Sensitivity readers – that is, censors, thought police – are patrolling the publishing world:
An author and her independent publisher have warned that “sensitivity readers” who check books for potentially offensive content are destroying the art of writing.
In one case Kate Clanchy, the award-winning author, was told she could not refer to the Taliban as terrorists because they now govern Afghanistan. The sensitivity readers review manuscripts before publication and highlight potentially offensive content.
One commercial fiction author described how an editor at a leading UK publisher wanted to send his latest novel for review because one of the characters had a disability. The request was made even though the author is himself disabled and the character has the same condition.
One agency that provides sensitivity readers has a baffling array of areas of expertise, including “grey ace”, apparently a term describing someone who may only experience limited sexual attraction or on only one occasion.
There have been a number of public controversies over the use of sensitivity readers. The writer Anthony Horowitz said that he was asked to remove the word “scalpel” as it might offend native Americans due to its similarity to the word scalp. The word comes from the Latin scalpellum, meaning “a surgical knife”.
Clanchy was asked by her publisher to send her book Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me to three sensitivity readers years after it was published. The book won the 2020 Orwell prize for political writing but the following year social media users said some descriptions were racist.
Her publisher, Picador, sent the book to sensitivity readers. Clanchy said: “They came back with hundreds of changes so I just refused and left the publisher. In addition to the objection about the Taliban, she said, “I was told comparing Scotland’s bings — spoil heaps — to boils might be offensive to acne sufferers.
“The trouble is authors are now-self censoring their work even before it is shown to these people. We already have fact-checkers, so I don’t see why we need sensitivity readers. They are thought-checkers.”
After leaving Picador, Clanchy joined an independent publisher, Swift Press, and reprinted her original book. Its co-founder, Mark Richards, said: “I wish these books would be taken on by mainstream publishers but the industry has lost its backbone over the last five years. Publishers do not want to be caught in Twitter storms so they hire sensitivity readers as insurance.”
Swift Press is also publishing Time to Think, a BBC journalist’s account of the events that led to the closure of the Tavistock gender clinic, after she failed to find a mainstream publisher.
Writing Diversely is an agency that provides sensitivity readers. One reader is described as “a disabled nonbinary Jewish queer person with ADHD”. Another states that they are “Bisexual genderfluid, light-skinned brown Mexican, self-diagnosed autistic, as well as with EDS [Ehlers-Danlos syndromes], depression, and anxiety”.
Writing Diversely did not respond to a request for comment.
Dear me. An author like Roald Dahl, say, would surely get into trouble if he tried to publish nowadays.
Well yes, as it happens, that's all being taken care of:
“Words matter,” begins the discreet notice, which sits at the bottom of the copyright page of Puffin’s latest editions of Roald Dahl’s books. “The wonderful words of Roald Dahl can transport you to different worlds and introduce you to the most marvellous characters. This book was written many years ago, and so we regularly review the language to ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today.”
Put simply: these may not be the words Dahl wrote. The publishers have given themselves licence to edit the writer as they see fit, chopping, altering and adding where necessary to bring his books in line with contemporary sensibilities. By comparing the latest editions with earlier versions of the texts, The Telegraph has found hundreds of changes to Dahl’s stories.
Language related to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race has been cut and rewritten. Remember the Cloud-Men in James and the Giant Peach? They are now the Cloud-People. The Small Foxes in Fantastic Mr Fox are now female. In Matilda, a mention of Rudyard Kipling has been cut and Jane Austen added. It’s Roald Dahl, but different….
While there have been tweaks before, there has never been an alteration on this scale. Take The Witches, for example, Dahl’s memorably unpleasant 1983 novel about a young boy growing up in a world ruled by a coven of secretive witches. A 2001 version of the text includes the following passage, about yanking women’s hair to check if they are witches. (In the story, witches are bald, and wear gloves to disguise their claws.)
Unsurprisingly given The Witches’ subject matter, many of the edits are to do with depictions of women. “Chambermaid” becomes “cleaner”. “Great flock of ladies” becomes “great group of ladies”. “You must be mad, woman!” becomes “You must be out of your mind!” “The old hag” becomes “the old crow”. “A witch is always a woman”, went the 2001 version of the book. “I do not wish to speak badly about women. Most women are lovely. But the fact remains that all witches are women. There is no such thing as a male witch.” That became, simply, “A witch is always a woman. There is no such thing as a male witch.”
A selection of changes to The Witches by sensitivity readers: pic.twitter.com/7LrufI95Rt
— Tony Dowson (@TonyDowson5) February 17, 2023
Mick Hartley 
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