Aug 29, 2022·edited Aug 29, 2022Liked by Jesse Singal, Natalie
These measures remind me of the kind of policy posturing Republicans do to prove to the world that they are True Conservatives. Does the neighboring state require sex offenders to register? Then MY state must flog them! If another state flogs them, I must fire them into space with a cannon! It's this nuclear-arms race except with laws instead of weapons.
I think the anti-racist stuff is the same. Nobody wants to be seen as *less* anti-racist than the next organization, so that means you have to constantly be on the prowl for ways to out-anti-racist your peers.
This was something that defined Covid lockdown policies. All of the incentives aligned at the time that every (most) governor(s) wanted to be the most cautious possible on lockdowns. Led to some bad policies as a result of a one-way-ratchet w/r/t the incentives.
(EDIT: Ugh, it's Keira Drake rather than Keira Graves and The Continent rather than The Continental. Mandela Effect, I guess)
Sensitivity readers in Young Adult fiction are more or less an administrative process the publishing industry set up to avoid debacles like the controversy surrounding the YA book The Continent by Keira Drake. A black female YA author criticized the book on Twitter, claiming it was a "white savior" story that reinforces harmful stereotypes, but received death threats and rape threats as a reaction to her criticism. Keira Drake took the criticism seriously and eventually rewrote the entire book, but not before other shitstorms erupted (including Drake's husband accusing the other YA author of being a troll while Drake was taking her criticism seriously).
Sensitivity readers are a way to allow this type of criticism to take place without creating a social media shitstorm, which is good (not every book uses them). The reader reads your manuscript in Microsoft Word and leaves comments using the "Review" feature rather than publicly condemning you as a bigot on social media. But they're also a low-paying job available to people with theoretical social science educations, which encourages more people to identify needs for sensitivity readers when they might not be needed.
The issues with the Nature guidelines are similar. Are they just going to identify subjective issues with papers that probably should be corrected? How do they prevent an "arms race" of people who identify more and more specialized problems with papers to inflate the need for some type of specialized review?
"Sensitivity Reader" is a euphemism for censor and no writer with a molecule of integrity would ever submit to having their work sniffed through for crimes against "sensitivity".
The idea that books cause "harm" and "violence" is an ideological hyperventilation that is just a pretext used by aspiring political commissars (who always hide their power grabs in platitudes about "Justice" and "helping the marginalized") who want to control thought and language as a way to control people and society.
No book has ever caused harm or violence to a single person. If you don't like a book or a sentence hurts your feelings, you don't have to read it. If someone physically harms you it isn't because of words in a book but because they wanted to harm someone and used another's words as their excuse.
"Sensitivity reader" is just a rebooted Soviet censor who's traded Marxist jargon for the language of American therapeutic self-help.
I always wonder just how much protection sensitivity readers afford, when the Twitter storm starts a-brewing. I mean, does anyone say, "Well, you had sensitivity readers, so I guess my outrage is misplaced"?
Also, I suspect that if both Kamala Harris and Clarence Thomas were sensitivity readers for a given work about black people, they would have, uh, different opinions on how sensitive it really is.
The solution isnt to mar your work and ideas (not to mention brain and soul) to conform to our malicious and infantile zeitgeist, but to either stand up to or ignore the handful of miserable losers who will attack anyone for any manufactured reason under the guise of 'harm' or 'justice". Easier said than done, I know.
It pretty clearly doesn't provide protection. There have been several blow-ups lately (see, e.g., "The Men" by Sandra Newman) where the author specifically tried to defend themselves by pointing out that they had sensitivity readers from the allegedly impacted group and it appeared to have little if any effect on the amount of criticism received.
Several authors use sensitivity readers voluntarily to get an "authentic voice" from a specific group, while others have to use one because an editor or publisher decided. They're most common in Young Adult and children's literature but are sometimes used in adult literary fiction if a book deals with inequality or social justice themes.
Publishers won't release a list of books that use sensitivity readers or say how commonly authors use them (or get referred). Several books used multiple "comprehensive review" readers (I'm not exactly sure what it's called but it's the most expensive service and includes detailed revision suggestions) and were still subject to intense criticism on social media.
My guess is there are elements of "mission creep" where people get the books they want but then need something to criticize harshly.
Sensitivity readers are "insurance" to try to reduce the likelihood of an outrage culture shitstorm erupting because someone felt emotionally hurt by a book. Publishers acknowledge that they can't possibly protect everyone from being offended by a book.
I have a physical disability and I can tell when a text is clueless or insensitive about my experience (it doesn't ruin my day). But I wouldn't be reading for myself, I would be reading for a hypothetical 10-18-year-old who is very sensitive and prone to offense. I would also have to make sure the book is not unnecessarily critical of what's currently popular among the sort of progressives that Lenin would pejoratively call "idealists" who might buy the book, which is probably the most (uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh) problematic aspect of being a sensitivity reader.
but this is just the cultural equivalent of a fire dept who responds to every fire not with water but with buckets of gasoline.
the more you accept and reinforce the idea that people have a right to NOT be offended, that every text and work and idea should be a self-flattering mirror and a soothing balm to rub onto all your emotional wounds, the more people will claim to be injured and offended.
the current "sensitivity reader" strategy only expands the possible reasons for claiming offense and cedes tremendous social power to anyone making such a claim. it is basically allowing the most brittle and resentful children (of any age) to have veto power over our art and culture.
Not much, it seems. From the ones that I can remember, people tend to say things like “Despite having those sensitivity readers, she still made a mistake. [Always this objective-sounding language — mistake, misstep, messed up — as though there could be no good-faith disagreement.] Clearly even more sensitivity reading is necessary.”
It strikes me as very “compliance”-y: If people make mistakes, there need to be more safeguards! More training! More audits! Makes sense when we’re talking about preventing violations of the Bank Secrecy Act; for art, not so much.
American Heart by Laura Moriarty is a YA dystopia about a future US that actually goes forward with Muslim internment camps. It was relentlessly criticized and condemned even though it went through "comprehensive review" (the most expensive service) by multiple sensitivity readers.
(EDIT: Reading reviews, it does look like a genuinely bad book. Sarah-Mary, the protagonist, is a ridiculous caricature of a profoundly bigoted and ignorant person.)
I think the idea of a "sanity reader" makes way more sense than a "sensitivity reader." If you're writing about a complex or niche area as an outsider, it definitely makes sense to have someone more "in the know" read through the piece or work to identify any intellectual rakes you might accidentally step on. But agreed, the notion of a "sensitivity reader" comes across as censorious.
Regardless of whether the worst offenders can be treated, or should be monitored, or should stay locked up, or whatever, plenty of sex offenders are for things unrelated to children, or for things that you might probably consider "bad" but not "sex offender" bad.
Know I have a similar history to you, and sometimes I express the same attitude just because I’m tired or whatever, but after a long while here’s what I came up with in it if it’s any use to you.
1) just because someone deserves to die, it doesn’t mean that I deserve what killing them would do to me.
2) what if we are wrong about their guilt and now we’ve all done something we can’t take back?
3) once you’ve removed someone as a threat and locked them away you are liberated from having to think about killing them
That said, you’d probably agree with me that there’s a lot of very bad thinking about sentencing guidelines for someone who has shown they have a compulsion to hurt children. There seems to be an assumption that it can be studied well, that people don’t lie, and that their compulsion will just go away.
I do worry about this hurting good research. One of the reasons why gay marriage was first passed in battleground states was because there was tons of research showing that gay households did not have worse life outcomes than straight households. I worry that research would not get approved of today if there was sufficient fear that it may show gay people are worse parents than hets.
This whole thing feels very churchy. I feel like every grad student/scientist/research fellow needs to read Galileo's Middle Finger.
Right. The more (especially conservative) people suspect that research they contracts liberal views will not get published, the less they will trust science at all--and rightfully so!
I already see that happening and policies like this will make it worse.
There’s a guy at my local hardware store that I completely trust because he 1) has literally never been wrong about anything he has ever told me 2) doesn’t just make shit up when he doesn’t know an answer. 3) is only interested in interacting with me as a purchaser of wares and doesn’t want to be my priest.
I wish I had that same relationship with academia.
Their point about not treating a particular state as "superior" would mean not publishing ANY medical research that starts with the baseline assumption that it's better to be healthy than sick.
Actually I've just realized "healthy" is an offensive term to the health-deprived, deriving from Western patriarchal notions of human bodies. I'll show myself out.
Yes, the part about disease and disability status is really where this completely flies off the rails. Taken literally, an article about treating/curing a disease or disability would violate these standards.
The internet and other technological advancements have completely disrupted the ability of universities to claim a shred of monopoly on information that average citizens cannot find for themselves instantly. What they should have clung to is their ability to be viewed as arbiters of quality of information, but daily they prove that they are the opposite. This is why college enrollment is in decline and will continue to decline, especially as employers ease up in their credentialing requirements or start to produce degrees in house. I work in academia but am excited for this day to come. We deserve to reap what we have sewn for being intellectually lazy and dishonest while the public has entrusted us to educate the future generations.
Science as a discipline is teetering on the edge of an abyss.
This kind of idiocy may prove the breath of foul wind that pushes Science into the void.
Seriously, people I know (including myself) are already scoping out MDs to make sure they aren’t under the care of a social justice worker mis-credentialed as an MD.
The journals are only adding urgency to the scoping.
Universities and their faculty are no longer thinking society's go-to for reputable, high quality research and ideas. (Ditto for the legacy media like NYT). The popularity of Substack is illustrative of this. This scares the shit out of the people who have benefited from a regime in which they were once among the most widely recognized and respected "knowledge" producers in their fields, designated by their credentials, publications, and reputation of their institutions. I feel like these attempts at purging the remaining free thought from their ranks and the last gaps of the complete restructuring of higher education.
These dynamics are exactly what was going on among historians with the whole presentism blow-up on Twitter. Being an unforgiving cop who polices others is a great way to keep your career going when you're a stalled mediocrity in a shit job or a grad student failing to deliver or an adjunct just scraping by and you're embittered about it. Who wouldn't want revenge on all your perceived tenured nemeses who rejected your articles and funding proposals? Taking a few of them down is a good way to feel powerful in a super competitive profession with scarce opportunities.
Interesting to consider how often this standard of harm could apply to (mostly liberal) social scientists doing research (with often fairly disparaging conclusions) on conservatives.
The "potential implications (including inadvertent consequences) of research on human groups defined by ... political or other beliefs,... to be reflective of their authorial perspective if not part of the group under study." (in other words, careful drawing sweeping negative conclusion about groups that you're not a part of):
full quote: "Researchers are asked to carefully consider the potential implications (including inadvertent consequences) of research on human groups defined by attributes of race, ethnicity, national or social origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, political or other beliefs, age, disease, (dis)ability or other status, to be reflective of their authorial perspective if not part of the group under study, and contextualise their findings to minimize as much as possible potential misuse or risks of harm to the studied groups in the public sphere."
Really outstanding piece Jesse. I hope you consider taking this one out from behind the paywall so more people can hear this really well articulated takedown of their policy.
DEI and these attitudes don’t simply create jobs for what is now an overabundance of college grads. They offer jobs whose very existence results in an aggregate that better reflects the overall demographics of the US population
Their very existence allows corporations and institutions to achieve a more ideal “diversity”
Comrade Lysenko has been given total command of American science and knowledge-making production. He comes not in the name of glorious Communist Revolution but to protect the feelings and self-esteem of the poor downtrodden marginalized (blessed be their names), who he and the Party have dedicated their lives to uplifting and defending. He promises the full destruction of all enemies of the Revolution and the realization of total ideological unanimity before the end of his first 5-Year Plan. So far the Plan is well ahead of schedule...
These measures remind me of the kind of policy posturing Republicans do to prove to the world that they are True Conservatives. Does the neighboring state require sex offenders to register? Then MY state must flog them! If another state flogs them, I must fire them into space with a cannon! It's this nuclear-arms race except with laws instead of weapons.
I think the anti-racist stuff is the same. Nobody wants to be seen as *less* anti-racist than the next organization, so that means you have to constantly be on the prowl for ways to out-anti-racist your peers.
This was something that defined Covid lockdown policies. All of the incentives aligned at the time that every (most) governor(s) wanted to be the most cautious possible on lockdowns. Led to some bad policies as a result of a one-way-ratchet w/r/t the incentives.
(EDIT: Ugh, it's Keira Drake rather than Keira Graves and The Continent rather than The Continental. Mandela Effect, I guess)
Sensitivity readers in Young Adult fiction are more or less an administrative process the publishing industry set up to avoid debacles like the controversy surrounding the YA book The Continent by Keira Drake. A black female YA author criticized the book on Twitter, claiming it was a "white savior" story that reinforces harmful stereotypes, but received death threats and rape threats as a reaction to her criticism. Keira Drake took the criticism seriously and eventually rewrote the entire book, but not before other shitstorms erupted (including Drake's husband accusing the other YA author of being a troll while Drake was taking her criticism seriously).
Sensitivity readers are a way to allow this type of criticism to take place without creating a social media shitstorm, which is good (not every book uses them). The reader reads your manuscript in Microsoft Word and leaves comments using the "Review" feature rather than publicly condemning you as a bigot on social media. But they're also a low-paying job available to people with theoretical social science educations, which encourages more people to identify needs for sensitivity readers when they might not be needed.
The issues with the Nature guidelines are similar. Are they just going to identify subjective issues with papers that probably should be corrected? How do they prevent an "arms race" of people who identify more and more specialized problems with papers to inflate the need for some type of specialized review?
"Sensitivity Reader" is a euphemism for censor and no writer with a molecule of integrity would ever submit to having their work sniffed through for crimes against "sensitivity".
The idea that books cause "harm" and "violence" is an ideological hyperventilation that is just a pretext used by aspiring political commissars (who always hide their power grabs in platitudes about "Justice" and "helping the marginalized") who want to control thought and language as a way to control people and society.
No book has ever caused harm or violence to a single person. If you don't like a book or a sentence hurts your feelings, you don't have to read it. If someone physically harms you it isn't because of words in a book but because they wanted to harm someone and used another's words as their excuse.
"Sensitivity reader" is just a rebooted Soviet censor who's traded Marxist jargon for the language of American therapeutic self-help.
I always wonder just how much protection sensitivity readers afford, when the Twitter storm starts a-brewing. I mean, does anyone say, "Well, you had sensitivity readers, so I guess my outrage is misplaced"?
Also, I suspect that if both Kamala Harris and Clarence Thomas were sensitivity readers for a given work about black people, they would have, uh, different opinions on how sensitive it really is.
"Sensitivity" is in the eye of the beholder...
The solution isnt to mar your work and ideas (not to mention brain and soul) to conform to our malicious and infantile zeitgeist, but to either stand up to or ignore the handful of miserable losers who will attack anyone for any manufactured reason under the guise of 'harm' or 'justice". Easier said than done, I know.
It pretty clearly doesn't provide protection. There have been several blow-ups lately (see, e.g., "The Men" by Sandra Newman) where the author specifically tried to defend themselves by pointing out that they had sensitivity readers from the allegedly impacted group and it appeared to have little if any effect on the amount of criticism received.
Several authors use sensitivity readers voluntarily to get an "authentic voice" from a specific group, while others have to use one because an editor or publisher decided. They're most common in Young Adult and children's literature but are sometimes used in adult literary fiction if a book deals with inequality or social justice themes.
Publishers won't release a list of books that use sensitivity readers or say how commonly authors use them (or get referred). Several books used multiple "comprehensive review" readers (I'm not exactly sure what it's called but it's the most expensive service and includes detailed revision suggestions) and were still subject to intense criticism on social media.
My guess is there are elements of "mission creep" where people get the books they want but then need something to criticize harshly.
Sensitivity readers are "insurance" to try to reduce the likelihood of an outrage culture shitstorm erupting because someone felt emotionally hurt by a book. Publishers acknowledge that they can't possibly protect everyone from being offended by a book.
I have a physical disability and I can tell when a text is clueless or insensitive about my experience (it doesn't ruin my day). But I wouldn't be reading for myself, I would be reading for a hypothetical 10-18-year-old who is very sensitive and prone to offense. I would also have to make sure the book is not unnecessarily critical of what's currently popular among the sort of progressives that Lenin would pejoratively call "idealists" who might buy the book, which is probably the most (uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh) problematic aspect of being a sensitivity reader.
but this is just the cultural equivalent of a fire dept who responds to every fire not with water but with buckets of gasoline.
the more you accept and reinforce the idea that people have a right to NOT be offended, that every text and work and idea should be a self-flattering mirror and a soothing balm to rub onto all your emotional wounds, the more people will claim to be injured and offended.
the current "sensitivity reader" strategy only expands the possible reasons for claiming offense and cedes tremendous social power to anyone making such a claim. it is basically allowing the most brittle and resentful children (of any age) to have veto power over our art and culture.
Not much, it seems. From the ones that I can remember, people tend to say things like “Despite having those sensitivity readers, she still made a mistake. [Always this objective-sounding language — mistake, misstep, messed up — as though there could be no good-faith disagreement.] Clearly even more sensitivity reading is necessary.”
It strikes me as very “compliance”-y: If people make mistakes, there need to be more safeguards! More training! More audits! Makes sense when we’re talking about preventing violations of the Bank Secrecy Act; for art, not so much.
American Heart by Laura Moriarty is a YA dystopia about a future US that actually goes forward with Muslim internment camps. It was relentlessly criticized and condemned even though it went through "comprehensive review" (the most expensive service) by multiple sensitivity readers.
(EDIT: Reading reviews, it does look like a genuinely bad book. Sarah-Mary, the protagonist, is a ridiculous caricature of a profoundly bigoted and ignorant person.)
I think the idea of a "sanity reader" makes way more sense than a "sensitivity reader." If you're writing about a complex or niche area as an outsider, it definitely makes sense to have someone more "in the know" read through the piece or work to identify any intellectual rakes you might accidentally step on. But agreed, the notion of a "sensitivity reader" comes across as censorious.
Regardless of whether the worst offenders can be treated, or should be monitored, or should stay locked up, or whatever, plenty of sex offenders are for things unrelated to children, or for things that you might probably consider "bad" but not "sex offender" bad.
https://www.tijerinalawfirmpc.com/2020/02/6-unexpected-ways-you-could-end-up-on-the-sex-offender-registry/
E.g. urinating in public is distasteful but... sex offender list?
It's hard to turn these laws back down to sensible levels because then you're "being soft on sex offenders!"
Know I have a similar history to you, and sometimes I express the same attitude just because I’m tired or whatever, but after a long while here’s what I came up with in it if it’s any use to you.
1) just because someone deserves to die, it doesn’t mean that I deserve what killing them would do to me.
2) what if we are wrong about their guilt and now we’ve all done something we can’t take back?
3) once you’ve removed someone as a threat and locked them away you are liberated from having to think about killing them
That said, you’d probably agree with me that there’s a lot of very bad thinking about sentencing guidelines for someone who has shown they have a compulsion to hurt children. There seems to be an assumption that it can be studied well, that people don’t lie, and that their compulsion will just go away.
I do worry about this hurting good research. One of the reasons why gay marriage was first passed in battleground states was because there was tons of research showing that gay households did not have worse life outcomes than straight households. I worry that research would not get approved of today if there was sufficient fear that it may show gay people are worse parents than hets.
This whole thing feels very churchy. I feel like every grad student/scientist/research fellow needs to read Galileo's Middle Finger.
Right. The more (especially conservative) people suspect that research they contracts liberal views will not get published, the less they will trust science at all--and rightfully so!
I already see that happening and policies like this will make it worse.
There’s a guy at my local hardware store that I completely trust because he 1) has literally never been wrong about anything he has ever told me 2) doesn’t just make shit up when he doesn’t know an answer. 3) is only interested in interacting with me as a purchaser of wares and doesn’t want to be my priest.
I wish I had that same relationship with academia.
Their point about not treating a particular state as "superior" would mean not publishing ANY medical research that starts with the baseline assumption that it's better to be healthy than sick.
Actually I've just realized "healthy" is an offensive term to the health-deprived, deriving from Western patriarchal notions of human bodies. I'll show myself out.
Yes, the part about disease and disability status is really where this completely flies off the rails. Taken literally, an article about treating/curing a disease or disability would violate these standards.
The internet and other technological advancements have completely disrupted the ability of universities to claim a shred of monopoly on information that average citizens cannot find for themselves instantly. What they should have clung to is their ability to be viewed as arbiters of quality of information, but daily they prove that they are the opposite. This is why college enrollment is in decline and will continue to decline, especially as employers ease up in their credentialing requirements or start to produce degrees in house. I work in academia but am excited for this day to come. We deserve to reap what we have sewn for being intellectually lazy and dishonest while the public has entrusted us to educate the future generations.
Science as a discipline is teetering on the edge of an abyss.
This kind of idiocy may prove the breath of foul wind that pushes Science into the void.
Seriously, people I know (including myself) are already scoping out MDs to make sure they aren’t under the care of a social justice worker mis-credentialed as an MD.
The journals are only adding urgency to the scoping.
Universities and their faculty are no longer thinking society's go-to for reputable, high quality research and ideas. (Ditto for the legacy media like NYT). The popularity of Substack is illustrative of this. This scares the shit out of the people who have benefited from a regime in which they were once among the most widely recognized and respected "knowledge" producers in their fields, designated by their credentials, publications, and reputation of their institutions. I feel like these attempts at purging the remaining free thought from their ranks and the last gaps of the complete restructuring of higher education.
These dynamics are exactly what was going on among historians with the whole presentism blow-up on Twitter. Being an unforgiving cop who polices others is a great way to keep your career going when you're a stalled mediocrity in a shit job or a grad student failing to deliver or an adjunct just scraping by and you're embittered about it. Who wouldn't want revenge on all your perceived tenured nemeses who rejected your articles and funding proposals? Taking a few of them down is a good way to feel powerful in a super competitive profession with scarce opportunities.
Thank You for this, and a number of other articles, M. Singal. But I especially enjoyed this one.
If this isn't an argument to break up the cartel of Journal publishers, I'm not sure what is. TY again.
This is very Soviet sounding, and it disturbs me. Thanks for calling it out.
Just want to point readers to a few other well-articulated critiques of this Nature policy:
https://noahcarl.substack.com/p/scientists-not-doing-science
https://quillette.com/2022/08/28/the-fall-of-nature/
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/08/26/nature-manuscripts-that-are-ideologically-impure-and-harmful-will-be-rejected/
I wish Sabine Hossenfelder didn't delete this tweet (though I understand why she did - the nasty pile on was ridiculous) https://imgur.com/a/AnJZCuj
Her response back "I'm a physicist - I don't know anything about the topics of DEI so how could I write about them" was perfect.
Interesting to consider how often this standard of harm could apply to (mostly liberal) social scientists doing research (with often fairly disparaging conclusions) on conservatives.
The "potential implications (including inadvertent consequences) of research on human groups defined by ... political or other beliefs,... to be reflective of their authorial perspective if not part of the group under study." (in other words, careful drawing sweeping negative conclusion about groups that you're not a part of):
full quote: "Researchers are asked to carefully consider the potential implications (including inadvertent consequences) of research on human groups defined by attributes of race, ethnicity, national or social origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, political or other beliefs, age, disease, (dis)ability or other status, to be reflective of their authorial perspective if not part of the group under study, and contextualise their findings to minimize as much as possible potential misuse or risks of harm to the studied groups in the public sphere."
Really outstanding piece Jesse. I hope you consider taking this one out from behind the paywall so more people can hear this really well articulated takedown of their policy.
DEI and these attitudes don’t simply create jobs for what is now an overabundance of college grads. They offer jobs whose very existence results in an aggregate that better reflects the overall demographics of the US population
Their very existence allows corporations and institutions to achieve a more ideal “diversity”
The expansion of the idea of harm justifies all
this. But it didn’t create the phenomena.
Comrade Lysenko has been given total command of American science and knowledge-making production. He comes not in the name of glorious Communist Revolution but to protect the feelings and self-esteem of the poor downtrodden marginalized (blessed be their names), who he and the Party have dedicated their lives to uplifting and defending. He promises the full destruction of all enemies of the Revolution and the realization of total ideological unanimity before the end of his first 5-Year Plan. So far the Plan is well ahead of schedule...