The rise of the ‘sensitivity reader’

You probably won’t have heard about sensitivity readers, but across the pond they are already an essential part of fiction.

Sensitivity readers are freelance copy editors who publishers pay to cancel-proof their new books. They read books that feature identities or experiences that are outside of the lived experience of the author. They then critique the writing through the prism of what they claim to be their own authoritative life experience to guide the author toward more authentic representation. For example, the white author Jodi Picoult used a sensitivity reader for her novel about a black nurse who cares for the children of white supremacists.

For critics, these individuals are the latest stage of the culture wars: woke-ifying new books before readers even have the chance to read them. For publishers they offer a seductively cheap way of reducing the risk of a book or its author being cancelled and the ensuing reputational and profit damage to the firm.

To become a sensitivity reader you have to advertise your suffering — create and market a CV of otherness, of emotional pain, trauma, credentialising your oppression to enter a victim-for-hire system. Salt and Sage, for example, is a market leader in this industry. It offers dozens of sensitivity and expert readers whose online profiles enable the public to browse consultants with a panoply of experiences. They range from the ethnic and cultural (Afro-Brazilian, Christian, Native American) to the traumatic (emotional/mental abuse by a parent, rape survivor, institutionalisation in mental hospital) to the interest-based (cheese-making, equestrianism, tabletop gaming, K-pop).

When read as a list, the incongruity of each reader’s profile can be darkly comic. One person’s list includes ‘LGBTQ…abusive relationships… schizophrenia, Pilates… law school… vegan lifestyle… use of an EpiPen’. Almost all of the readers seem to use their full names, unfazed by making public their most intimate and traumatic experiences.