Crossposted from the soapbox: Amazon is censoring books with GLBTQ content.

[fiercelydreamed]

My apologies to those of you who have both my journals friended and are reading this twice.

Amazon.com is censoring books featuring GLBTQ characters or homosexual relationships by stripping them of their sales rankings, which makes it less likely that they will appear in searches. When contacted regarding one of the books, an author was told, "In

Comments

[tesserae_]

Done. I'm deeply uncomfortable with this whole notion of theirs, that I need to be protected from anything and that it's their job to do the protecting. Maybe if they gave people an option to opt *out* of certain rec categories - but no, don't make those decisions for me...

[tropes]

T, they censored Foucault. It's not only offensive and hateful and wrong, it's also deeply illogical. WTF.

[the_drifter]

And What To Do When Your Spouse Comes Out. What??? misshepeshu and I were just on the phone about this. I'd run straight through into anger, but she'd taken the side road into incredulous bogglement: Brokeback Mountain's censored, but Alan Moore's Lost Girls -- which has not just lesbian sex but incest orgies -- isn't? Your bigotry lacks an internally consistent structure, Amazon. That's like being wrong to eleven on the internet. The only way to fail more epically is to also invoke Godwin's Law.

Also, if they'd read Foucault, they'd know that repression is a myth and that the technologies of power control the polymorphously perverse by instituting a compulsion to confess. DUH.

[tropes]

You should see the twitter explosion about this. The entire site has gone #amazonfail.

[the_drifter]

I love it when the internet shit hits the marketing fan over the weekend and the execs aren't on-hand to provide quick spin control.

[aesc]

I love love LOVE how "consideration of our entire customer base" is totally code for "we've probably caved to right-wing maniacs, only we are completely spineless so we're going to offer you heaping and steaming piles of bullshit and hope you accept it! PLEASE DEAR GOD TAKE IT."

*goes off to google bomb*

[malnpudl]

Note that A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality is still ranked.

*rabid snarl*

[anonymous]

Hope this is okay, but I linked this to John Aravosis. Hopefully he'll pick up the story & help spread the word.

Licia