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Annals of woke literature — 25 Comments

  1. Sensitivity readers are one of the fastest-growing subsets of editors in publishing, particularly in fiction. They’ve been around for a few years now: here’s an account from 2019 by a writer who hired a sensitivity reader even though his book had already been accepted for publication:

    The idea of a sensitivity reader, the newest profession birthed in our politically correct times, instinctively does not sit well with writers. Because writing is not about protecting people’s feelings—it’s about provoking them. And nobody pursues a career in the arts because they like being told what they can and can’t say with their work. So I, like many writers, watched the influence of these “editors” grow with significant consternation. In theory, sensitivity readers simply review looking for anything that might offend the arbitrary sensitivities or transgress the invisible fault lines of the moment. In practice, I saw what looked like hordes of censors with the power to block the publication of Young Adult novels. I even watched as one professional sensitivity reader—a black, gay man—had his own novel sunk for not being sufficiently sensitive to diversity concerns.

    https://quillette.com/2019/10/01/the-problem-with-sensitivity-readers/

  2. I confess I may be mistaken, but I think you put one too many ‘n’s in the headline…

    :-9

  3. So, do you think anyone hired “sensitivity viewers” before displaying “Piss Christ” or “Virgin Mary In Elephant Dung”?

    :-/

  4. }}} There are NO Truths that someone doesn’t absolutely hate.

    I hate that…

  5. Freedom begins when you tell Mrs. Grundy to go fly a kite.

    — Robert A. Heinlein —

  6. It’s not about offensive tropes, it’s about control and the power that extends from control. The Left so needs people to defame, that they will invent out of whole cloth ‘offense’.

    Tell them to go pound sand and if they react violently, finish what they start.

  7. I’m re-reading a favorite British novel written in 1917 and set between 1900 and 1914. The casual anti-semitism and occasional misogyny are jarring. Do I wish some editor had removed those references in 1917, or that someone would re-issue this book this year with the offending parts removed? I do not. It’s where the author was coming from. It’s good to know people like him were prone to certain errors; I can certainly learn something about comparable (though likely different) errors I’m prone to myself.

  8. I didn’t realize Philip Pullman had joined the ranks of Sir Mick and Sir Paul…

    A friend recommended his book, “The Golden Compass” (outside the US, known as “Northern Lights”). At the time I had become some sort of born-again Christian. I didn’t have to read too far into the book to realize Pullman had an axe to grind against Christianity, so I lost interest in reading him.

    However, Pullman is an old-school liberal — freedom of speech and all that — so it’s not surprising he would get into trouble with today’s woke world.

  9. @ huxley > “I didn’t have to read too far into the book to realize Pullman had an axe to grind against Christianity, so I lost interest in reading him.”

    I had seen that observation, so didn’t spend any time on the books, despite their positive reviews. However, I had acquired a copy of the video adaptation of “The Golden Compass” and watched it to see if it was acceptable for the grandkids anyway.

    The treatment didn’t engender any angst religion-wise, but it was very badly scripted, without sufficient antecedents or explanations for much of the plot-line and using confusing dialogue; poorly acted; and had somewhat cartoonish special effects.
    I ditched it on those grounds.

  10. AesopFan:

    Interesting! And entirely likely.

    Aside from my thorough disenchantment with the underlying SJW notions of Hollywood. I’m struck by how shoddy the work is and how far down the standards have fallen.

    By the gods of the Original Star Wars Trilogy…

  11. Interesting pullman sr was an army officer killed in kenya in 1954, when phiilp was 6

  12. I’m re-reading a favorite British novel written in 1917 and set between 1900 and 1914. The casual anti-semitism and occasional misogyny are jarring.

    Wendy Laubach:

    Nine years later with an American novel, you’re talking about “The Sun Also Rises” and I’m with you on that count too…

    Damn good novel, chaps.

  13. Yet again: neurotic (mostly) young (mostly) women at the forefront of Making The World Worse.

    Re Pullman: I read the first volume of his series. It had some rather intriguing and appealing features, but the extreme anti-Christian and specifically anti-Catholic theme made me uninterested in reading further. Basically a somewhat shallow village atheist type, I thought, despite the imaginative scope of the fantasy.

  14. @ Neo > “So what language did Clanchy use that was so terribly offensive? I read another entire article on the brouhaha and then a third one before I found anything that gave me a more precise idea. It’s as though her words were so toxic that they couldn’t be mentioned, even in an article covering the episode.”

    I continue to be intrigued by this common characteristic of Woke complaints: omitting the actual language or action or behavior that is said to be so horrific it merits ostracism from public life forever, if not incarceration (and for some execution).

    PA Cat’s link to an article on Sensitivity readers — which is frightening, by the way — led to another Quillette post remarking on one of those omissions, in the process of detailing a long list of attacks on Wokism’s heretics.

    https://quillette.com/2021/06/24/standing-up-to-the-gender-ideologues-a-quillette-editorial/

    On June 23rd, Britain’s Royal Academy of Arts put out a carefully worded five-paragraph media statement regarding German-born textile artist Jess de Wahls. “We have apologised to Jess de Wahls for the way we have treated her and do so again publicly now,” read the RA communiqué. “We had no right to judge her views … This betrayed our most important core value—the protection of free speech.”

    The controverted speech in question was contained in a 2019 blog post, in which de Wahls wrote that “a woman is an adult human female (not an identity or feeling),” and that trans women are “biological males [who] choose to live as a woman, or believe they actually are women.” These are statements that almost every person knows to be true, but which have become unfashionable to say out loud in highly progressive subcultures. And so, when a handful of people raised a fuss about de Wahls’ work being sold in the RA gift shop, Academy officials not only purged de Wahl from their inventory earlier this month, but peacocked their reasons for doing so.

    In backing down from its attempted cancelation of de Wahls, the RA now claims that “[a] plurality of voices, tolerance, and free thinking are at the core of what we stand for and seek to protect.” Whether or not this Road-to-Damascus conversion is sincere, these high-flown words glide over the fact that de Wahls’s views were never remotely “transphobic” to begin with, no matter what standard of “tolerance” one might choose to apply.
    ….
    But the very fact that she had to defend her reputation in this way shows how deeply embedded gender dogma has become in the world of arts and letters. This includes journalism, too: Even after the Academy apologized to de Wahls, news reports described the artist as being marked by “accusations of transphobia,” without plainly noting that these accusations are baseless. And thanks to Google, these smears will follow de Wahls throughout her career.

    One reason these milieus have succumbed so readily to gender cultism is that activists have successfully weaponized a definition of “transphobia” that now encompasses virtually any acknowledgment of the biological facts concerning human sexual dimorphism.

    While each of the controversies discussed herein may seem small and inconsequential—the contents of a museum gift store, a deleted Twitter account, a canceled university event, a muzzled author—the larger issue at play is not. The “final, most essential command” of any coercive movement is, as George Orwell once put it, “to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.” Once you sweep aside all the glitter showers, animated unicorns, and rainbow emojis, that is ultimately what gender supremacism is truly about.

  15. >> I don’t think the newly-found sanity from the Brits has traveled across the pond yet.

    It may actually be a factor underlying the urgency with which Progressives in the US have been attempting to institutionalize their Child Sexuality & Gender Identity agenda.

    The reforms discussed in that article were set in motion about a year ago with the Bell v Tavistock ruling and the revelations arising from that investigation. Those were soon confirmed by investigations and clinical reviews in the EU resulting in changes to pediatric care in line with the UK’s.

    There’s been almost no acknowledgement of this fact in the US media, nor has there been a response from the NIH that I’m aware of – though it was the NIH that funded the development and promotion of the ‘affirmation model’ as well as the primary hormone therapy protocol for minors. They also launched the clinical network that implements it domestically, through the SGMRO.

    Instead we’ve seen intensified efforts to expand and compel the inculcation of Gender Identity ideology in schools and Federal intervention to prevent states from regulating those treatments.

  16. I don’t expect sanity to take hold any time soon in the “Biden” administration.
    (To the contrary, they simply MUST keep those crises a’ comin. And the war on the American family is particularly well-suited.)

    In any event, the US military had better expedite that “preferred-pronoun” training. PRONTO…. (That means, by yesterday.)
    “Russian Airlines Told To Prepare For World Without GPS”—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russian-airlines-told-prepare-world-without-gps

  17. a little remarked note about Clockwork Orange, is alex and the rest of the droogs operated in a Soviet controlled Britain, except in this case they do it to themselves, of course the EU having been designed by an Italian communist Aldo Spinelli, might explain things,

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