Tag: sensitivity readers

I will never apologize for refusing to use sensitivity readers.

The Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming estates have been in the news lately, after their publishers have worked with committees of “sensitivity readers” to rework their books in order to make them less offensive to woke sensibilities. The outcry was so great that Roald Dahl’s publishers agreed not to go through with their plan to sanitize his books, but to release the originals along with the censored versions (though I have heard conflicting stories indicating that the ebooks have been retroactively censored).

For many readers, this was their first time learning that “sensitivity readers” are a thing. While their outrage at the Orwellian rewriting of dead authors’ works is entirely justified, sadly, this is nothing new to the science fiction and fantasy field. Indeed, as Larry Correia and Steve Diamond pointed out in the latest episode of Writer Dojo, sensitivity readers have been a thing for at least a decade, and the most insidious examples of censorship are the ones we don’t see, when writers self-censor for fear of offending the outrage mobs.

For several decades now, science fiction and fantasy has skewed hard to the left, and the fact that there wasn’t a major outcry against these self-appointed Orwellian censors back in the 10s is a damning indictment of field as a whole. Why did it take until now, when the beloved works of Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming were threatened, for large numbers of people to speak out against this trend? Because all of the big names and major institutions in the SF&F field (or at least, the traditionally published side of it) tacitly approve of the censors and are quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) working to advance their politically correct agenda.

Back in the early 10s, when sensitivity readers were starting to become fashionable, I privately swore that I would never, under any circumstances, submit my work to any of these professional grievance mongers, nor internalize any of their rules to self-censor my work. If I was writing about another culture and needed to make sure I got things right, I would seek out feedback from a trusted friend who had personal experience with that culture (which is actually surprisingly easy here in Utah, thanks to how many of us have served missions in every corner of the Earth). I would not seek feedback from anyone whose paycheck depends on finding new and innovative ways to be offended.

The thing that’s sad, though, is how many writers have bent the knee to these cultural vandals, because they felt it was the only way to get their work out there. I happen to enjoy being a voice in the indie wilderness, but it’s not for everyone, and a lot of writers are self-censoring in order to keep their agents, or their publishing deals, or even just because they hope to have an agent or a publishing deal someday. It’s sad.

If I were feeling conspiratorial, I would point out that if my goal was to establish a neo-feudal, Orwellian police state, where religion was replaced with The Science, individuals were atomized away from their families, and the common folk were divided against each other by identitarian tribal distinctions in order to make them easier to govern, I would seek to capture the SF field before moving forward with my plans, so as to prevent a new 1984 or Brave New World from spoiling them. The pen is mightier than the sword, after all. If possible, I would subvert the SF field to actively advance my agenda, such as pushing the Marxist politics of envy, or the Malthusian economics of depopulation, or the post-modern rejection of any and all sexual mores and gender roles, so as to destroy the family as the fundamental unit of society. But none of that would really be necessary, so long as I made sure that nothing of any real truth or beauty came out of the field. All of the major awards would favor the ugliest lies that my propaganda machine put out into the world, and all of the professional organizations would pit authors and editors against each other according to their tribal identities, such as race or class or religion. Victimhood would be rewarded, and merit would be suppressed—and anyone in the field who dared to oppose this agenda would be harrassed relentlessly by my underlings, who would work to get them canceled from publishing deals and disinvited from major events.

In any case, I’m not going to be a part of that, even tangentially. Which is I I will never use sensitivity readers to review my work, nor apologize for refusing to bend the knee to the woke censors.

Larry Correia on Sensitivity Readers

Larry Correia just came out with another highly entertaining rant, this time on sensitivity readers. In case you don’t know, “sensitivity readers” are people that publishers hire to go through an unpublished manuscript to make sure that there’s nothing that could offend any marginalized groups. Larry sums it up quite well:

A Sensitivity Reader is usually some expert on Intersectional Feminism or Cismale Gendernormative Fascism or other made up goofiness who a publisher brings in to look for anything “problematic” in a manuscript. And since basically everything is problematic to somebody they won’t be happy until they suck all the joy out of the universe. It is basically a new con-job racket some worthless scumbags have come up with to extort money from gullible writers, because there aren’t a lot of good ways to make a living with a Gender Studies Degree.

It only gets better from there. And I have to say, I completely agree with him, not only from a political angle (in fact, politics has almost nothing to do with it) but from an artistic angle as well.

You can’t tell a good story without taking the risk of offending somebody. That’s because being offended is always a choice. Always. My favorite Brigham Young quote, which has gotten me banned from multiple forums, is this:

A good story stimulates the mind and excites the emotions. Anytime that happens, people will inevitably be offended. It doesn’t matter the reason. Humans are weird.

Here’s another way of looking at it: in order to create truly great art, you have to pour a significant part of yourself into it. That’s scary, because it makes you vulnerable.

The perpetually outraged crowd loves this, because it’s a weakness that they can exploit. They don’t care about your art. They only care about power. If you give them that power, they will suck all the greatness out of your art and leave you bleeding and broken on the floor.

That doesn’t mean you should always necessarily go out of your way to offend people, of course. But relying on sensitivity readers is a bad, bad idea. Why?

Because fuck your sensitivity.

Seriously, that’s my favorite part of Larry’s rant. If your skin isn’t thick enough to tell these moral busybodies to fuck off—or to simply ignore them, which is probably the better choice—they’re going to walk all over you.

Which gets to the last part of his post:

To further illustrate how Sensitivity Readers stifle creativity and suck all the fun out of books, at a recent writing convention I attended there was a panel on Intersectional Feminism or something like that. I didn’t attend it (I’m not a glutton for punishment) but several of my friends went because they were curious to see how much of a train wreck it would be.

The panel was a bunch of feminists and the whole thing turned into a big competition of who could be more offended, and who could speak for more “marginalized” people. At one point a certain author (who is an upper class white lady) had to establish her street cred, so she actually called her professional Sensitivity Reader and put her on speaker phone.

Seriously, this shit is like the victim Olympics. It has fuck all to do with creating books that readers will actually enjoy.

I went to a party that night where a bunch of people who’d attended that clusterfuck of a panel were talking about it. Apparently the only panels at this event which were more dreary was the one about the evils of capitalism (I shit you not), and the one about writing comedy which degenerated into authors who’d drank the social justice Kool Aid telling everybody what not to write because it might be “offensive”.

I’m pretty sure I was at that convention. I didn’t attend the panel, but I did run into an aspiring professional creator who told me “I just found the solution to my problem! Sensitivity readers!”

Even at the time, I wanted to put my arm around this guy and tell him to have confidence in himself and in his art. I still feel that way. We talked a bit about the outrage crowd, and about the difference between trusted alpha readers who have your best interests at heart, and sensitivity readers who may or may not. But I felt really horrible about it, because I could tell that this guy was getting pushed and pulled and tossed back and forth in all the wrong ways.

If sensitivity readers provide any value at all, it’s basically as overpriced alpha readers. But even there, the value proposition is dubious because the feedback is so toxic. Larry is right: these people create nothing. They can only destroy.

I’m a creator, not a destroyer. Because fuck your sensitivity.