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.
References to brothers or sisters, or mothers or fathers, is offensive to nonbinary people? In all seriousness, not trying to start a flame war, why is that? Is a reference to hair offensive to a bald person?
But … retired stories don’t sell and don’t get turned into remakes, ticket sales, etc…
Rewritten stories are fine, I like lots of them (the new ghostbusters, I adored..) but this, to me, seems like prep work for a lazy hollywood..
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.
> once you take a position of empathy.
...and the usual thinly veiled "if you don't agree with my opinion you're a Bad Person". How about taking position of sensibility for once ?
The same argument can be made about people who are triggered by this edition of the book. You can just not read the new edition instead of pushing for and celebrating the silencing of its owners.
But it won't happen because that would be honesty and we can't have that from people that push for the changes
Ask for empathy in a preface, or an introduction, if you have to. Stay the fuck out of Dahl's work. You don't have to like it, but changing it is obscene - Dahl is not alive to permit these changes, and would probably be horrified. They're his fucking words.
"Everyone" or "people" would make more sense
That's not what they mean when they say empathy. They misuse empathy when they mean compassion.
I think they do it because even they understand it's indecent to say they pity all of these people.
empathy: The ability to identify with or understand another's situation or feelings
compassion: Deep awareness of the suffering of another accompanied by the wish to relieve it.
If it turns out these beloved stories become out of fashion because of stuff like this, so be it.
Twisting it into something it isn't, to fit current tastes doesn't seem right.
The reason to replace an aggregate ‘brothers and sisters’ with ‘siblings’, ‘mothers and fathers’ with ‘parents’, or ‘boys and girls’ with ‘children’ is because for all of these the replacement suffices without calling attention to gender when it’s not necessary to do so.
There’s also an argument that the ‘X and Y’ phrasing makes the ‘X’ seem more important than the ‘Y’, or makes it seem like the ‘default’ - just a little, but with repetition the impression is reinforced. If there’s an alternative collective word to use, it avoids this ‘ordering’ issue with no real downside.
Note that all these arguments make sense in even if you consider gender to be a binary thing.
And removing any reference to color … for tractors.
Using the perspective from the OP, it's a kids' book, using a couple of different synonyms might help them better understand what they're reading and not walk away believing that there's something wrong with their family or themselves.
It's easy to figure out why these changes are being made in particular, and it has nothing to do with empathy.
Nobody would be upset if they were just making a new version of the book. The issue is they're trying to sweep the original under the rug and eventually memoryhole it.
I do now attempt to use the single-word non-gendered collective nouns in speech myself for the reasons I gave, and I think it’s a good idea to do so.
To discuss the edits to Dahl’s work: I would argue that for these ‘Xs and Ys’ examples he was probably just using the popular idioms of the time rather than choosing them to convey a specific meaning as you say. That would certainly be what I would’ve done, without much consideration, 20 years ago!
But that’s obviously not the case for all the edits that are reportedly being made.
The edits in aggregate do make me uneasy. I’m not sure how I’d feel if they were more limited.
The "owners" (who likely don't have a imaginative bone in their entire skeleton), if you'll pardon my vernacular, should stay the fuck out of the authors original work instead of mucking around with it, particularly inane changes like the removal of the word fat.
And by pushing a new addition of the book while discontinuing the originals they seek to erase the authors original work. If anything this particular addition should have a large CliffsNotes banner on the cover.
Wait until they realize that every single fucking insult in existence is equally "able-ist", by definition, or otherwise offensive in some way. Is the expectation that we slowly disallow insults in culture? No, it's going to be arbitrary whitelisting. Stupid (there I go being ableist).
A change like this doesn't work as intended without fundamentally changing the narrative. If a character was insulting someone, they should still be insulting someone. Want the story to be different? Write a different fucking book.
Regarding the first occurrence being conceived as more important, it’s the reason usually females appear named first, a sign of courtesy to them. That was sorted out neatly long ago.
The current equilibrium seems to be that we're on a sort of vulgar treadmill. The process goes as follows:
1. Decide that previously formal/medical/technical word like "idiot" has developed too many colloquial negative connotations.
2. Invent new formal term, like "mentally retarded", and tell people that they have to use that instead, because the old term is now considered offensive.
3. Because connotation emerges from denotation, the new term develops precisely the same colloquial negative connotations.
4. Rinse and repeat.
Yes, of course you’d need to be specific if it was important. I’d use ‘10 parents’ only if it wasn’t important.
Your example isn’t great though. Even if you assume binary gender for all parents in the group, you couldn’t replace ‘10 parents’ with ‘10 mothers and fathers’ because it’s unclear whether there are 20 people or 10. You’d need to be specific (‘6 mothers and 4 fathers’ or the like).
I don’t think your second paragraph refutes mine at all. I obviously don’t agree that it was ‘sorted out neatly long ago’. You could assume that from the fact that I’ve rethought my own behavior. This world would be a much worse place than it is if people never reconsidered whether the status quo from long ago was optimal.
[Edit: I see now that this comment was not on the same branch as the one where I said I’d rethought my own behavior from a default of e.g. ‘boys and girls’ to ‘children’, so I take back the sentence about you not seeing that. The rest stands though.]
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
Come on guy, it's not that hard to see. People have been pointing it out to you for hours now.
I hate to be the guy that cries “1984,” but do we really have to completely neuter our language to avoid every imagined offense? Are there people out there who’s egos are so fragile that they can’t handle “gentlemen” coming after “ladies?”
What is your relationship to tptacek dang? Every time I see him winding people up, you're there behind him, threatening anyone who stands up.
But that's who that guy was. That's what came out when he set out to be edgy. Removing it, you might as well write a different book. Misrepresenting who the guy is in order to sugar-coat him seems not the right approach, to me.
So if you do that, you should DEFINITELY edit Harry Potter to get the terfliness out of it, simply because I'd like to see Rowling's reaction to that :)
I don't think the oppressed need their enemies painted over and hidden. I think they need allies. A little more 'You have my bow." "And my axe!"
"Let's just not mention Sauron k?", not really the same effectiveness.
Have you actually read Harry Potter? What are you referring to within the books?
Rowling was a progressive darling for years until she expressed disallowed sentiments outside of her fiction writing.
I didn't see personal attacks from tptacek. Some of his comments in this thread were edgier than I would like but I didn't see any that broke the site guidelines badly enough to warrant a scolding the way your comment did. Based on what I saw, this isn't a borderline call and (in case you're worried about this) it has nothing to do with disagreeing with you—just look at my posts on the actual topic.
> Every time I see him winding people up, you're there behind him, threatening anyone who stands up
The active ingredient there is "I see". What people see, and fail to see, is basically determined by their passions on a subject. If all these years of moderation have taught me one thing, it's that.
If I were you I would revise this to "having read some recent shallow hit pieces about the author".
And people were pointing out tptacek's errors in understanding. How is that rude or personal to state?
Tptacek wouldn't take any of it in, or respond to any of the points made. Instead he threw around actually rude and personal attacks.
> The active ingredient there is "I see".
I'm not "passionate" about tptacek, or HN, or yourself.
However, in your "years of moderation", you've seen plenty of people take issue with tptacek's habit of twisting of people's comments. I know you have. It's a regular sight.
The complaints are generally about issues quite a few steps above "Come on guy." Twisting people's words, personal attacks, wilful ignorance, etc.
So I'm left with the same question as before - what's your relationship exactly? Because it's pretty off-putting to see such bias. It makes me wonder.
You're kidding me, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden
Re "twisting of people's comments" - that's your interpretation based on your priors. People make these judgments all the time—in fact they come up in nearly every argument as soon as emotions get activated. You're overestimating what moderation can do if you think we should impose our own such interpretations. And they wouldn't agree with your interpretations in any case (how could they?) so you wouldn't get what you wanted even if we did. No one would! In fact it would amplify the complaints about moderation by many orders of magnitude.
If someone is wrong or you think they are, the helpful thing to do is respectfully provide correct information. If you can't or don't want to do that, please just chalk it up to someone being wrong on the internet and walk away. The one who stops posting first in tit-for-tat exchanges is the one who wins anyway.
Also, HN conversations are basically never good once people start arguing about what each other is really saying, so when things take that turn, it's a sign that it's time to stop.
Really? Talents based on heredity, the portrayals of the Dursleys as fat, the renditions of other cultures, the questions of whether the goblin bankers echoed anti-Semitic stereotypes, the domestic slavery, etc. got criticism for years. She got some kudos eventually for saying Dumbledore was gay but that was late and never in the books, so it seems pretty minor to hang that theory on.
No one will read this, but I believe the authors Matilda "liked" to read have been judged to be politically incorrect. And we wouldn't want to give sensitive young mind a reason to look them up. /s
For anyone curious to why the word "folks" is chosen, here's great explanation: