Skin in the Game - Karen Kao
Sensitivity readers are the new thing. At least, it was new to me when I read an article by Lionel Shriver entitled We need to talk about sense and sensitivity . Apparently, US publishers are sending out manuscripts for review by sensitivity readers. Their job is to check for any misrepresentations, stereotypes, inauthentic dialogue or anything else that might conceivably offend “marginalised groups”, which include a host of racial, gender, and disability variants. Shriver calls them the sensitivity police and warns of censorship coming to a bookshop near you. critical theory Shriver likes a good fight. In 2016, she gave a speech at the Brisbane Literary Festival. It was so controversial that some of the audience walked out to write their own speeches. Shriver’s topic was cultural appropriation , in her eyes another form of censorship. Those who embrace a vast range of “identities” – ethnicities, nationalities, races, sexual and gender categories, cl...