On Sensitivity Readers

[Steerpike]

Sensitivity readers are a topic I have somewhat mixed feelings about. I found the title of the article, below, by Kate Clanchy, to be over the top and meant to attract clicks. I think the article, as a whole, is well-written, however.

I don’t mind the use of sensitivity readers to draw an author’s attention to issues they may not have thought about whole writing. I disagree with the idea that once such issues are illuminated, the author has any moral obligation to adopt the recommendations of such sensitivity readers, however. I don’t agree with establishing a homogeneity of expression around certain topics simply because sensitivity readers may, on the whole, recommendation doing so. I think this is particularly true when it comes to writing for adults, which is one of the points Clanchy makes.

Use sensitivity readers as you might any other readers—as a source of feedback on your work. Feedback that you can and should feel free, in your own absolute discretion, to adopt or ignore.

How sensitivity readers corrupt literature

 

[Queshire]

Guh, that article is entirely too long to read only for spite.

 

[Puck]

There is an old adage - you can please all the people some of the time, you can please some of the people all of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.

I think it is beholden on writers to educate themselves on potentially sensitive issues (if they intend to cover them) but there is only so much you can do. It is ultimately about striking a balance. You can't adopt the recommendations of all sensitive readers - since their recommendations will, in some cases, contradict each other and may contradict members of the community they purport to represent. Take note of what they say and test out their views with other members of the relevant community seems like a reasonable approach.

 

[Steerpike]

There is an old adage - you can please all the people some of the time, you can please some of the people all of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.

I think it is beholden on writers to educate themselves on potentially sensitive issues (if they intend to cover them) but there is only so much you can do. It is ultimately about striking a balance. You can't adopt the recommendations of all sensitive readers - since their recommendations will, in some cases, contradict each other and may contradict members of the community they purport to represent. Take note of what they say and test out their views with other members of the relevant community seems like a reasonable approach.

I agree with this and would add that, at the end of the day, the author’s own vision has to control.

 

[pmmg]

I feel I kind of said this in another thread. I am not writing for the sensitive types. I will accept that they and I don't share the same sensibilities.

I have another term for this, as I think the sensitive types are infecting more than writing, but...carry on and keep writing.

 

[skip.knox]

I see it as just another area expert. If I'm writing a story in which horses and their peculiarities figure large, then I'm going to do all the research I feel is appropriate, and then I'm going to run the story in its finished form past at least one person who knows horses directly. Note I say that I do the research first and get myself to the point where I think I can tell the story reliably. Note also I do *not* say I throw a bunch of questions at a horse expert. I write the story and let the horse expert judge the product, not the questions. I feel that is important.

"Sensitivity reader" is a phrase with currency, but I believe that's a passing phase. My sincere hope is that future generations will say "of *course* I need someone authoritative from this group or that group to read my finished work before publishing." That's just good sense.

The phrase does not mean "someone easily offended" or at least it doesn't to my ears. Indeed, a great many people of color, or of different sexual orientation, or whatever other difference (I note the baseline here is clearly cis white male, but I wonder if that's the case in other cultures) .... er, where was I? Oh yeah. A great many "other" are not easily offended precisely because they've been so often offended. I think it is counter-productive to me as a writer to think of a sensitivy reader as someone easily offended. That undervalues their experience, and it trivializes their potential contribution to my story.

Heck, I'm a medieval historian. There are medievalists who are "easily offended" by any story that gets anything wrong at all about the Middle Ages. They hoot and howl about things most folks wouldn't even blink at. If someone asks me to read their story that is medieval or even quasi-medieval, I'll make my best effort to be helpful and point out what they got wrong and even what they might not worry much about, and I'll certainly try to help them make their story better.

Call me a sensitivity reader. I won't take offense.

 

[Steerpike]

I agree it’s another tool. I don’t view it exactly the same as experts on horses or rocket propulsion or subject matter where there are plenty of objective facts, but sensitivity readers can be useful tools. I do think, however, that writers should avoid viewing the feedback as mandating change. I’ve seen people view sensitivity reader comments as gospel, feeling as though once a issue is raised they have to change how they’ve handled things. I think that’s a mistake.

 

[Queshire]

When you're getting someone to be a sensitivity reader for your stuff you're hiring them for a particular task. Now, as writers we know that things like a run on sentence or sentence fragment can help the story's voice, but if I'm getting someone to look over the grammar in my work I would hope they'd light that shit up like they were your 8th grade English teacher. When your job is to particularly look for that sort of stuff is it any surprise that they'd come across as a bit... shall we say, oversensitive?

It rather seemed like the sensitivity readers in the article were just general ones. That's a different beast than one that's there to make sure you don't like... fuck up Native American mythology or something.

Honestly, if you look at it the right way even getting utterly blasted by a sensitivity reader can be a good thing. I have to imagine that a lot of us writers are just as big readers. Reading lets us experience perspectives other than our own. Getting something pointed out by a sensitivity reader lets us know about perspectives other than our own in real life. There's few things that I find more enjoyable in life than being able to go, "Huh, I never thought of it that way before."

 

[skip.knox]

>writers should avoid viewing the feedback as mandating change.
Sure. That's where doing your own research comes in. The conversation with a sensitivity reader is a conversation, so I as author need to be educated enough to converse. If not, then I'm just a victim.

And if I'm tackling something that is so complex and difficult, and so far from my own knowledge, that I cannot even tell opinion from fact, or diatribe from advice, then I need to do more work. Or choose another topic. I may feel that there needs to be more fantasy stories that speak to the experience of Canadian First Nation peoples, but I know enough to know I'm not the person to write such a story.

Happily, I also feel there ought to be more medieval fantasy stories set somewhere besides the British Isles, and I am the person--one person, anyway--to write those stories. Doing just that much is all I can tackle.

 

[Mad Swede]

As someone who is disabled I have very mixed feelings about so-called sensitivity readers. I understand why some think they are necessary. But I also understand why so many find them problematic. To me, most of those sensitivity problems come down to poor characterisation and poor world building, at least when we're writing fiction. As authors we should be doing the research. But once we've done that, we should be creating nuanced characters who act as a result of things happening in the world/setting we've built. In doing so we can challenge the way we and our readers see things - most of us wrote novels, after all. But that doesn't mean we should avoid controversial subjects or characters with controversial viewpoints. These may be necessary for the plot, and the onus is then on us as the authors to handle it well. It may make for uncomfortable reading for some, but is that really a problem?

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I had a Publicist read a couple of chapters of my upcoming novel and the person ran it by her people...

PUB: We might need a warning for using the word rape.
ME: But, no one is raped. That I could understand... kind of sort of.
PUB: Yeah well, most reviewers are female, and you know. AND the title with "Halfbreed" in it, reviewers skew left, so at least half the people are going to see that as a derogatory term.
ME: I picked the word because damned near Everybody left, right, or batshit crazy thinks of that as a derogatory term, at least a little bit. That's the point! And the character will own it.

Okay, okay, I worded the latter nicer.

It's not a sensitivity reader by any stretch, but it's more than enough to let me know I'm not touching that with a 10 foot pole cat.

 

[johnnyfoges]

I'm a little late to the party, but I went ahead and read the article and the comments and at this point I don't have much to add.

It seems to be that sensitivity readers do seem to have a specific purpose and that they fall into the 'toolbox" as it were. That said, I'm a little surprised by the article's tone, especially when it went out of its way to claim it had no bias. It feels almost frivolous to debate the clear disdain the article had for the process which I think seems wrong and counterproductive. Given that sensitivity readers are there to provide a very specific type of feedback what is the point in becoming upset with the product they give you?

Several comments highlighted my take away: You cannot please everyone all the time, only some of the people some of the time. But that does not mean that you are enabled to punch down on those who are disenfranchised or even try to take on topics where you cannot discern the facts.

 

[Mad Swede]

I'm a little late to the party, but I went ahead and read the article and the comments and at this point I don't have much to add.

It seems to be that sensitivity readers do seem to have a specific purpose and that they fall into the 'toolbox" as it were. That said, I'm a little surprised by the article's tone, especially when it went out of its way to claim it had no bias. It feels almost frivolous to debate the clear disdain the article had for the process which I think seems wrong and counterproductive. Given that sensitivity readers are there to provide a very specific type of feedback what is the point in becoming upset with the product they give you?

Several comments highlighted my take away: You cannot please everyone all the time, only some of the people some of the time. But that does not mean that you are enabled to punch down on those who are disenfranchised or even try to take on topics where you cannot discern the facts.

I'm not sure why you're surprised by Kate Clanchy's tone. The article is about the comments made about her autobiography. And one of the major reasons for writing autobiography is for the author to give their views and reasoning about things. So comments made by sensitivity readers along the lines of "author stance" and "author gives her views" shows that those readers hadn't actually understood what they were reading. So why would any of their other comments have any relevance? I can quite understand why Kate Clanchy decided to ignore all the comments made and just publish and be damned. Especially given that it was her then publisher who decided to send the book for a so-called sensitivity reading rather than a choice she herself made.

It's also worth considering what Tomiwa Owolade has to say on the subject...

The problem with white saviours

And as for punching down on people and taking on certain topics. As someone who does have a disability I don't like other people deciding for me what is and is not insensitive. A really nasty joke or character comment about my disability can be perfectly OK in the right context in a work of literature. It's the context that matters, and it's the contextual nuances (which can be quite subtle) which all too often get lost in discussions on sensitivity, predjudice and bias.

As authors we have the freedom and the right to take on any topic we want, and handle it in any way we like. With that comes the responsibility to accept that our work will be subject to criticism, and that some criticism will be harsh. That is when we as authors make our choice. I for one will not avoid sensitive topics or depictions in my books. Ultimately it comes down to my ability as a writer, my ability to put these things in a context appropriate to my work in terms of characterisation and setting. If I do it well then I can defend my work - as indeed I must do. Because that freedom of expression is what separates democracy from dictatorship. (Sorry. This is something I feel strongly about.)

 

[pmmg]

Missed that it was an autobiography. Um…too funny. yeah. I wont be needing in put from sensitive types on that.

 

[Queshire]

A cynical bastard might say that an autobiography is exactly the sort of place where you'd want to fine tune your word choice in order to present a specific image of yourself.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Oh! A Politician's autobiography! Why anybody takes any of those seriously is beyond me, they might as well be written for Vanity Fair. The original vanity press? The original unreliable narrator? Heh heh.

A cynical bastard might say that an autobiography is exactly the sort of place where you'd want to fine-tune your word choice in order to present a specific image of yourself.

It's kind of fascinating how these readers want to alter history, to make it nice and neat, whitewash it—if you will—instead of depicting the period as it was. This bears a certain irony as so many people rail against the whitewashed depictions of 1950's America. Now, part of this is that the sensitivity reader's job is to "protect" the author from Twitter mobs, so in that sense, they aren't necessarily "wrong" but what they achieve isn't necessarily "right" in a literary and freedom of speech context. The publisher's reaction was whacky, gutless. It's fascinating how corporations fear Twitter when in reality, I suspect there are as many bots as humans. One could say that Twitter cleared a bunch of bots but at the same time, I don't think they really want to. It's what brings what should be an illusion of power into psychosomatic reality for so many people.

 

[Steerpike]

A cynical bastard might say that an autobiography is exactly the sort of place where you'd want to fine tune your word choice in order to present a specific image of yourself.

Or just tell the truth as you remember it instead of trying to sanitize it for the sake of personal appearances.

 

[Devor]

I don't have a lot of time and haven't read the article.

One of the things that's always bothered me about these issues is.... well, I'll cut right to an example. There was an article, 10 Things Sexist about the Witcher TV Series. I strongly agreed with about a third of them, and rolled my eyes at about another third. That's common for me. But having the list, and calling attention to each item, makes each item feel equally serious. And they aren't - nobody believes they are, it just sounds that way because the topic itself is to be taken so seriously. So if I were going to look for a sensitivity reader, I would be looking for a very clear picture of how serious they considered each issue, that way I could weigh it against how hard it might be to address. I mean, I'm a real person trying to do real work on my story, to also be enjoyed by real people. I'm happy to learn and improve and do the work to help more people enjoy my writing, but I don't have the patience for - well, attitude.

 

[Queshire]

Or just tell the truth as you remember it instead of trying to sanitize it for the sake of personal appearances.

As you remember it? So.... inevitably sanitized for the sake of personal appearance?

 

[pmmg]

I suspect those who write auto-biographies do sanitize a bit, but to have someone else read and tell you something is not right is silly. But...I am sure it happens.