Washington (AFP) – It’s a profession which is increasingly under the spotlight as the culture wars rumble on: “sensitivity readers” — editors who identify insensitivities or stereotypes in manuscripts — are becoming a lightning rod for the publishing industry.

Such readers have worked in the wings of the Western literary world for years now, though they were largely confined to children’s literature.

But amid social reckonings such as the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, sensitivity readers are becoming prominent in contemporary fiction publishing also — and not everyone is pleased about it.

Publishers “are doing a damn good job, trying to ruin our books, and to ruin our fun as readers,” the American author of “We Need To Talk About Kevin,” Lionel Shriver, complained on ultra-conservative British channel GB News last month.

Sensitivity readers have recently been pilloried again with the announcement that books by children’s writer Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels, were being republished to be more adapted to current sensibilities. 

In Dahl’s books, for example, some characters are no longer identified as “fat” or “crazy.” Fleming’s books were being reissued with racial references — including the N-word — removed.

Accusations of censorship began flying almost immediately from observers who fear sanitized literature could whitewash the past as well as the present. 

“People say that, but I don’t feel that they understand the process,” Patrice Williams Marks, a Los Angeles-based sensitivity reader, tells AFP. 

“If you’re writing about a people or community that you’re unfamiliar with, and you want it to be authentic… then you find somebody who’s a sensitivity reader who’s part of that community and ask for their opinions,” she explains. 

“I always let them know that they don’t have to accept the changes that I suggest,” says Lola Isabel Gonzalez, another sensitivity reader, also based in Los Angeles.

Modern censors?

So who are “sensitivity readers”?

Mostly they are freelance editors, often paid by the word or number of pages — and with strict confidentiality clauses, of course — by authors or publishers concerned about the accuracy of their manuscripts.

Or, as critics charge, to avoid at all costs the disaster of being canceled in a social media storm over a faux pas.

The proofreaders often list their areas of expertise: “child of immigrants,” “bisexual,” “autistic,” “hijabi,” “deaf,” “expertise in both mainland Chinese and Hong Kong culture” and so on. 

“There are good reasons for regulating children’s reading: it is foundational and formational,” British author Kate Clanchy wrote last year.

But she is much more circumspect when it comes to adults.

Adults “are able to put books down if they upset them, so their books may safely contain difficult ideas,” argues Clanchy, who was herself at the center of a sensitivity reader controversy when her memoir was accused of being racist and insensitive.

For Shriver, who has long complained about such readers, they are nothing less than “sensitivity police.”

“At the keyboard, unrelenting anguish about hurting other people’s feelings inhibits spontaneity and constipates creativity,” she wrote in The Guardian newspaper in 2017.

In France, a country widely resistant to this type of revisionism, the essayist Raphael Enthoven in 2020 denounced these “modern censors” as “the vanguard of the Identity Plague.”

Progress

But many other writers are in favor of readers — like the American Adele Holmes, who called on Marks’s services for her first book, “Winter’s Reckoning.”

“Patrice was able to point out some areas of white privilege and the white savior role,” Holmes told AFP.

And, more prosaically, for the character of a Black woman described as having “silky” hair, Marks suggested using the word “coil” instead, to make it more realistic. 

Holmes feels that the proofreader helped her “immensely.” 

As for the criticisms, she argues they come from people who feel “threatened” by minorities, in a publishing world long known to be predominantly white.

For her part, Marks dates the renewed interest in her profession to the 2020 killing of George Floyd, an African American man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis. The murder ignited protests and a social reckoning on modern racism in the United States and around the world.

Since then, authors have “become more conscious of the lens that they’re looking through,” Marks told AFP.

Gonzalez also sees this increased care as reflecting social evolution. 

“I don’t think I could have done it professionally in any other decade,” she says of her job, welcoming the fact that “Generation Z” is challenging established social narratives.

Those younger generations understand the importance of sensitivity reading, she argues — as opposed to their elders, who might “have a harder time seeing it as progress.”

Lukas Gage’s mom praised his “great a**” when she saw his nude scene in ‘The White Lotus’.

The 27-year-old actor has had some raunchy sex scenes in both the HBO vacation satire and the latest season of ‘You’ but the risque material didn’t faze his “cool hippy” mother.

Asked how his mom reacted to the scenes, he told Variety: “She says, ‘That’s a great a**. Get that money. Get that bag and be committed.’

“My mom’s cool. She’s like a cool little hippy lady. With nudity, I think we both share sort of a European vibe.”

Lukas – who is dating hairstylist Chris Appleton – doesn’t want anyone to feel “scrutinised or like the butt of the joke” with the sex acts he’s depicted on screen.

Asked if he’s had any crazy fan mail, he replied: “No. We have a couple people from the golden shower community that are very grateful that it’s being shown on screen, and they have some haters who are yucking some people’s yum.

“Everyone should feel heard and feel seen. I never wanted to make anyone feel scrutinised or like the butt of the joke. I just believe that everyone should embrace all their kinks and everything that they love about themselves and not feel ashamed.”

Meanwhile, Lukas offered praise to Diplo for his “honesty” after the producer revealed he had received oral sex from a man and was “not not gay”.

He said: “I’m sure there are a lot of people who have that same exact experience but maybe don’t have the confidence or the honesty to talk about it like that.

“And, you know, there’s going to be people on either side saying that he’s not labelling himself enough. I commend him on his honesty and I don’t think we need to label everything and have it all figured out. Things can be in a grey area and don’t have to be so black and white.”

Bono was too “macho” to admit to being an ABBA fan.

The U2 frontman admitted he never wanted to “own up” to enjoying the Scandinavian quartet’s pop hits when he was a teenager “in the middle of punk rock” but he and bandmate The Edge professed to a love of various chart stars who are not “very hip” because they can appreciate their art for what it is.

Explaining why they chose to cover ABBA’s ‘SOS’ in BBC Radio 2’s ‘Piano Room’, which was broadcast on Thursday (16.03.23), The Edge told DJ Gary Davies: “We’re big fans of this Scandinavian band, appreciators of their work in a way that grew over years. We are fans of the Bee Gees which people wouldn’t have imagined. We’re fans of lots of great songwriters who aren’t necessarily seen as very hip, and I guess we’re just appreciators of their work.”

Bono added: “I was saying to one of the cellists today that I didn’t have the courage to own up to this next band when I was 16 in the middle of punk rock, but I did get to the Bee Gees and I was ready to own up to ‘Massachusetts’ and ‘Tragedy’, I mean these are just crazy good.

“John Lennon owned up to loving the Bee Gees. But there’s a bit of a macho, ‘I don’t want to own up to ABBA.’ But I’ll tell you what, they’re just better songs. You can’t be empirical about everything in art.”

The ‘One’ singer recalled the “phenomenon” of how ABBA were so beloved by “young mothers”.

He said: “There is something about ABBA. I can remember ABBA as like the national anthem for young mothers. Certainly at closing time at our local pub, often young women would sing ‘Thank You For The Music’, and I would sing it and I was very thankful for the music!

“But I was like, what is this phenomenon? This is before their musicals and all that. What is going on with ABBA?”

Listen back to Bono and The Edge in BBC Radio 2’s Piano Room on BBC Sounds and BBC iPlayer.

Washington (AFP) – Until 2019, Matthew Kacsmaryk was a lawyer representing a Christian organization aligned with the religious right. Now a US federal judge, he is set to decide the future of abortion pills across the country.

The 45-year-old Kacsmaryk has been in the spotlight ever since a coalition of anti-abortion activists sued the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), seeking to overturn the federal agency’s approval of mifepristone over 20 years ago.

By filing the suit in Amarillo, Texas, plaintiffs were certain to have Kacsmaryk oversee the case, as he is the only sitting federal judge in the city.

That was not a coincidence, said ACLU project director Jennifer Dalven.

The group behind the suit “was able to hand-select their judge,” picking one who “has issued a series of radical decisions” on hot-button social issues, Dalven said.

“In any rational universe, this case would be laughed out of court on multiple grounds.”

Conservative opponents to abortion rights have closed ranks around Kacsmaryk, who was appointed by former president Donald Trump and confirmed in 2019 by the then-Republican-controlled Senate.

The judge is “the latest target of judicial intimidation” whose “real offense is his background litigating religious liberty cases,” said Carrie Severino, who leads the conservative legal group Judicial Crisis Network.

Before assuming his life-long post as a federal judge, Kacsmaryk was a lawyer for the First Liberty Institute, a Texas-based group that focused on cases surrounding religious freedom.

Those included representing bakers who refused to make a wedding cake for same-sex couples because it violated their Christian beliefs, and supporting a public high school coach who was fired after praying on the field with students.

While at First Liberty Institute, Kacsmaryk openly opposed the Supreme Court’s landmark decision to legalize same-sex marriage as well as transgender people’s choice to use bathrooms of their gender identity.

In a 2015 article, he decried the “sexual revolution” which he said was “spearheaded by secular libertines.”

“Even the unborn child must yield to the erotic desires of liberated adults,” Kacsmaryk said.

When the Senate was considering his nomination — confirmation of the president’s picks requires a simple majority — Democrats were strongly opposed, voting en bloc against him.

Democratic leader Chuck Schumer at the time described Kacsmaryk as having “demonstrated a hostility to the LGBTQ bordering on paranoia.”

Kacsmaryk nonetheless vowed that once in office, he would judge impartially without letting his beliefs influence his decisions.

While he has mostly dealt with low-level cases since taking office in Amarillo, Kacsmaryk has already ruled once against the Biden administration when it comes to reproduction-related issues.

Late last year, he ruled that a federal program which funds contraception for minors without their parents’ consent was illegal — although he did not order an immediate halt to the program.

His sister, whose child Kacsmaryk helped place up for adoption when she gave birth at 17, now believes he is the right person to decide the mifepristone case.

“I feel like he was made for this,” Jennifer Griffith, still an opponent to abortion rights, told The Washington Post.

“He is exactly where he needs to be.”

Gwyneth Paltrow has found rectal ozone therapy to be “very helpful”.

The 50-year-old actress has revealed that the therapy – which involves having gas delivered via a catheter into the colon – is the weirdest wellness treatment she’s ever tried.

During an appearance on the ‘Art of Being Well’ podcast, Gwyneth explained: “I have used ozone therapy, rectally. Can I say that? It’s pretty weird. It’s pretty weird, yeah. But it’s been very helpful.”

The Oscar-winning actress also revealed that she’s consumed ketone drinks as part of her wellness journey.

Gwyneth observed that the drinks taste like “cherry gasoline”.

She said: “It helps with cognition and brain fog and energy. I have it with green tea in the afternoon. It tastes pretty, pretty bad.

“I believe that they are coming out with an improved flavour or an improved version, which is very exciting.”

Meanwhile, Gwyneth previously revealed that she’d “barely” drunk alcohol after being diagnosed with COVID-19.

The Hollywood star – who was diagnosed with the virus in 2020 – explained: “It’s been a long year of barely any alcohol, I mean I’ve had a sip here and there but very rarely.

“You know me, I love a drink, I love the ritual of it, and I love to sit down and have one and chat. I love the taste of alcohol, like, I love whisky and wine and, whatever, vodka. I’ll take it all.

“But I think what happened was, having gotten COVID and having felt like s***, or like having had long COVID stuff for a while, I just didn’t feel vibrant.”

The actress had COVID “early on” and she was subsequently encouraged to change her diet by a medical expert.

Gwyneth explained: “I didn’t feel good, and I had really high inflammation levels and the doctor was like, ‘Look, you really need to clean up your act. You gotta, at least for three months, no alcohol, no grains, no sugar, nothing processed,’ everything like that.”