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WillWorker's avatar

While I understood this analogy when I read it, something felt off.

It's like there's some kind of uncanny valley with it. All the parts look right and fit neatly together, but there's something missing that causes the intuition to bristle (enough that it got some free rent in my head for a day or so).

The problem is every experiential reason I could think of as to why the metaphor doesn't fully intuit nonetheless resulted in it rotating into position with marginal effort. Be a pickier shopper. Inoculate one's self against the razzle-dazzle of the store and fashion expectations. Give up shopping for shoes, only to find a great pair at the grocery store a week later. Steal someone else's shoes.

The only common thread I can think of between them is some sort of impulse to scream, "Fuck shoe stores!". Maybe it's that there is already unnecessary rigidity in how society generally defines relationships that also carries through to the metaphor. And it is that rigidity which needs to be rejected, which is why the metaphor chafes.

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Joseph's avatar

I think the problem with this metaphor is that you're implying that romantic relationships are a intrinsic part of life, and therefore not being part of one for a long time is akin to going around barefoot or even having a disability, which is a pretty harmful belief considering that "romantic love" isn't really a thing in human nature but rather a myth rooted in religion and patriarchal subjugation of women, it's actually kinda ironic that prostitution abolitionists say that sex work is always the most pervasive form of violence against women while conveniently overlooking that for all of human story married women were basically chattel slaves and the vast majority of cases of gender violence happen within romantic relationships. Romantic relationships are a lot more about power than they are about "love", much like religion itself, and pointing out how human sexuality actually works in a way that contradicts the ideals of romance is often treated like blasphemy.

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