Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

The cult of sensitivity

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I was extra pleased to have swerved the modern curse that is Wordle when I read that ‘sensitive’ words have been removed from it. A spokesman proclaimed: ‘In an effort to make the puzzle more accessible, we are reviewing the solutions and removing obscure or potentially insensitive words over time. HARRY is an example of an obscure word.’ Other more obviously ‘insensitive’ words had already been removed, such as ‘sluts,’ ‘bitch’ and ‘whore’, and though I’m the most rad of femmes, I do wish they’d stayed. Removing ribaldry makes the language increasingly bland.

‘Sensitivity’ is one of those words that’s changed its meaning. It was once used mostly to refer to sore teeth and gums. But just as ‘community’ now means people complaining and ‘activist’ now means sitting at home swearing on the internet, to be sensitive simply signifies you’re politically progressive.

In 2015, in this magazine, I invented the term cry-bully to describe a new type: ‘A hideous hybrid of victim and victor, weeper and walloper.’ Cry-bullies are everywhere, the duplicitous Pushmi-Pullyus of the personal and the political. And for a cry-bully, almost everything’s too insensitive. They’re ‘empaths’, they say, deeply disturbed by anything unpleasant.

‘And how are you at thinking on your feet?

If it was just Gen Z being soppy, you could slightly excuse it. But when middle-aged men and women who you respected for their apparent insouciance claim to be ‘empaths’, it’s hard not to despair. Witness John Lydon saying that punk was about ‘empathy’. Really? From where I was standing – right at the front of the crowd at the Screen on the Green – it was about anger and spite. But no doubt I got the wrong end of the stick. The Sex Pistols took issue with everyone, from girls who had abortions (‘Bodies’) to the Queen (not a human being, apparently).

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