintext reading of the metaphor suggests attempted rape? WTF?
I also inferred rape from the story. It was the part about how in desperation, he reached out and grabbed at her ankle. And then he was imprisoned in response to that.