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Originally Posted by BeccaPrice
I guess my objection to the "updating" of archaic works is that there is no consent from the author possible. If an editor said to an author "this choice of words is problematic" the author has the choice to change it or not. Making these kinds of changes without permission of the author (or heirs) strikes me as hubris.
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Part of the purpose of the public domain is to allow use of the text without permission of the author.
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and my biggest problem with the quotes cited in #37 above isn't the use of "dago" v. Levantine, it's the mysogeny. Where do editorial changes stop?
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Was there misogyny in one excerpt and not the other? The point of the change wasn't "to remove discrimination," but to change a no-bigotry-intended passage to one that still showed no overt racial bigotry.
The assumption that women can't or won't use a "man's weapon" is still widespread; the fact that it was a much more acceptable notion in the 20's doesn't mean the passage should be updated. However, a different editor might've replaced the word "feminine" with "cowardly" or "pathetic" to remove the implication that women, specifically, are incompetent with some weapons.
Whether to remove insulting implications from text where they *were* intended is a different issue from removing implications that only exist because of language shifts that happened after original publication.