From "Fresh Air" from WHYY, on National Public Radio
Maybe We All Need Some 'Sensitivity' Training
By Geoff Nunberg
"Sensitive" was complicated long before it was political. Like other words for feeling, it alternates between an inert and an active meaning. Someone can be sensitive the way a tooth is, pained by the slightest touch. We think of that as a bad thing, as in, "Gee, don't be so sensitive!" Or it can be like having a sensitive nose, attuned to what's in the air. That kind of sensitivity is usually considered a good thing, at least in moderation. Novelists have always made a butt of the bluff, insensitive male — the man of the undeveloped heart, as E.M. Forster called him, the character who says things like, "Good Lord, woman, now what's the matter?"...