Actually, "selling out" would be changing the story. If the editor told me to make my main character heterosexual so the book would have wider appeal, then of course I wouldn't even think of such a thing. Or dropping all the sex out. Or changing the location of the story. All these things would alter the message.
I'm not so sure. Cleaning it up to affect the bottom line - I'd call that selling out. For example editing out the violence and graphic action for Robocop 3 to appeal to a wider audience.
Changing a font so I could sell in Venezuela? Well, of course I wouldn't reprint the entire run just for them. I would, however, consider running off a couple hundred in another font. If I want Venzuelans reading my book, I have to have it translated into Spanish anyway, why not give them another font? But I sure as hell wouldn't send a consignment of books to Venezuela printed in a font I know is going to make them angry. What would be the point?
This is the point - you
didn't know. It's not something which would have occurred to you since the font (in our case, the terms) is commonplace and the idea that someone would STILL be offended over such a small detail after you'd explained it all to them is just too puzzling for you to make any sense of.
Neither would I send a manuscript full of fucks and asses and jizz-dripping cocks to The Ladies' Home Journal. They'd just send it back and I'd be out the price of postage.
Well, this is obvious.
To give you another instance, in the book I'm working on right now, I developed a pedophile character to act as a catalyst in the protagonist's sexual awakening. But as I was fleshing this character out with a name and a backstory, I started wondering if perhaps it was wise... pedophilia is a very hot button, emotionally; would the inclusion of this character be worth alienating readers? I rather liked him and had developed a very nice scene, but I decided to drop him out, since the story was about the boy, not the pedophile. In the scenes I had to write to replace him, I was very careful to absolve of blame the characters who did give him his sexual awakening... again with the readership in mind. I don't want people putting down the book before they get to the good part.
Perhaps that's selling out, but it's selling off a part in order to preserve a whole. And if I ever get to the publishing phase and have to edit the hell out of it at the behest of the publisher, I'll have to decide if the edits take away from the story or if the story survives the edits so it can reach an audience.
Is the role of the paedo central enough to the tale, or is he a paedo for the sensationalism of it? If the former, leave it in - life is not all silver lined clouds and hearts and roses and fluffy bunnies and there's no point pretending that it is unless your world looks like the Disney Channel. But if you've made him a paedo just to make people gasp, then that's a whole other can of worms.
And I am willing to bet that if a Time reader stumbled across a word that offended him or her, letters will be written to the editor. They probably get hundreds every week. The editor might not print them, but they'll be there.
But would Time cease and desist, or would they consult with people in the field (since Time know they don't know these things) and then decide to leave the offensive term in if it was a commonly used term in that field? This is what we're arguing, here.
So yeah, you aren't going to change anything (that hasn't already been changed by the editor) to placate an audience that isn't interested in your work; but you also don't present your work to that audience. I don't care that church-ladies are going to be offended by my story, and so I am not going to try and publish to a church-lady magazine.
But would you would be beyond pissed if they decided to campaign your publisher to have it cleaned up?
The articles that started this "discussion" were probably not meant for a general audience, but were nevertheless presented here by someone, and JUB is a pretty general audience. The video about the fetal testosterone deficiency theory may very well have been intended for Scientific American, but it was posted on YouTube, and you don't get much more general than that.
So, say I get published...I go with a gay publisher like Alyson, and my books are sold only in gay bookstores. But somehow they get beyond my control, maybe a library in Peoria buys a couple of copies by accident, and it reaches beyond its intended audience. I get some nasty letters from little old ladies in Peoria. Do I answer "Shut your pie-hole, you old bag, I wasn't writing for you; and if you're upset by a few grown-up words maybe you should confine yourself to Highlights for Children." No, though it might feel good, it doesn't further my message; instead I say "I'm sorry you were offended. But I felt the words I used were integral to the story. May I give you this condensed version instead?"
I'm not sure why you feel the need to pander to these people. You can't please all the people all the time; I know that and I accept that and I please myself and as many people who are as pleased as I am by the result.
I might not say "Shut your pie-hole, you old bag," at least not at first, but I probably would say the rest. In my video store days we'd be bombarded by cretins like this all the time, clearly taking out specialist material (anything from films peppered with graphic nudity or violence to foreign languages; we even put warning stickers on them) and at the end of the day people would still take them out, we'd warn them at the counter and then they'd go out of their way to be offended and complain the next day and I simply don't have the inclination to entertain their nonsense any longer. You know what? If you like it, fine. If you don't like it, fine. It is what it is; if you want something written for you specifically and to your tastes, commission it.
So it's only one more person in my audience, but one is better than none. And it won't get me another sale, but I'm not in it for the money. Nobody makes money on gay novels, anyway. And if the old lady refuses to listen and just walks away still angry, at least I tried. If I'd been condescending, if I'd insisted that she accept the words and read the book anyway, I would have just skipped straight to her walking away angry and completely obviated any other possibility.
But we don't do this with movies, so why should we with books? Sometimes movies are censored for ratings and there is an uncensored/unrated version released for purchase, but if the directors and producers had their choice, the unrated version is what would be released in the first place. Unfortunately its not their money they're playing with so they are bound by the studios; still, 90% of the time, what you see is what you get and no further correspondence is entered into.
So, as a writer of fiction, I need to be prepared to make some concessions:
Theme? No.
Plot? Hell no.
Main characters? Go fuck yourself.
Ancillary characters? Maybe, if the cost is greater than the value, I'll have to think it over.
Swear words? I'd rather not, but in the narrative, I could; in the dialogue I'm not so sure, it will depend on who's speaking.
Sex scenes? Well, I won't take the sex out of the plot, but I can certainly euphemize if we're talking about an excerpt for a mainstream magazine.
Twelve-dollar words? Oh, I do love my twelve-dollar words, but I can sacrifice a few without changing the tone, and ensure that the meaning is clearer in the context if I keep them.
Font? I like Palatino, but so long as it's serif, I don't care.
Hey, seriously, good luck with the book.
As in any other facet of life, you choose your battles. If words don't really matter to you, and changing one or two doesn't cost you much, or anything at all except a few extra keystrokes, what's the point in defending them? If you can say 'soft whispering noise' instead of 'susurration,' and it doesn't take anything away from your meaning, why barricade yourself behind susurration?
Because you're passing up a perfect opportunity to use the word susurration. And if it doesn't get used, it'll die out. And it's a beautiful, beautiful word. And because people need to learn new words, otherwise we'll, like, be like, stuck with L0lz0rs and OMG and wtevr else ppl thnk we cn gt by on.
And feelings are real and valid things. If you cause a feeling in someone, even if you didn't intend to, you're at least half responsible for that feeling. And sometimes you have to hurt feelings, you can't get away from it, but if you can avoid it why wouldn't you?
This I can't answer satisfactorily. Part of me is plain stubborn, and it ain't broke so don't fix it. Part of me hates the whole PC blah blah cotton-wool and kid-gloves way the world is going. Part of me says "sticks and stones." Part of me says "did anyone die from this? No. Is anyone going to die from this? No. Then it's probably not a big deal."
You didn't start this thread, blackbeltninja, and I don't think you would have. As far as I know, you've never presented a scientific thread on JUB.
I did one once, and like most of my threads it died a very quick death. A pity, because it was all about charity of a sort. Oh well...
However, yeeeaaahhh started this thread, as well as the one that originally ignited the furore over the words 'unfit' and 'deviant.' If he had taken a moment to think about how the words might affect people on this board, or even backpedaled from those words and presented his sentences another way so as to continue the discussion, a whole lot of anger and resentment and pain, not to mention thousands and thousands of word spent by him defending those two words, could have been prevented.
Perhaps he's stubborn too. Perhaps he just doesn't like being told what to do or how to behave. And perhaps he's using the words completely correctly and they're not all that offensive and the adverse reaction here is simply disproportionate, sorta like being arrested for drinking coffee naked in your own home when someone peers through your window.
Are those two words that important? I mean look at the cost: two words defended with ten thousand words. Were those two words essential to the original message? Were the ten thousand words he's written in their defense worth it?
As you and he have said repeatedly, they're just words.
All that I will say to this is that the words were correct in context. I've said everything else about it that I can. I suppose this has now run its course.
On a personal and sincere note, I do admire your passion for the things you debate and you are arguably this community's MVP (cue another bunfight). I think - and I do hope I'm right - that you're able to divorce a person from an argument to the point where a discussion such as the one we've had, where we've taken diametrically opposite viewpoints and argued vehemently on both sides, does not make us immediate candidates for each other's ignore lists.
Again, good luck with the book.
-d-
