I heard about this petition at critiquecircle.com, one of my writing sites, and while I usually don’t get caught up in activism of this sort, I was annoyed enough by Amazon’s rationale and methodology that I went ahead and signed. I didn’t use the option to e-mail friends about the petition, but I’m bugged, and thoughtful, enough about the topic that I thought I’d post about the petition.
In protest at Amazon’s new “adult” policy
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We the undersigned, state our strong objection to Amazon’s “Adult” policy as outlined in their letter in italics below
“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.
Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.
Best regards,
Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage
We find it hypocritical that Amazon continues to sell adult books but thinks that removing the sales rating to (keep them out of the public eye) will achieve this.
We would like to hear the rationalisation for allowing sales ratings for explicit books with a heterosexual focus such as:
–Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds by Chronicle Books (pictures of over 600 naked women)
–Rosemary Rogers’ Sweet Savage Love” (explicit heterosexual romance);
–Kathleen Woodiwiss’ The Wolf and the Dove (explicit heterosexual romance);
–Bertrice Smal’s Skye o’Malley which are all explicit heterosexual romances
–and Alan Moore’s Lost Girls (which is a very explicit sexual graphic novel)
Yet the following books, which have a gay or lesbian focus, have been classed as “adult books” and stripped of their sales ratings:
–Radclyffe Hill’s classic novel about lesbians in Victorian times, The Well of Loneliness, and which contains not one sentence of sexual description;
–Mark R Probst’s YA novel The Filly about a young man in the wild West discovering that he’s gay (gay romance, no sex);
–Charlie Cochrane’s Lessons in Love (gay romance with no sex);
–The Dictionary of Homophobia: A Global History of Gay & Lesbian Experience, edited by Louis-George Tin (non-fiction, history and social issues);
–and Homophobia: A History by Bryan Fone (non-fiction, focus on history and the forms prejudice against homosexuality has taken over the years).
Please tell us, Amazon, why the explicit books with a heterosexual focus are allowed to keep their sales ratings while the non-explicit romances, the histories and the biographies that deal with LGBTQ issues are not.
We would love to hear your reasoning.
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Some of the comments by people who signed are pretty illuminating about the issues with the new policy, I think:
Surely there is a way to establish a “safe search” for viewers who don’t want to hear about adult books, that doesn’t strip those books of their rankings. I also find it appalling that many non-explicit GLBT titles have been targeted for ranking removal. By all means allow people to customize their search experience, but don’t penalize readers & writers of GLBT and erotica simply for their preferences. And don’t classify something as “adult” merely because it acknowledges that not everyone is heterosexual. You aren’t protecting your viewers; you’re imposing your morality on them.
And just who is it, pray tell, that determines which materials are “Adult” and which are not? What are his or her qualifications, I wonder. American Puritanism rears it’s pinched little head once again.
This action seems not only discriminatory, but senseless. You have made it extremely difficult for customers to find material that is in high demand, and which therefore helps to support your business. It makes even less sense in light of the fact that you can still search and find sex toys (which I have no objection to). I have also noticed that you have restricted the search and rankings on books with gay material, including books which are not sexual in any way, including young adult fiction helping gay and lesbian youth handle the issues they face, such as self-acceptance and coming out. If this policy is not rescinded, I will be taking my business elsewhere.
Amazon clearly needs to either rethink their definition of “adult,” or, better still, drop this idiotic policy. At present it sounds more designed to keep books with a LGBTQ focus out of the public eye than to keep books with explicit sex (the usual definition of “adult”) out of the public eye. And that is unacceptable to me as a customer.
I’m pretty sure if you’re doing something “in consideration of [your] entire customer base” you shouldn’t discriminate against a large portion of that base. Also, you might consider making sure this is something your customer base actually wants before making the decision for them. At the very least, you should make this an opt-out option.
Mine was a little shorter, since I think other people had put it better than I: If you’re going to state that something is your goal, make sure that your methodology has some sort of rational relationship with your rationale.
Smart Bitches and others are lashing out at amazon as well, in some pretty clever ways. NB: Amazon Rank.
Filed by Cally at April 12th, 2009 under