'Sensitivity Readers Are the New Literary Gatekeepers'
'Sensitivity Readers Are the New Literary Gatekeepers'
My conversation with American culture writer, novelist and podcaster Kat Rosenfield
Appears in this episode
If you’re a fiction reader and you’ve noticed that novels are getting more political — and more overtly aligned with the progressive political project in particular — there’s a reason for this. Big publishing houses are increasingly hiring what are called “sensitivity readers,” to vet authors’ work to ensure that it doesn’t cause offence.
My guest on the podcast today has written a piece about this trend for Reason Magazine. It’s titled “Sensitivity Readers Are the New Literary Gatekeepers,” and it argues that overzealous language policing on race and gender is shaping the publishing industry in profound ways.
Kat Rosenfield is an American culture writer, a columnist at UnHerd and the co-host of the Feminine Chaos podcast. She’s also a novelist; her most recent book is No One Will Miss Her. Kat Rosenfield is my guest, today on Lean Out.
'Sensitivity Readers Are the New Literary Gatekeepers'
I will add this comment as I have for the sites I most value. Many of us do not have the time nor the inclination to listen to podcasts/watch videos. Luckily, there are auto-transcribers that will take the spoken part and reduce it to text with 99% accuracy. We readers can figure out the errors and read past them. They are inexpensive/free and most of the sites where I have brought this up have started posting transcriptions when they post podcasts.
Anything for which one has to sacrifice minute for minute to learn is likely to be underused -- there are only 1440 minutes in a day. But a 15 minute podcast can be read in under a minute. This is wonderful for your visual learners and will greatly broaden your scope.
Hope you can figure out how to do this. Your stuff is wonderful. Just don't want to miss any of it.
Please consider transcribing the podcasts…
Tillman