Sensitivity reading has nothing to do with art, it has nothing to do with sensitivity. It’s all about power and authority. You will bow to the will of your progress rulers or risk their wrath. It’s like taking the knee for writers.

Stop reading anything published in the past ten years. Which self-respecting reader would voluntarily read a novel that has been vetted for them by some twenty-something media studies graduate?

Do hospitals in the US employ sensitivity staff to prevent surgeons from accidentally asking a member of the team of native Indian ethnic origin to “pass the scalpel, please”?

This must be especially traumatic if the surgeon is about to conduct brain surgery. And never mind post-surgical trauma for patients, what about the poor staff? One would hope that councellors are on hand in the changing rooms to salve the offended; preferably trans to provide for both sexes.

Although created with good intentions, the practice of sensitivity reading …

Absolutely sure about that?

Sensitivity readers are a waste of money, too. The profit margins on publishing are already slim and most authors do not make a living from it. Spend those hundreds on marketing, a higher advance, etc.
Also, there’s little evidence that sensitivity reading helps sell books, too.

Any publisher who employs a sensitivity reader to do the publisher’s job will probably go out of business, as nothing will be published. One of the more delightful features of the woke movement is that it is actually a suicide cult.
Invest in popcorn.

All hail Flashman (and GMF), as sensitive as a bull (cows may also be inserted (no sniggering at the back there), lest I be accused of sexism, especially given the ‘modern’ trend for ever larger cows (small cows are equally valid, lest I be accused of the udderly ridiculous notion of size-ism) in a China pottery shop, and all the better for it !

Sensitivity readers are just contemporary censors, all that has changed is what is deemed offensive. As to the moral character of the author, like great actors, the work of great authors is independent of their character, which is not to say they do not draw on aspects of themselves and their lives: their work is a study in human nature.

Any author worth his salt will deliberately set out to offend sensitivity readers as much as possible.

If your job is to find faults with books before they are published and you don’t find any faults, eventually your job will be deemed surplus.
As authors see what gets rejected and self-edit these things out of their work, it gets increasingly hard for the sensitivity mob to find fault, so they have to get more extreme and go to the Nth degree.
As with most things like this, it’s all just job justification in the end

“Cherry-picking” is obviously reminiscent of “cotton-picking” and thus of plantation slavery. Strike it through please.

You mean to say writers are the ones hiring these “sensitivity” readers? I assumed it was their editors or publishers. What kind of writer submits his or her work to such lunatic scrutiny? Why, it’s like giving the hired reader a scalpel.

A great analogy with the culinary arts. It could also apply to music, architecture – even photography. Lord knows the field of theater and cinema is already neutered by this pedantic censorship.

These conversations are becoming everyday things and have become part of our culture, whether we like it or not. The issues seem funny but, day by day, the freedom of the majority is being curtailed. Clearly, we don’t have democracy. In fact, I suspect that we have never had democracy but today it is beoming clearer.
Surely democracy means doing what the majority wants but with the majority deciding what should be done to protect minorities from harm. Our democracy through intermediaries means that we trust pliticians to work for us. We should not trust these politicians.
Crook or not, populist or not, silly hair – but only Donald Trump will set things right. We tend to follow everything done in the USA so we will see the trickle-down effect.

I wish an intelligent take-no-bullshit- type interviewer like Andrew Neil would interview one of these publishers

Adore the picture, love your article. Thanks.

Yes indeed, Kat. Though I have to wonder, in parentheses, if “fair game” is another of those phrases that means the opposite to Americans that it does to the British.