That wasn't the argument I've made. I didn't say every edit suggestion was based on ideological shifts. I said that (actually, merely summed up the author's experience) they discovered a tendency for editors to also (keyword: also) make suggestions that not only result in ideological shifts, but have an ideology/ethics and not "how best to serve the text" or aesthetics as the underlying drive.
And some those corrections can even coincide with a "better expression" edit.
To make the claim perfectly clear:
(1) editors make mainly "better expression" edits
(2) they also make a certain class of ideology/ethics edits. Some of them they make them explicitly with ideology in mind (e.g. they find situation X, that is acceptable to a French sensibility as yucky because of their culture), and other times unconsciously as mere not understanding the point of the text (but again, not because it doesn't have one, but because of conceptions rooted in their culture about what is included, not some "universal" needs of the text).
(3) they make enough of the latter that the writer can see a pattern - also shared/expressed by other writers of the same culture as him (different to the editor's culture)
(4) many people reading about those, can't even understand that the latter kind of edits are of that kind, not only because the change might be suble subtle and they can't understand what's at stake, but also because they share the same ethics/ideology (in short: culture) with the editor.
It's not a convincing piece of evidence to point out that an editor removed a nonsense statement as evidence that the editor has ideological motivations. It's not proof that they don't have ideological motivations. It's just an irrelevant edit of a bad phrase.
This feels like the classic Community scene in which Chang is trying to pitch "Bear Down for Midterms" as the school's slogan, and everyone says "What does that mean?" to which he tries to defend by asking if their issues with it are a race thing.
The author's thesis can be correct even if his evidence and persuasive reasoning are bad.
Yeah, that's how editing works. Both I and the author know this.
On top of that, however, an editor can have other causes in mind for flagging a sentence (either explicit or unconscious motivation), besides it "being crap". And if they do this frequently enough, one can discern a pattern.
To put it another way, a cigar is something people smoke. But sometimes (to reverse the know quote) a cigar is not just a cigar.
Similarly, an edit it's not always an edit - sometimes it's imposing an ideology behind the editing.
>It's not a convincing piece of evidence
Part of the essay is about how for some of those cases there's no evidence, but you can see it if you come from the right (constrasting to the editor) background. And where it's more obvious, there's still "plausible deniability". It's about about the emerging pattern of editing decisions.
And like many things in life, you either see it or not. It's not a court case, or a math proof, it's more like a joke. You can't prove it is funny to someone, you can just find it funny or not.
That's obviously not exclusively true. Otherwise the sole purpose of the editor would be pure ideological shifts. That would be dumb. Ergo I conclude most of the edits are just competent editor edits.
> Way to miss the whole argument.
And I'm saying the author seems like a sensitive soul that has jumped the gun far too quickly. His argument is incorrect.