Sensitive Touch; March 22 2020

I have a lot of feelings about sensitivity readers. Bear with me.

On the one hand, I think they’re an invaluable resource. My current project is, essentially, short stories in the form of diaries written by people all over the world. That’s a lot of experience that I don’t have. A sensitivity reader will help catch anything offensively incorrect, and lend some authenticity to the story.

There’s a lot of emotional labour that goes into sensitivity reading, too. You’re asking someone to look at your writing through the lens of, oftentimes, their individual trauma. That’s a big thing to ask anyone to do. Therefore, why shouldn’t it be a paid service?

But that’s where things get tricky.

Most authors I know care deeply about doing right about the marginalized communities they’re writing. They care because they are marginalized in some way. That goes hand-in-hand with poor economic status. The people who really care often can’t afford a sensitivity reader.

That’s just where the issues begin. Who gets to be a sensitivity reader? The qualifications are marginalization, but who’s vetting these people? To demand someone prove they have the necessary experience leads to a type of gatekeeping that could get really problematic really fast.

For that matter, it’s easy for an under-qualified or inexperienced reader to apply a lot of misconceptions to the original author’s intent. They could wind up offering insight that goes directly against what the writer is going for, but it’s hard to have an open conversation about that without someone getting offended. If it’s the author, they might choose to disregard everything their sensitivity reader says. If it’s the reader, that’s heaping more upset onto the emotional labour they’ve already done.

It’s also hard to get an accurate picture of what issues need to be fixed from a single reader. You need a broad scope to give you the right idea. If you’re shelling out of pocket for every sensitivity reader, though... Well, you could barely afford the first one. Dedicated and lucky authors might be able to do it, but most can’t, and thus won’t.

The easiest thing to do would be to avoid needing a sensitivity reader. But unfortunately, publishing doesn’t often give as much focus and love to books written by minorities, about minority issues. Taking diversity out of the equation means saturating the market even more with cisgender, heterosexual, neurotypical, mentally well, white characters.

Is there a solution? Personally, I think professional sensitivity readers should be employed by and work with professional editors, and be an integral part of the publishing process. The qualifications should be related to readership and editing, and not demand someone prove they check certain boxes on the minority checklist. Freelance sensitivity readers should be more like beta readers, and volunteer their services while taking into account their time and emotional labour.

That’s just me, though, and I’d be remiss not to add that my perspective is a white one.

However, I’ve got my own experiences that I could bring as a sensitivity reader, so in thinking about this, I decided to offer free sensitivity reads. You can learn more about that here!

If you have thoughts on this topic, let me know in the comments! I’d be honestly interested to know what others think!