So, I first saw the news via Susie Bright (http://susiebright.blogs.com) and Tristan Taormino's (http://www.puckerup.com, http://www.openingup.net) facebook twitters (yes, the new facebook status update is twitterish, but I like it more) . . . Amazon has decided to remove books with adult content from front page searches and the ranking system (which also means that you don't get notices regarding those books in the "you liked ___, so you might like ___" spambot notices which is how many people find out about new books that suit their interests - quite frankly, I am not sure why Amazon would want to cripple a worthwhile marketing tool that has allowed them to cater to a person's genuine previous buying habits.
Obviously, this affects sales on those books that are narfed since it's a little bit like having to ask for the book specifically rather than finding it on the shelves. Jane has a very very good description of what all this means for authors and readers at http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/04/12/amazon-rank/ which you really want to look at as well as Dear Author break of the story at http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/04/12/amazon-censors-its-rankings-search-results-to-protect-us-against-glbt-books/.
A number of the blurbs in the blogosphere note that this move specifically targets gay and lesbian friendly books (for instance, "Heather Has Two Mommies" is expunged from rankings but "A Parents Guide to Preventing Homosexuality" (yes, from the NARTH folks) is still right there in the searches and is not considered adult content at all - although, I quite frankly put it in my bin of "that's f*cked up not to mention unrealistic" titles). So, if you come off as in any way gay-friendly, you're shoved to the back of the book bus but if you stand up tall and proud with your homophobic paranoid delusions you get to ride in the front.
However, the move doesn't just target gay and lesbian titles. Anything that Amazon's formula considers in any way adult gets zapped. So, a collection of horror short stories with one story that has an erotic scene gets pulled but Jackie Collins is fine. Mein Kampf is still fine as are books on dog fighting. Andrew Sullivan discusses this paradoxical paradigm at a personal level at http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/04/amazon-delists-gay-books-as-adult.html and Mark R. Probst has the response from Amazon regarding his query on the matter at http://markprobst.livejournal.com/15293.html (despite other sources posting that Amazon has also called it a glitch).
Some folks have called this more by Amazon a form of censorship. Well, it is but Amazon is not the government so your first amendment or other rights don't apply, at least not in the way that some folks seem to think they do. They can have weird corporate policies if they wish. However, in creating the policy, Amazon is obviously catering to the delights of a certain vocal subsector of their market (the same folks who force other corporate entities to have all sorts of dumbass policies "to protect us from ourselves" and the like. There are other, more elegant solutions to their conundrum. They could listen to those of us who WANT our adult topics (even though we don't consider them adult in nature). They could link searches to profile age (not showing what they consider adult stuff in searches unless a profile has a majority age in it). They could have an opt in to adult system. Or, they could be reasonable and let the dice fall where they fall . . . it's not like we're talking hardcore porn here, we're talking about books - the kind with words.
One man's porn is another man's erotica is another man's smut is another man's light reading. While I respect that some folks are not comfortable with material that honestly deals with the non-sexual lives of gays and lesbians and how they can cope with societal pressures while maintaining a gay-positive lifestyle, I would respectfully submit that I am very uncomfortable with material that flies in the face of reasonable interpretation of scientific and cultural evidence to the contrary and claim that somehow children should be protected from becoming gay as if homosexuality were a virus one could "catch." I most definitely find it offensive that books of the former type might beconsidered too controversial for the masses while those of the latter are okey-dokey and put out in search results as what then becomes a representation of general opinion and expression of ideas (really, search results give the impression of most commonly held or popular ideas in and of themselves).
Honestly, while I certainly don't go out of my way to expose my daughter to gay indoctrination material, I do teach her that gay is just another way that people live their lives because that's who they are. I want her to understand that our gay friends are regular normal people and that it's okay for them to be gay . . . it's just who they are, just as our Chinese friends are Chinese and our non-Chinese friends are simply non-Chinese. It's an atribute, NOT an attitude. However, I would very strongly want to protect my daughter from the nonsense associated with a book that purports to teach how one can avoid being what one already is or that one should be ashamed for being it. I do not protect my daughter from such prejudicial ideas and nonsense by trying to hide it . . . rather, I have done so by teaching her my values at the onset and given her the tools to evaluate things on her own. Certainly, as she matures she will be exposed to new ideas, some which she will reject thanks to the loving and caring and tolerant initial values my wife and I have endeavored to install in her upbringing and others she will accept. In the end, as she matures and has more critical tools with which to explore the world, she will reject some of my values as not being appropriate for her and she will continue to embrace those that are appropriate for her experience of the world (I sincerely hope that she will always be open and tolerant of others - acceptance of others doesn't mean accepting their life choices as one's own - certainly, she understands that one can be friends with Captain Jack (I mean Torchwood, not Pirates) and accepting his life choices as his own without joining him in those choices). No, I don't want my daughter or other peoples' kids surfing Amazon and clicking on hardcore porn picture links but there aren't really any there in the first place. What is being limited here is not explicit material but in many cases merely the access to frank discussion of ideas. When discussing some of these books being shuffled into oblivion, we are not even talking about sexual material (although that is certainly there) but about material that quite frankly is intended for young people in a positive nurturing way). Something is broken and it isn't the folks who are objecting to this new policy.
I would hope that Amazon would adopt a policy that allows parents to teach their children on their own rather than making choices for us. I would most certainly wish Amazon to allow adults to decide which link to click on their own rather than limiting the links available to us as well. Folks who are not interested in gay and lesbian or other materials can certainly easily JUST NOT CLICK the links to such books without eliminating the option for those of us who WANT TO CLICK.
All the best,
Brian
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Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH [brian@briandavidphillips.com]
Hypnotist, Hypnotherapist, Intuitionist, Trance Wizard
President, Society of Experiential Trance
Associate Professor, NCCU, Taipei, Taiwan
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