Sensitive Reading — What It Is And What It Is Not
In the public debate, there are many misunderstandings about what sensitive reading is and what sensitive readers do. With this article, I would like to contribute to the objective discussion of the subject.
I heard the term sensitive reading for the first time a few months ago. When I was working on it, I noticed that the debate on this subject was very controversial and sometimes quite aggressive.
The opponents scream “censorship,” the advocates insult the opponents as “old white men” or as racists/Sexists/gay-haters.
But if you take a closer look at what Sensitive Reading is about, it quickly becomes clear that the reflexive aggressions of both camps are entirely unnecessary.
Let’s have a look at it in a completely unbiased way.
What is sensitive reading, and who needs it?
Sensitive readers are people who have a connection to the literary scene (authors, publishers, editors, book bloggers) and belong to a marginalized group.
We speak of marginalized groups when parts of the population are perceived by the majority as a peripheral.
In a Western industrial nation, where the majority of the population is heterosexual, Christian, and white, this inevitably affects all non-whites, people of non-heterosexual orientation, and all members of non-Christian religious communities.
In Sensitive Reading, members of these groups read manuscripts on behalf of publishers or authors in which one or more members of their group are described and report their reading experience back to the author or publisher.
They focus on unintended clichés and stereotypes that the author is unaware of.
An example: Author X, fifty years old, heterosexual and white, has written a book. His hero is gay, and another vital character belongs to the black community.
Author X has sympathies for both groups and privately communicates with members of both communities. He is neither gay-hostile nor racist. He hopes to win both gay men and black people as readers.
One would not expect any problematic passages in the text. Author X has an insight into the everyday life of both communities and is friendly towards them.
So does this author need a sensitive reader?
In fact, this author needs the critical eye of a sensitive reader because his stated goal is to win gays and blacks as readers for his book.
Since he knows both communities only from the outside and has not grown up and socialized as a member of one of these groups, it will be difficult for him to write about them authentically.
Of course, he can try to put himself in the shoes of his characters. That’s an author’s job — to put himself in other people’s minds.
He does nothing else when he writes about a murderer without ever having killed anyone himself, or when his main character is female, but he is a man.
Unlike a gay man or a member of the black community, both a murderer and a woman can belong to the social majority. A white, heterosexual killer and a white, Christian woman are closer to the author in terms of socialization than members of actually marginalized groups.
One could argue that women are a marginalized group in our still male-dominated society. However, white Christian women have a much larger lobby in our society than, for example, gays or black people.
On the other hand, of course, there is nothing to be said against publishers and authors, ensuring that a woman also examines the text during the editing process. This will undoubtedly do the manuscript thoroughly.
But here we are talking about the classic field of application of sensitive readers.
What problems do sensitive readers uncover in the text?
Stereotypes:
Whenever an author has no first-hand information, he has to speculate. If, for example, he wants to describe how two gay men get to know each other, he has never experienced this himself.
So he has to use his imagination.
But our imagination is always fed by unconscious prejudices and internalized clichés. One stereotype gay men have to deal with is continually being reduced to the sexual aspect.
From a heterosexual’s point of view, there is a danger that the first meeting of two gay men will only take place on a sexual level.
So he might, without meaning it offensively, transfer the meeting of the two to a gay bar and describe how one attracts the other’s attention because of his crunchy butt. Of course, the two men end up in bed together that same evening.
A gay sensitive reader could now draw the author’s attention to the fact that this form of getting to know each other is a pure cliché. He might remark that as a gay, he doesn’t want to be reduced to his sexuality.
He could also point out that he met his partner in sports, and there were three dates before there was the first kiss.
Of course, the author doesn’t have to rewrite his scene immediately radically. But he now knows that his gay bar scene is only a particular case and not the ordinary reality of an entire community.
This knowledge can help him to rewrite the scene more believable and less clichéd without losing its character.
His two characters can still get to know each other in this bar, and the first impression of one man from the other can still be the great ass. But now he can make it clear by the way he portrays the behavior of individuals and not the typical behavior of a whole group.
Microaggressions
This is the topic that ignites the most heated debates in the debate about sensitive reading.
Authors who do not belong to a marginalized group find it extremely difficult to admit that they undermine microaggression. Yes, they even deny that there is such a thing as microaggression at all.
Deliberately avoiding microaggression can be extremely stressful. If someone offers to help a wheelchair user get on the bus, the wheelchair user may perceive this as a microaggression.
He may think that the offer of help degrades him to a helpless person.
If the person who has offered help is confronted with it, he will often react offended. He just wanted to help. He meant well. This reaction is just as understandable as that of the wheelchair user.
When we subvert microaggressions in communication, we rarely mean it as really evil or derogatory. However, this does not change the fact that our remarks are received differently by those affected than we expected them to be.
If a Sensitive Reader points out microaggressions in the text to an author, this should not be interpreted as an attack on the author. It is an offer for the author to critically question his writing once again from this new point of view.
Sensitive readers are advisors, not censors.
The publisher or author can implement recommendations from sensitive readers, but do not have to. The Sensitive Reader is merely an additional instance in the editing process, and by no means has the power of a censor, as critics often claim.
Instead, the Sensitive Reader is usually paid a racket price and has no say in publication. Thus, the Sensitive Reader is not at all in a position of strength vis-à-vis the author or the publisher. The opposite is the case.
We have to imagine sensitive readers as external consultants who are called in when our competence is not sufficient.
Misuse of Sensitive Reading
Sensitive reading always makes negative headlines when it comes to shitstorms on the Internet against authors for alleged cultural appropriation, sexism, etc.
These shitstorms are, in most cases, ignited by people who do not belong to any of the marginalized groups, but who feel called upon to speak for them.
The fact that they marginalize these groups even more through uninvited “support” is not noticeable at all to these self-appointed sensitive readers.
Such Shitstorms are staged under the guise of Sensitive Reading but have nothing to do with it. Sensitive reading always takes place by order and is carried out by literarily competent people.
At the end of a Sensitive Reading, there are constructive suggestions for improvement. The public dismantling and insulting of authors and publishers are definitely not one of the tasks of con sensitive readers.
Final remark
During my research, I noticed one interesting thing: To this day, there is no Wikipedia entry on the term “Sensitive Reading.”
Given the broad public discussion, this is very astonishing.
One could assume that Wikipedia itself has a problem with marginalized groups.
It would be interesting to find out if there have been any attempts to post an article about Sensitive Reading on Wikipedia.
If this is the case, and if editors rejected the article as irrelevantly, it would not shed a good light on the online encyclopedia.
Sources
https://sensitivity-reading.de/was-ist-sensitivity-reading
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