Some publishers employ "sensitivity readers" (editors) to police language in manuscripts which might make readers "feel unsafe".
Sensitivity editors' role is actually to make publishers feel safe from attack by woke would-be censors. For that purpose, publishers now hire "Inclusion Ambassadors".
Bret Easton Ellis's latest novel came in for editorial correction* when his publisher's sensitivity readers complained it “was not a ‘positive’ portrayal of homosexuality”.Clearly, many classic books are in need of re-writing so that people can feel safe reading them. Readers don't want to be ambushed by the notion that there are more ideas in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy.
Some books that seriously need to explain their attitude:
Black Beauty, for not supplying a positive portrayal of horse-abusers
War and Peace, for a non-positive portrayal of a Napoleonic war
Far From the Madding Crowd, for being negative about crowds
Animal Farm, for implied criticism of farmers
Wuthering Heights, for insensitivity toward people with fear of heights
Treasure Island, for casting aspersions on pirates
The Mill on the Floss, for stigmatizing people who can't afford dental care
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, for not portraying "them" as a young woman or trans person
Where's our freedom of expression, once it's edited away by publishers? Like Eeyore of Pooh Corner said of a lost thing: "Somebody must have taken it. How like them."
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PS: A disclosure -- I've never read Bret Easton Ellis's novels* but I might now, for who can resist an author who says "I do not want to write anything with a fucking cell phone in it"? I'm sure tired of reading stories full of them, with characters who do nothing but talk on them, text with them, scroll through them, take pictures and solve murders with them ... So please, edit phones out, thought-pruners. ...
