@light I’m sorry you feel that way. I guess I’m not quite willing to cop to being guilty as charged, as you say the phrase was an off-hand remark put a bit crudely to add color to what in essence is a very abstract discussion of social affairs. I understand how it could be taken ungently, and in a context where I’m actually discussing tensions surrounding civil liberties, genuine human interests, and institutionalization, I’d treat the topic more carefully. 1/

@light But I guess as a writer, I feel the need for and reserve the right to some recourse to the lurid, gut punching, and hyperbolic, which nearly always means glossing over complexity and difficult feelings. I think in clearly off-hand contexts, where the colorful phrasing is clearly not the subject one is opining about, that’s okay. But I get and respect your disagreement. 2/

@light (This has come up before when I’ve used rape as a metaphor. eg https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/4013.html I don’t see it in the comments to that post, but on Twitter or elsewhere I’ve received pretty poignant objections to analogizing not-literally-rape to rape. I understand that and get why some people are really upset by that! But it’s not a metaphor from which I’ll promise always to abstain. The emotions it provokes are a double-edged sword, but charged metaphor is an important tool.) /fin