Discrimination: who are the "sensitivity readers", these new book correctors?

Manon Bernard 3:43 p.m., August 31, 2021

DECRYPTION

It is a whole new profession which is developing in the publishing world: "sensitivity readers".

Their mission?

Read the texts and identify what can hurt minorities because of their gender, skin color or sexual orientation.

These new proofreaders are added to the "gender editors" already present in certain media such as the

in the United States or even at

in France.

"We are there to reassure, enlighten and explain and not to censor, as many media say it still and always now", explains a "sensitivity reader" in the program 

on Europe 1.

For some time now, publishing houses have hired a person specifically dedicated to proofreading texts to avoid clichés in essays, novels or even comics.

"We usually ask for help with subjects such as bisexuality, harassment, sexism, misogyny or even gender stereotypes. I usually read the first drafts in order to spot clumsy writing and avoid them. clichés ", takes up this" sensitivity reader ".

A profession sometimes criticized 

But this new profession is sometimes criticized by certain players in the publishing world. Like Emmanuel Pierrat, lawyer and also proofreader. For him, "legal proofreading has always existed". "It's something that I do as a lawyer in the French edition. It's something that legal services do in television and series production companies, which is not to be defamatory, not to be infringing. to privacy, do not call for racial hatred, "he continues. According to Emmanuel Pierrat, the "sensitivity reader" smooths the written word. "This is not the world of law. It is a kind of self-righteous morality," he proclaims at the microphone of Philippe Vandel on Europe 1.

>> Find Philippe Vandel and Culture-Médias every day from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Europe 1 as well as in replay and podcast here

Emmanuel Pierrat takes the example of the opera

, directed by Georges Bizet and written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy in the 19th century.

The opera, passed to proofreading two years ago in Italy, would then have changed face, says the lawyer.

"We changed the end because the director said we could no longer applaud a feminicide. But at the end of

, I applaud the singer, the sets and the overall performance. But he changed. so that in the end Carmen kills her lover and that she is not killed ", he explains.

A "sanitized" view of history for the lawyer.

"Point out clumsiness, approximations or clichés"

This is also the opinion of Céline Charvet, the editorial director of Casterman Jeunesse.

She chose not to work with a "sensitivity reader".

Impossible for her to "delegate [her] conviction", she prefers more "to assume [her] editor choices by carrying them with the author".

Even if it means not publishing when the text poses a problem.

"This has happened to us before," she assumes.

"An American dystopia posed real questions about Islam, a subject that we do not master enough to be able to assume a point that could easily have become controversial. We have decided not to publish," says Céline Charvet.

However, many writers rely on these specialist proofreaders as tools to improve their writing and dismiss reviews out of hand. "The 'sensitivity readers' are there to point out the errors, the blunders, the approximations or the clichés that I could make vis-à-vis certain characters who come from minorities to which I do not belong", details Cordélia , an author of children's novels who directly calls on these proofreaders. "They have this experience that I don't have, so a different perspective," she concludes.