Star: Friends, if you haven’t yet heard about Jane Eyre being banned at four public school districts in Texas because of its “explicit content,” I’m sorry, because I’m telling you now.
Duck: But WHAT explicit content, Star? It’s been a while, but I don’t remember Jane Eyre so much as flashing a thigh. I mean, even in Victorian times when any kind of intimacy was up for shunning, most people ducking approved of Jane Eyre. And they were VICTORIANS!
Star: The mind paddles.
Duck: Some smart geese named PEN America who know about these things say Jane Eyre is “consistently near the top of major literary canons, has been on school reading lists, likely for over a century, has no steamy content at all, and has been adapted for as many as 25 to 30 movies and television series, most rated PG.”
Star: That really does stew my goldfish.
Duck: Mmm, now I’m hungry.
Star: According to the CS Monitor, Jane Eyre is now also COMPULSORY READING for Chinese teens, having long been celebrated because of its “independent heroine who eschews materialism.”
Duck: Is this some secret plot for China to really kick the U.S.A’s tail when it comes to acing equality?
Star: I’m ruling nothing out.
Duck: And didn’t the same article suggest that A.I. (and no, I do not mean Auntie Ingrid,) might be to blame for these bans?
Star: Yes, old friend. The article explains that Senate Bill 13 “redefines” what qualifies as “harmful, indecent, or profane content in library books.” So there’s that. (By the by, Hitler’s Mein Kampf doesn’t seem to be on the banned list). But when it comes to A.I, cover your beak-holes, because this one stinks ….
Duck: I’m already getting a good, strong whiff. And I can’t even blame it on the stewed goldfish.
Star: See, according to Anne Russey co-founder of the Texas Freedom to Read Project in the same C.S. Monitor article, all the Texas districts that have made the ban use A.I. extensively. So A.I. might have “erroneously flagged Jane Eyre as problematic.”
Duck: Are we now just doing what the robots say, Star? Because that’s only okay in properly tagged erotica.
Star: Is robot erotica on the banned lists?
Duck: Perhaps if Jane Eyre’s involved.
Star: You know, there’s so much good that A.I. can do—maybe not as much as Jane Eyre, but still—yet we can’t focus on that very easily because of all the problems in the USA right now. The stories are incredible! According to Forbes, Anthropic, an enormous company or whatnot, allegedly bought “millions of physical books, hired contractors to slice their bindings off, fed the pages into high-speed scanners and then shredded the originals in a venture called ‘Project Panama.’”
Duck: Wait a feather-plucking moment while I LOSE my PONDWEED. They SHREDDED the BOOKS?
Star: Yup. They did so after sucking up all the info to train their A.I. and not paying or crediting any of the writers for that info, duck it! And what about all that paper waste? The environment is weeping.
Duck: Jane Eyre would be livid, Star. (Although she doesn’t have the privilege to be livid in certain Texas schools.)
Star: Maybe what our society’s yearning for, Duck old chap, is protection of our independent thinking. We can’t accept A.I. as an overlord. We need to be able to rely on the fact that we’re responsible here as humans. You know what would help? Laws! Boundaries! If by making a mistake, A.I. can get an important feminist book banned, we should be here to put things right because we keep an eye on why and how. Guardrails would help with that. If we put anyone but ourselves in charge of why and how, aren’t we becoming the robots?
Duck: Star, that’s going to give me nightmares. There I’ll be, bobbing around on the pond, snoring peacefully away as my flippers waft through the water, and suddenly my dreams will take me to a place where all the books have been SHREDDED by ROBOTS who also own my BEAK-HOLES.
Star: Want cuddles?
Duck: Duck yes! But first of all, tell me how you as a writer are dealing with the Auntie Ingrid landscape.
Star: Other projects aside, I’m in the process of pitching a category romance publisher with book proposals. These include the first three chapters and an outline. My tack? I’m being entirely myself. Firstly, I only ever use A.I. for summarizing research, (like discovering which cars go faster than others for a chase scene in a romantic suspense novel.) Secondly, I verify the research myself. Thirdly, and most importantly, when I write, I write as ME. If I want to use em dashes, I will use them. My voice and my story need to be as ME as possible. But that’s how I always write. I believe that A.I. needs to be here to serve us, not to stifle or restrict us, and certainly not to copy us.
I won’t let A.I. keep me afraid. I am a human writer with a human heart, and I won’t become any less than that.
Duck: Star, this Auntie Ingrid stuff is making me feel like pond sludge. Let’s go and read some romance to keep us peppy.
Star: Duck, yes!
Duck: We’re seventy percent of the way through a super-ducking awesome Sapphic Harlequin novel, Bodyguard’s Saint-Tropez Temptation by Bryony Rosehurst. (More on this soon!)
Star: No robots in there! Only drama of the most delightful kind.
Duck: And after we’ve finished the whole book, I’ll be hiding the book deep inside my feathers. No robot is getting their flippers on that spine!
Star: Robots are officially banned from our bookshelves. Thanks for reading, friends!
