zlacker

>>GavCo+(OP)
Here's a good list of changes. Most are about removing any references to ugly or fat. But also other strange things like changing the author's Matilda likes to read to include Jane Austin and John Steinbeck, not calling people crazy, swapping screeching to annoying, removing brothers and sisters to favor "siblings" and using "folks" instead of "ladies and gentlemen"

https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1626860237104857089

>>bko+h5
Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling wrote favorably about colonialism; they were replaced with more agreeable authors.

Use of gendered language is marginalizing to nonbinary people.

It's easy to figure out why these changes are being made in particular, once you take a position of empathy.

>>bitwiz+IM
I can be (and in fact am) empathetic. At the same time, I still take the position that non-binary people and other cultural minorities can simultaneously enjoy non-edited older fiction and understand that it may not have been written with them in mind (and may even be mocking or a little mean).

Write new books. Make them as inclusive or exclusive as you want. I just think it's very telling that you hear so much about "erasure" and yet changing an author's words and intent like this is celebrated.

>>mpalme+WN
Yeah, that comment is just saying you can understand the changes empathetically. It's not saying they're good.

>>tptace+CO
I can't square that with their last sentence.

Moreover, when I feel empathy with someone who feels different and unrecognized by society, something still keeps me from advocating for the censorship and misrepresentation of a writer's ideas and internal logic.

I think what's stopping me is the knowledge that if I'm fortunate enough to write something that lasts beyond me, I sure as heck don't want anyone updating it for the sensibilities of 2053. Putting myself in someone's shoes, I think there's a word for that