How Americans edit sex out of my writing
europeanreviewofbooks.com
europeanreviewofbooks.com
>There were mornings following marriage blackout nights
Maybe it's just me but I don't understand what this sentence means. I've never heard of a "marriage blackout night" and can't parse what it means.
The second cut was taking "the usual briefs and t-shirt" out of this sentence:
>The other day I was sitting on my bed, the usual briefs and t-shirt, camera on the lines of my face and the new grey of my beard, when my wife came in the room as she was taking off the t-shirt she’d slept in
"the usual briefs and t-shirt" is not a sexual statement.
From what I can tell they've taken edits meant to improve the flow of the paragraph and, for reasons I can't see, taken them as editing sex out.
The author explains a few lines after:
> In my version, that writer is also in his underwear, and the reader is informed that the couple is having some sad, drunken nights (« marriage blackout nights » doesn’t sound right and would have needed editing anyway, but bear with me). These are two expressions of, well, vulnerability.
>We used to do it without video, but last March we started feeling the need to be visible to one another. The need to be seen and acknowledged by people you respect.
>We used to do it without video, but last March we started feeling the need to be visible to one another. There were mornings following marriage blackout nights where you only wanted to be seen and acknowledged by people you respect.
(not weird because they're guillemets, just kinda weird because they're in an English language article and being used for emphasis instead of quotations)
The section on editing is about 2/3 of the way through, although the whole thing is a great read.
TLDR: writers don’t like being edited (particularly by bad writers acting as editors)
> In my version, that writer is also in his underwear, and the reader is informed that the couple is having some sad, drunken nights (« marriage blackout nights » doesn’t sound right and would have needed editing anyway, but bear with me).
Yeah, it's not like he spends 10 or more subtle paragraphs explaining both why he feels the phrase was important (despite needing editing for other reasons) and why he felt the shame (despite knowing he had not done anything shameful, except under a puritan gaze: he felt the shame because he was forced to view his prose under a different culture's understanding of sex).
It was bad writing and the editor removed it. The fact that he felt shame doesn't make his assumptions any more valid.
That's because the editors they worked with, and others he discussed such things, had a pattern to cross off specific things (regardless of whether both author and editor agreed they were bad), and those "crossing offs" revealed not just an editorial hand, but also an underlying ethics/ideology behind what they chose to focus on...
>It was bad writing and the editor removed it. The fact that he felt shame doesn't make his assumptions any more valid.
Way to miss the whole argument. It's not even like he didn't spell it out...
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.
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.
Well that's how editing works. I'd be charitable and say that, certainly, both I and the author know this.
On top of that, basic function, 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 spot a pattern.
To put it another way, sure, a cigar is something people smoke. And sometimes "a cigar is just a cigar" as the quote goes. But also sometimes a cigar is NOT just a cigar. It was put conscisously as a phalic symbol, or even uncosciously so.
Similarly, an edit it's not always an edit - sometimes it's imposing an ideology behind the editing - even if it thinks it just removes a bad sentence.
Now, about the "no evidence" part.
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 more about about the emerging pattern of editing decisions that you get a feel for.
So, there's no "evidence" or "proof", in the sense of a court case or math, the same way you can't prove a comedian is funny to someone. They either find them funny or not, and there are no real arguments and explanations that can change their mind.
At best you can point that many agree with you and find said comedian funny (though, of course, that wouldn't convince anybody that the comedian is funny - it might just give them some doubt about them finding them unfunny, or merely make them think those "many" have no good humor either).
>The author's thesis can be correct even if his evidence and persuasive reasoning are bad.
Certainly.
Tho in this case, I think he makes a good case at the literature level: how what's conveyed changes by the proposed edits they point out.
And how even when the sentence is not good, the suggested edit doesn't propose an improvement that removes the "bad expression" and retains what's conveyed, but completely removes what was conveyed.
Not because they're a bad editor and don't have a feel for improving phrases while retaining their meaning in general, but because they have a different mindset/culture.
That is, the editors can handle the "improve-but-keep-meaning" fine for phrases where the ideology is not an issue, but get a "blind spot" when it is...
Reviewer: This block of code is a bit confusing. Could you replace with a simpler and shorter version like this? (Suggest edit)
Reveiewee: I agree with you. But nah I will keep it. Oops shipped!
Reviewer: I don't like this code - so we don't need it. Take it out.
Reveiewee: Umm what? I can clean it up, but it's kind of essential
The author explains the term and agrees it needs editing.
> "the usual briefs and t-shirt" is not a sexual statement
It makes the author's comment about his wife sexual. The author is suddenly fully clothed and mocking his naked wife, instead of sharing in their shared hungover, underdressed state.
You also fail to mention the second example which is explicitly sexual. It seems as though you didn't read it all.
It means drinking inside the house into a blackout stupor (actual or not but meant for effect) during covid nights where you couldn't get outside.
>"the usual briefs and t-shirt" is not a sexual statement.
It's not to you, because of what the author already covered: you want sex to be a story, not a fact hanging in the air.
In other words, you look whether the description has an explicit a sexual purpose.
But this introduces nakedness and the human body without explicit sexual purpose. The sexuality is a background, not a plot, and the details help paint a picture, don't tell a story, and don't serve as plot devices.
That's also what the american editor couldn't understand - and for the same reasons.
if I ever write my novel, I'm going to include the line "I studied my face in the mirror before starting to scrape last night's hoar from my chin"
For example, the bad parenting example at the bottom. He clearly illustrates that the author is simply capturing a scene as he imagines it, but the modern interpretation of an adult smoking and drinking in front of their child in the middle of the day is going to be interpreted as them being bad parents. If thats what he means to express, no one is going to complain about the inclusion of those details. If he doesn't WANT them to be cast as bad parents, don't include those details because they're not helping with the scene.
Unless the goal is to make the sentence palatable to Americans only, it could be understood as editing to make sure the author's point is preserved, but otherwise it is merely hiding what some believe life "should" look like.
And even if it's "bad parenting" why can't someone write a scene where this casual bad behaviour happens in the background, without having to explicitly point it out as bad?
And is it just an American thing? I haven't noticed that English, Irish, or Scottish people smoke all that much. But visiting Germany and seeing the blase attitude towards public smoking was definitely a culture shock.
Is spending time with your kids in front of the fireplace similarly bad parenting? Because the health effects of an open fire indoors are worse.
To answer your actual question, yes, doing something that is worse than smoking near your kids is bad parenting (unless it's a rare enough event to cause negligible harm).
Also, how is one other (potentially bad or not) activity germain to the one being discussed? What about clowns? What about how Swedish fish candies are made?
Most of it, yes, but there's still a very large increase in particles in the air, far more than when smoking.
> how is one other (potentially bad or not) activity germain to the one being discussed?
My parent was saying "given the health effects, you should not smoke in front of your children". I was asking how they squared this with an activity with much larger health effects that I suspect they think is fine to do with your kids.
Do you have any evidence that indoor wood fires are more damaging that cigarette smoke?
I will happily have my fireplace burning all day long on a subzero winter day, throwing on the occasional fresh log. But if I have a bonfire outside in summer, I need to be standing upwind.
It would be really surprising to me if it were the case, because secondhand smoke certainly seems like it creates more particulates in a house, since most wood smoke goes up the chimney. Plus, if you smoke, you're probably not only smoking for part of the year, like with fireplace use.
But, my intuition is not a strong argument, so that's why I'd love to see the study.
For the author, certain info (such as him very his usual briefs or she climaxing or someone smoking) is just to add "reality" to the scene. It doesn't say anything about the character per se. Yet, to Americans, it does. To them if it wouldn't say anything about the scene, it wouldn't be included. But that's only true for a subset of topics, them being body/sex stuff and smoking. Nobody would raise an eyebrow if the character was watching a football game.
> American readers need body/sex stuff to be told as stories and not as facts (so says my friend Sara Marzullo, about whom more later). The problem is that even if sex always requires storytelling, you can still just show a body—or a feeling, a glitch in the software of life where sex transpires—in a way that is not easy to interpret, or in a way that maybe doesn’t need to be interpreted at all, but that only needs to ring true. And even if this thing I just wrote sounds wholesome and real, somehow American literature—writers, editors, critics, readers—needs sex always to be contextualized. It should be raunchy. Or loving. Or a cautionary tale. It cannot be open-ended.
> This is a good chunk of what literature is for me. An opaqueness that affords us openendedness. Openendedness that is based on a feel for the world where details create facts so vivid you can touch them. They make you say « that’s real ». If stuff is put in a story only to create the sense of a story, then often it won’t coalesce into a simulacrum of reality.
Europe gets extra points for all the outdoor seating, but loses all of them because it's impossible to sit outside and enjoy a coffee or a meal without someone lighting up a cigarette next to them.
I do wish Europe would discover non-smoking rules near food & drink.
That's very interesting. I'd love to see the comparison between the stats on smoking related diseases in those places that prohibit public smoking and those that do not, given that both places have a similar number of smokers.
It's one thing for an editor to say 'this passage is confusing or boring,' quite another to add in personal opinions of fictional or historical characters.
And why is that? Because Americans are puritanical.
> but the modern interpretation of an adult smoking and drinking in front of their child in the middle of the day is going to be interpreted as them being bad parents.
For you (American?) it's the Modern interpretation while for others it might just be the American interpretation.
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I think it's just hard for people when being a product of a certain culture/society to see how said culture/society looks from the outside.
> For you (American?) it's the Modern interpretation while for others it might just be the American interpretation.
Where does this come from? This clearly isn't accurate for the majority of America. Maybe back in the 50s - but that was also 70 years ago.
We've come a long way here in usa, but we've got a ways to go.
it's exhausting listening to Europeans make such a huge deal about how they don't make a big deal about sex.
There must be some code I do not know about. It is ubiquitous
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ac/e1/f9/ace1f9037208231eebf5...
What's with Americans wearing shoes on the bed? we're always shocked when we see that on TV.
1. Americans are always on the run, living at much higher pace, ready to take off at moment's notice.
2. The US is located more to the south than Europe, so the climate is warmer and drier in most parts, so your shoes are much cleaner (no snow, no mud).
Or maybe it's just a movie convention: like they want the movie character to be able to take off without wasting time on finding their shoes. Similar thing happens with how phone calls are shown in movies: there's a very short greeting, and after the conversation is over people just hang off, no pleasantries at the end, in the interest of air time.
Priorities
America is extremely polarised. On the one hand it's blurring bottoms and censoring words of drugs in songs and the other it produces the most hard core porn and gun violence...
I once read an article that wrote about different cultures typical curse words. It explained that the principle of cursing is to break a taboo. If you know how a culture curses, you know what's holy to them.
* In North America, cursing often revolves around sexuality. * In slavic countries, cursing involves the mother. * In middle eastern countries, it involves the father. (Not sure if I remember that one correctly, though.)
We’re a country of many peoples with many values and that’s one of the reasons we fight so much. Pretty much everything you listed is a norm which evolved from a strict—and yes, sometimes puritanical view—to accommodations for different people from the heart of the Tennessee River Valley to the beaches of California.
We’re not all still partying like we’re fresh off the boat and it’s 1620. As clean as a Hollywood production might look to you, the people that made that movie were probably all living rather diverse lifestyles, many of whom might make a Roman at their peak blush. The Puritanism is still there, but so is a lot more than that.
Yeah, no further questions. Have you ever left the US?
You can drive 500 miles in this country and feel like you haven't moved an inch.
I didn't know non-puritanism scales with size! TIL!
> Pretty much everything you listed is a norm
Yes, that's exactly what I wrote. Seems you agree after all!
So, if I am just cherrypicking, where is the majority of states with uncensored radio and music? Where do you see nipples on magazines in supermarkets? Where can you say "shit", "piss", "fuck", "cunt", "cocksucker", "motherfucker", and "tits" on TV and in movies without repercussion? In which states can you bathe nude or even just topless? Or just even change on the beach? Where can I consume alcohol in public as a norm, without brown bag? Where can I simply drink in a car, as long as I am not driving, or, as a driver, not exceeding the legal alcohol limit?
> many of whom might make a Roman at their peak blush.
Man, that made me laugh out loud.
I don't think "puritanical" is the right word in this case. Unless you are implying that smoking being considered unhealthy is something based on Puritan or other religious values.
> In America we tend to assume that it's ok for children to eat food but not ok to smoke
"Americans eating in front of their children". Does not mention food.
That is the point
Just because the taboo changed does not mean that the Puritan-inside(tm) hardware most Americans have is not there (self-evident on conservatives and very rabid omg-living-in-denial in liberals)
The main point is, in Puritanism, thinking the wrong thing is a sin, so even writing it down is seen as bad. Other cultures can discuss without dirtying their souls/minds/egos.
The issue isn't that "writing it down is bad" its that certain descriptions of a character are going to cause readers to judge that character differently depending on the culture the reader is used to. People who think smoking around children is a bad thing, are going to judge a parent doing that around their children. So, an editor might believe that removing that reference will avoid people focusing on an unimportant detail in a way that negatively affects the story being told.
> I don't think "puritanical" is the right word in this case. Unless you are implying that smoking being considered unhealthy is something based on Puritan or other religious values.
We Americans are puritanical, and that's in the sense of being able to imagine that our values are universal because they are good and correct, having been arrived at only after a great deal of thought and even spilled blood; and that anyone who disagrees is at best thoughtless or ignorant, but quite possibly crazy or evil.
He had heard that Americans don’t let children drink alcohol. That sounded puritanical.
When he arrived in the US, and saw people drinking more alcohol in one night than they drank in a year back home (this was hyperbole).
I’d drink with him. One shot of rum a night - no more, no less.
Americans aren’t one shot drinkers. We drink too much. And so do many Europeans.
If the point of the passage was that this character is "a good parent", then getting that point across to American audiences would depend on cultural context. If the point is to describe without judgement, then a more literal translation makes more sense.
A lot of people in Europe drink a beer or glass of wine when having lunch. It's completely normal.
It's not unheard of to drink with lunch in the US, but it isn't common in most subcultures. The whole concept of "happy hour" involves immediately after work being the accepted time for daily drinkers to start. Americans on the whole drink rather less, and have more teetotalers.
The easier thing to do is edit the beer out or replace it with coffee or soda, because the message the mid-day beer sends is in fact a parent who drinks too much in front of the kids.
An American with no experience of European culture might be startled that everyone drinks at lunchtime, but wouldn't consider a European, or American, who has a beer with lunch, to be degenerate or alcoholic. A round of drinks during a business lunch is commonplace, some places it's a Friday thing. What it isn't is totally unremarkable.
So as the exception rather than the norm, including this detail in a fictional context does send a different message. The editor is probably right to cut that line in translation.
I can't agree with that. As a non-European, if I'm buying a translated work from a European author about a European character, I expect them to behave as ordinary Europeans would. I am paying for the authentic foreignness.
If I wanted to see people behaving as they would in my own culture, I'd buy a work from a domestic author.
"happy hour" is the commercial offering of alcoholic drinks at a cheaper price to entice customers to come early. That will create a convivial atmosphere enticing more customers, and once there people will frequently have "just one more" a few times, extending their evening. Pretty sure it's about selling rather than social mores.
When you live in a culture where a midday drink or drinking in front of children is associated with drinking problems, soon enough you will live in a culture where only people with drinking problems will be having a midday drink or drink in front of their children.
Also it's hard to know without further context, but if the Euro was writing a story that would be set in America, that scene would seen somewhat odd to most Americans as mid-day drinking is not all that common, especially mid-week or without an explicit reason, like a birthday or some sort of celebration.
The need to do this in American movies, TV and books ruins a story.
There is a reason that Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer was published in France.
But there are loud camps of culture warriors who raise a fuss if it's not "safe for kids" and a whole industry of grifters who amplify this, because getting people angry improves their TV ratings and the political campaign funds.
There are a lot of managers in the arts and culture industry (editors, producers, museum directors etc) who are rarely rewarded but often punished for resisting the culture warriors.
There's a question of how familiar or unfamiliar a story should seem when it's set in a time and place that's different from what the reader is familiar with. Do you emphasize the differences or hide them? Maybe you add a footnote? But this assumes the reader needs a footnote. It's a way of highlighting the distance between the reader and the story setting.
Cultural changes are like that.
As someone who reads in part to find out about cultural differences, I think that maybe stories shouldn't seem too familiar, and I like footnotes and asides. Perhaps others will think them distracting, though.
This paragraph really hits home for me with respect to what people refer to as a "chilling effect" on expression post 2015. This American editor almost feels like a metaphor.
When juxtaposed with our values, it's clear how things got this way. Social media lets us casually evoke, and even moralize, these judgements. When cast en masse with hash tags, threads, and replies it looks like a very unsafe world for us to be ourselves. Suddenly, things look less free than they used to be.
A man must be poking idle, unpleasant fun at his barely dressed wife. A parent must be bad if there's beer or cigarettes observed, but not when hidden - that's a different kind of ill, right? All these little cliches add up to a larger story, and that's what I'm reading. Our tendency for clear villains and heroes leaks into everything we do - even to how we shape our literature.
A significant portion of the country's 330 million people are indeed prudes.
I’d also note the difference between the public moral image projected and what they practice in private. We have far more hypocrites than prudes.
Maybe in old movies but this is not exactly the vibe America is giving off today.
they also have this thing where everything has to have a moral. even things that are seemingly immoral - it's always sunny, south park, etc - do in fact have a moral message. the message being "if you're doing the things our characters are doing, you're immoral"
I agree that we are prude as a culture, just dont see how this is evidenced by the average sitcom. South Park in particular is a very strange example of a "prude" show.
I’d say that’s the same thing as making a value judgment
For example, in southern europe, its pretty common to see people openly drinking on the streets and no one bats an eye, either beers or straight up taking pulls from vodka bottles as casually as if its a water bottle. A lot more people live walking distance to a bar or someplace that serves alcohol. The smallest village will have a bar before it has a pharmacy or any other services. I've even found it to be cheaper to order light beer than to order water in restaurants in certain countries (they don't give you water for free like in the U.S.). Getting drunk is a lot more convenient and cheaper in europe than it is in America, unless you live in a college town that has dirt cheap well drink deals or something like that, and those towns feel pretty european to me with their drinking culture as a result.
Well, to be fair, what you typically get in Europe is a nice bottle of mineral water, while in the US they just give you tap water (which would be considered faux pas in Europe).
My question, is how did Europe develop its seeming openness to sex and nudity? 1950s and earlier Europe looked a lot like America, maybe in that time America even seemed more open with sex. Europe produced Victorian prudishness, it used to be the norm for women to cover their hair, etc. It's not like Europe was always seen as a place that has been really open with sexuality.
I tend to believe writers and their point of view on the editing process. I've been published in a small number of publications and I know the process. My biggest gripe is the cultural norm of not being able to pick or have veto power over the title, not editors that are completely inflexible and stacked with their own moral code which crushes over the prose.
At the end of the day this seems like there was no meeting of the minds between the editor and writer before they started working together, but I do not believe it is at all this prevalent anyway.
Yes, I'm a Christian too, like the derided editor, but I know the difference between literature and trashy erotica. While I appreciate the former and avoid the latter, I would never brow beat a writer as an editor over the choice of having parents smoke cigarettes in front of their kids and I simply wouldn't take up the task of editing work that was outside my moral boundaries. I like fiction that rings true. Reality includes all sorts of bad parenting.
There is a type of writing that is in vogue lately where preconceived biases get validated through a juicy narrative that is obviously unjust and thereby justifying the reader's pre-held notions. I hate it.
It's my one concern with the Substack / filter bubble way of doing things. A thousand avid fans can prop up work that is mostly meritless and divisive. Or they can prop up valuable work that the public generally ignores.
If only it didn't cut both ways.
The author's obsession with the balcony passage is hilarious, and it gives me a good insight into his general attitude. It's as though he feels that his prowess is being questioned and that he needs to be defensive and attack an entire culture. I mean, in response to a minor edit, he literally called up a "friend" out of the blue to ask her details about sex they had a decade back. That's Grade A insecurity.
It's likely this insecurity is seeped thoughout his writing. And his editor is doing her best to legitimately improve his story telling.
The second example is the english translation of his novel: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374720889/thewomenilove
The generalisation "americans" is twofold wrong: first, I do not think that the whole US editorial market is exactly the same. Pretty sure there is place for pornographic writing. But second, especially coming from a writer, he should say "northamerican". May sound pedantic, but we are talking about people influential in cultural scene.
Yeah but why is it "not correct" for the targeted audience? According to the author, prudishness.
Then again, supposedly some people idolize the Joker, Walter White, Don Draper etc.
In the case of the wife in the bed, it seems like the American editor was trying to punch it up and bring into focus what they believed was more salient. Mistakenly maybe, but no sex was edited out.
In the case of the balcony scene, it's hard to guess what the editor was trying to accomplish. Maybe enhance the realism? It's a well known fact that most women do not orgasm via penetrative sex alone. But this is rarely shown in media, written or otherwise. I don't really see the need for the edit, or how the edit is characteristically American, because unrealistic depictions of female orgasm are by far the norm in American media. But perhaps the editor is trying to improve the situation?
Maybe the author means the Americans are making their writing less sex-y?
My favorite example is the movie "The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain" (which btw is awesome). It has an "FSK 6" rating in Germany, which means it is free to watch for children six years or older. In the US it is R rated, which means children unter 17 have to be accompanied by an adult to watch the movie. The reason for the R rating is that one of the characters, Nino, is working in a sex shop, and in one scene Amelie enters the shop and you can see Nino applying price stickers on adult toys, which in the US seems to be dangerous to the soul of teenagers, while Europeans would not even think about this for a moment.
Warning, NOT SAFE FOR WORK:
For context here's the sex scenes in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6wqunhUVWo
(I checked the guidelines, it doesn't mention anything adult related. Hence that should be okay here.)
Judge for yourself.
Both of these are completely misguided (IMO) moral policing and disempowering of the population. Both say: people are not capable of making a sound moral choice on their own, they must be protected from seeing things that could negatively influence their character.
That being said, if I were to pick between these two bad policies, I personally think sex is a vastly less morally objectionable topic. On one hand you have an activity that (between consenting people) is pleasurable and is essential in propagating the species, while the other is generally undesirable to everyone involved.
This of course has a rather obvious explanation, but HN prohibits mentioning it for political reasons.
A movie full of violence won't sell as well in Germany. It isn't want Germans want to go see. Vice versa for Americans and sex.
Culture dictates what kind of media is desirable, not the other way around.
Again, the cultural aspect is core to the entire thing, but nevertheless the overarching theme is that both countries apply a sort of self censorship.
Every country has something that rates or censors entertainment for popular consumption. Some are overbearing or carry criminal offenses (Iran, Russia) and some are more off economic (store wont sell your game).
Germany became strongly anti-violence after WWII cause the normalization of violence in that period and level of it was extraordinary high in Germany.
In fact, the opoosite was gained: the american editor forced it to be a story without the fun - two, if not sinners, then desperate people, slamming their bodies onto one another. For all we know, they get nothing out of this. With the orgasm detail in, it becomes fun sex - and dirty.
Same way adulteresses had to be punished for it in Noir films, or they wouldn't pass the censorship.
In this case it's a novel writer and a prudish editor. I can relate to this when editors tone down my attacks on unethical tech companies who might be advertisers - generally though I get a free hand because most editors seem sympathetic to the same concerns.
But it could equally be a magazine Photoshopping a model's blemishes, or a company PR department putting a gloss on research work. Anyone who has worked where an intermediary interprets ones work to an audience has experienced this doctoring at some point.
The role of the sanitiser, filter, censor and arbiter of taste is ever present. We seem to live in age of form over substance, appearance above reality, and wishing into existence a world that won't offend imaginary others.
More seriously, and boringly: I would have corrected "my wife came in the room" into "my wife came into the room". The former sounds like bad English to me.