I recently came across the term “Sensitivity Editing,” which is described as sensitivity reading looking for and changing terms that currently have a pejorative subtext (e.g. you “can’t” call food exotic because someone has decided that it’s xenophobic and racially insensitive; someone please explain this to me).
Frankly, this makes my blood boil. I am sick and tired of having to avoid certain words because some group or another has decided to make a fuss and take offence from it when no offence is intended. I will not go back and re-edit my published books to remove an ever-changing list of “forbidden words,” and I will not cave to social pressure to watch how I say what I say in my current books. I have readers all over the world, and what one finds offensive in once place, another finds perfectly acceptable and correct. I will use the words that I think best describe my intent, and if people choose to get offended by those words, then I invite them to not ready my books. But I will never–NEVER–bow to the PC culture because it is a lose-lose scenario. It changes constantly and is both impossible to keep up with and ridiculous to acknowledge as having any validity.
This nonsense has gone too far, and we need to fight it rather than meekly submit to it.
Author William Speir's Blog 