I am disgusted but also (perhaps naively?) quite surprised. I always saw Amazon.com as a rather benign business. Is there a history of some sort of moral-political agenda that I am not aware of??
It's quite bizarre. I did a brief search out of curiosity and their sweep also censors books about "curing homosexuality" etc. So if "homosexual, lesbian, gay" etc appears in the title or summary or keywords, Amazon removed it from rankings. The only explanation I can think of is a US military style "Don't ask don't tell"--ie, that this topic is verboten, pro or con.
I happen to know Doris Kloster's work. It has no aesthetic value (unlike, say, Robert Mapplethorpe or Bob Carlos Clarke or David Hamilton). No doubt her version of Histoire d'O will not add anything to whatever literary value the novel has. And why does someone not point out that both O and Alan Moore's Lost Girls (which is probably the worst thing he ever did), which both apparently have the Amazon seal of approval, are full of explicit lesbian content? These people condemn Radclyffe Hall and retain full-frontal explicit scenes.
"In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature."
But looking at what has and has not been de-ranked, they look inconsistent in what they call "adult materials".
I think the prejudice against homosexuality is patent and obvious. That was what angered me. To exclude Maurice and not, say, Lady Chatterley's Lover or Ulysses, is nonsense; it is not even a bad principle. And if you carry on with this kind of attitude, you will end up banning Plato and Virgil.
I think dustthouart (who is another Catholic) has it right: treat the word "homosexual" as if it were a live rail. Which is fuckin' pathetic, if you'll pardon the expression. Mind you, I have just lost yet another friend because of the obsessive idiocy currently haunting the concept, so perhaps their way is safer after all.
If their "policy" or whatever it is they are calling it, at least were consistent - but it's not. From what I've heard (and mind you, I am not very well informed on this matter) it seems they are choosing books pretty randomly, censoring some that whose homosexual or even sexual content is minimal, and leaving others where it's comparatively obvious?
On an almost unrelated note, this reminds me of the famous Star Trek interracial kiss thing: there was a minor uproar around a scene where Kirk kisses Uhura, because it was apparently the first interracial kiss on television. What they forgot was that in the same scene, a human female was kissing an alien (Spock) - but that was ok, because he was white. I don't know why, but this kinda reminds me.
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Meanwhile, the Illustrated Story of O retains its Amazon sales rank.
I agree with fpb. Disgusting.
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"In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature."
But looking at what has and has not been de-ranked, they look inconsistent in what they call "adult materials".
http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/04/12/amazon-censors-its-rankings-search-results-to-protect-us-against-glbt-books/
They are having an on-going discussion with Amazon on there.
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On an almost unrelated note, this reminds me of the famous Star Trek interracial kiss thing: there was a minor uproar around a scene where Kirk kisses Uhura, because it was apparently the first interracial kiss on television. What they forgot was that in the same scene, a human female was kissing an alien (Spock) - but that was ok, because he was white. I don't know why, but this kinda reminds me.
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