[paperwasp42]

In the 80s and 90s, right-wing Christian activists demanded the censorship of tons of "inappropriate" material from mainstream books. A good amount of censorship occurred at the height of the Satanic Panic, but ultimately the publishing industry grew tired of it and balked. The result was an explosion of the "Christian fiction" genre--it's a genre of books that is completely sanitized of things like premarital sex, illegal drugs, homosexual relationships, alcohol abuse, violent assault, rape, crime, cursing, spousal abuse, etc, thus leaving it "clean" and appropriate for Christian consumption.

The result was less pressure on the publishing industry to censor books. When Christian activists came knocking, the publishing industry could say, "Look, you guys have an entire section of the bookstore filled with books that cater to your morals. So leave Twilight alone."

I think it's probably time to create a similar genre for leftist activists. A "safe fiction" genre would allow for books that have been stripped of all things leftist activists find offensive. No body shaming, homophobia, mental health related slurs, etc. Having designated "safe fiction" books might have a similar effect of relieving the pressure to make all books "safe" in the eyes of left activists.

Of course, there remains the barrier that most individuals in the publishing industry are hard-core leftists that fervently follow the whims of leftist activists. It's standard these days for books to be edited by "sensitivity readers", who point out all potentially offensive things from a left-wing activist viewpoint, before publishing is permitted. (Source: am deeply involved in the writing and publishing community, and have had many friends go through the sensitivity reading process.)

Shifting away from this mentality is going to take a major push by the reading public, who will need to make it clear that they are not okay with a small minority enforcing their worldview through censorship, regardless of whether the censorship is coming from the right or left wing.

[nhchris]

> Source: am deeply involved in the writing and publishing community, and have had many friends go through the sensitivity reading process.

What happens if an author disagrees with some or all of the sensitivity readers' corrections?

[paperwasp42]

It depends a lot on the publishing house and editor you're working with. I have heard of editors who allow for sensitivity reader suggestions to be ignored, and some who are quite militant about enforcing all suggestions from sensitivity readers.

There seems to be little rhyme or reason behind how strictly the edits are enforced. (e.g.: One friend got to keep a very crude weight-related joke that a sensitivity reader wanted to remove, because she convincingly argued that it was needed to show-case the character's dark side. Another friend was aggressively forced to remove her teen protagonist's insecurity over having freckles, because it "encouraged low self-esteem and depression" and would be "damaging" to the audience.)

The difficulty with disagreeing with edits of any sort is that publishing is a reputation based industry. So if you put up a huge fuss and escalate issues up the chain of command, and possibly even involve the public, there is a chance you can resist even the most aggressive attempts to edit your work. But you will absolutely ruin your chances of another book deal.

For this reason, it's frustrating to hear the typical retort of, "Well no one's actually forcing authors to change anything, and they have the ability to protest, so it can't be censorship." This is like telling a junior engineer at a large company, "Well no one forced you to write that code. You had the chance to disagree with the design and write the program differently." Sure, no one physically forced them to write the code, but did they really have the option to balk at the design handed down from senior engineers and management? Of course not. It would be career suicide.