How and Why Sensitivity Reading Is Not Expurgation
First, let’s define our terms:
Expurgation is a form of censorship that involves purging anything deemed noxious or offensive from an artistic work or other type of writing or media.
Sensitivity Reading is a form of editorial guidance to assure/ensure cultural presentation is accurate, and societal subgroups are depicted in ways that they agree accurately represent them.
I suspect the word war is already at least partial understood based on those two definitions, alone. I can also tell you that I stan and ride with #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs. That said, my thoughts…
People who enjoy and savor their stereotypes, regardless how and why that is the case, are ever loathe to have them updated; particularly if that update feels or seems to them to result in a loss of power within the culture and society itself.
Of course, this is precisely why the matter of sensitivity reading came to exist; to support a credible and validated challenge from those affected by such stereotypes in the public discourse and space. To very specifically and with adept focus, insist that the only humans who are of the cohort being described “own” the description of themselves. That they are, in fact, the only legitimate owners of such aspects of identity.
All else is opinion, subjective and uninformed assessment based upon (usually) deeply internalized models that impact self-esteem along with every other aspect of identity and representation.
The irony rests in the double-standard so clearly on display.
Who gets to say what it is like to live as you?
Who gets to say what it is like to do what you do?
Who gets to say what is an understanding of you?
Expurgation is what happens when certain groups who are explicitly NOT of the cohort being described “decide” that no one else can be part of creating that definition, regardless that it often crosses more than any two group boundaries.
Sensitivity Reading is what happens when a company wants their writers to rely on lived experience and culturally validated research to make educated and informed decisions about how to present and write humans when the author, themself, is not a member of the cohort by adoption, birth, culturally, or societal immersive experience.
I respectfully assert that anyone who still cannot make this reconcile in a way mutually beneficial to all is likely not much interested in that being the outcome.
Thus, self-selecting out of knowledge. Thus, self-inflicted.
The difference between the two, as always, is intention and motivation as consistently expressed over time.
Which is the other rebuke; if you’re going to argue long-term harm then you’re going to need to let that change be tested over the long-term to see if you are correct.
You won’t be, because evolution favors diversity as fuel and the entire frelling universal reality disagrees with you, but it is with high probability and confidence I assert that allowing the change on behalf of those who have been ignored and shunned from the stipulation all together is the very least one might reasonably or legitimately ask within the context of a culture/society.