Addressing status as native speaker/non-native speaker in peer revieweing - a short-ish rant.

I am a non-native speaker of English. And this fact speaks clearly from all my writing and speaking.
Also, I acquired German in the Aachen region. This fact also speaks clearly from all my writing and speaking.
Both my English and my German contain non-standard forms.

Also, I used to have a terrible tendency towards overly complicated, run-on, needs-to-diagram-to-comprehend sentences. Plagued me in both languages in which I publish. Worked on it. Hope it has gotten better.

When I have my texts proof-read, the proofreader ALWAYS finds errors. In English, my nemesis are pronouns. In German, it's the cases. I struggle with singular-plural aligment in super-fancy-complicated sentences in both languages. Also, typos. Do them in all languages.

So, my writing just to suck a lot, now it sucks only a little. Also, I make errors in both languages (and, if my native speaker proofreaders are to be trusted, at a similar level).

Yet, only when I submit in English, do I get these "The author is clearly a non-native speaker and should...."
At the beginning, it didn't frazzle me. I am a non-native speaker, my texts identify me as one, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with being a non-native speaker.

But the more often I get those comments (usually followed by a list of two typos and three grammar mistakes the reviewer found), the more I dislike the practice.

I mean, if my text sucks, it sucks REGARDLESS of my linguistic biography, right? It's not me being a non-native speaker that makes it suck! It's the convoluted sentences, and the terrible paragraph composition, and maybe those few typos and grammar hickups don't help it either.

English is the language of academic publishing. It is not the native language of the majority of people who publish. Yet, peer review and "Notes to authors" still seem to imply that the native speaker is the norm, and the non-native speaker the deviation.

We all* need help with our texts. I don't mean that we don't know how to write - but that if we want to produce the VERY BEST texts, we need help. That applies to native speakers and non-native speakers.

*A handful of wondrous exceptions might exist.

Peer reviewers: Just tell me that my text needs some more tender loving care. That maybe a proofreader could help. But I would appreciate it if you didn't explain how useful this is by speculating about my language biography.

Or, of course, tell me that you love my text. That, too, is appreciated ;)

Btw, the phrase I've adopted when peer reviewing myself:
"You could make the text easier to read/more appealing to the audience by ...."

Works for anybody, native speaker and non-native speaker alike. And focuses on the essence: Reaching y audience. Communicating y ideas.