Roald Dahl books have been edited to remove the word "female" along with other edits.

[GoChasingWaterfalls]

www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/18/roald-dahl-books-rewritten-to-remove-language-deemed-offensive?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

It's literary terrorism.

1984 pure and simple

Female refers to biological sex - immutable and unchangeable - whereas the word woman has been co-opted by anyone who thinks they are a woman, even if they still have a penis and balls, and think that spinny skirts, make up and long hair are all it takes to be a woman.

Plus it is the height of arrogance to change an author’s words.

I read this and thought it wrong. It's so wrong I could go on all day. They also removed reference to Mrs Twit being ugly but in fact her being ugly is a fundamental part of the story. RD says that pretty people become ugly by thinking ugly thoughts. This isn't true and you can be pretty on the outside and ugly on the inside, but try editing that out of the book.

I also wondered what they'd do with Enid Blyton. The golliwog characters have already been consigned to history, but I laugh when it's always the girls making tea and cleaning and tidying whilst the boys go off adventuring.

I also thought we could have a field day sanitising Shakespeare. Everyone would be nice to Shylock so he wouldn't want his pound of flesh. Othello wouldn't have experienced racism that drives him to paranoia and then murder and of course because he's so enlightened about equality between the and women he wouldn't have needed to kill Desdemona and love her after. Better not call the witches in Macbeth Crones. Opelia not mad, just needs to get the right meds and have everyone #bekind to her. Just need to rename Bottom to stop 12 year olds laughing at body parts for names and we are all set.

Exactly this. I read Enid Blyton when I was a kid, partly because it was such a different world. Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Narnia, Alice in Wonderland -- all now 'problematic'. But these books broadened my mind, allowed me into other worlds, let me think about philosophical issues and credited me with the intelligence to process all that in my own way. Let these books find their place. Maybe Enid Blyton's books should be allowed to become obscure. Maybe Roald Dahl's books will continue to be entertaining and valuable to new generations. Let books find their own place.

Just reading through some of the changes made. The censors added a dedication to George's Marvellous Medicine! They dedicated the book to doctors! How dare they? Roald Dahl wrote that book for children.

I have to stop looking now because it's making me angry.

Maybe they should try updating The Railway Children - I wonder if Bobbie could stop a pendolino doing full speed by waving her petticoat at it?

Is female a dated word?

Does anyone know: will there be a note in the new improved text to say that they've made changes?

FFS won't anyone think of the oompa-loompas? Bet they're still in CATCF

Starting to think maybe Plato was correct about reading.

'If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.'

Plato, Phaedrus

That’s a load of age old prayers ruined then how am I to say the The Lord’s Prayer now then? 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

I could almost be convinced that in a very few cases, where a word has almost a different level of meaning than in the past, you could update it, in the case of books for fairly young children. Almost more in the spirit of translation.

Except I think that leads us right to this kind of thing.

Most of the changes they describe are utterly idiotic. Some change things that are banal for no obvious reason, others completely ignore the poetic element of the choice, and others actually seem to ignore or change the meaning of the text.

I'm a licensed minister in the C0fE and I can tell you that there is no support on the ground for this.

Archbishop Welby, I have been told, can "stick it up his pipe".

It's bliddy ridiculous - a church that refuses to recognise the desire for same sex couples to have their unions at least blessed, will happily accept that God has put people in the wrong bodies, or that God is non-binary.

Absolute tosh!

No - stick in a footnote.

Haven’t RTFT but the idea that books written a few decades ago need to be “sanitised” to accommodate the (imagined?) sensibilities of today’s young readers is bonkers. Totally bonkers.

This is horrific.

Is female a dated word?

It’ll soon be completely obsolete, if some people get their way.

Surely this is all just a cynical attempt to keep the money rolling in?

Shouldn't be allowed to publish as his books if they're fucking about with them. If people don't want to read his books as written they should be allowed to pass into obscurity just as many other books have.

I read all the CS Lewis books when I was a child and they had some pretty dodgy white vs brown, othering representations of the neighbouring enemy state. They were called the Calormenes or something like that, they wore turbans, worshipped a different, evil god called Tash and ate oil on their bread instead of butter like normal people would
I must admit that I still love the Narnia books, so would like to raise, in Lewis's defence, the Calormene heroine, Aravis, in The Horse and his boy, and the Calormene soldier who volunteers to walk into the stable in The Last Battle.

I was shocked by a PP who said that she and her DH put the classics from their childhood in the bin rather than read them to their own children, because they were “sexist or racist”.
I read books from every era of literature to my DDs, including some favourite Victorian ones, and even (horror shock) Little Black Sambo. In which the eponymous hero outwits a family of hungry tigers and is rewarded with a pile of pancakes - my DDs approved of his courage, and didn’t see him as a racist stereotype at all.
We always discussed the characters and motivations in the books, and it often led to interesting bits of social history.
It would be a great shame if today’s children are denied the glories of children’s classics out of political correctness.

That was me. My DH binned his old copies of Dr Doolittle because he was offended by them. It wasn't political correctness. I think it's perfectly feasible to talk to your kids about racism and sexist language and how it's changed but neither of us took any enjoyment in reading a racist story line to our kids. I am a bit surprised by all the people saying they're fine with that to be honest. I don't think we denied the kids something worthwhile either.

If people don't Roald Dahl they should buy his books, simple. But it is horrible for someone else who hasn't a tenth of his talent to think they have the right to tinker with his words.

Two posters have made a similar point that changes are commercially necessary:

But then they'd never sell, and would be lost to new generations.

...so purely from a sales perspective it makes sense to modernise them.

I'm not so sure that's true:
www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/16/famous-five-go-back-to-original-language-after-update-flops

but what is punished and celebrated is often quite uncomfortable.

Really? Let's take Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Gluttony, gum-chewing, brattish behaviour and excessive TV watching are punished.

James and the Giant Peach? Cruelty to children gets you flattened.

The BFG? Eating children gets you rounded up by the army.

The Giraffe, and the Pelly, and Me? Capturing a burglar makes you a hero.

I don't see the issue.

Posters on this board will be particularly aware of how Whitehall does its own thing with little regards to the wants of ministers. Yes, Minister was a documentary, not a sitcom.