Amazon Discriminating against LGBT and feminist literature

[vixalicious]

Amazon.com has removed sales rankings from hundreds of gay and lesbian books in the last week, thus excluding them from many best seller lists and customer searches. Their reasoning? "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. " Link to Source Post.

I know what some may be thinking. "Well, I didn't want to read this pornography anyway."

It's not pornography, it's not erotica they're going after. It's all LGBT literature. Looking for a list of the best college guides out there? Well, the one put out by the Advocate won't be on there. How about a list of the best Young Adult series? Well, you aren't going to find Rainbow Road, no matter how many copies have been sold.

If they are looking to truly remove 'adult materials' from their search lists, why are the novels depicting graphic heterosexual sex still there? What criteria have they applied to determine what should be labeled 'adult?'

And most importantly, WHO ELECTED AMAZON TO BE THE MORALITY POLICE?

This is censorship, people, plain and simple.

I urge you to:

• email Amazon to let them know this is wrong, at https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/general-questions.html


• boycott Amazon until they reverse this travesty.


• post a link to this source post in your own LJ, blog, and/or facebook.


• twitter the link referencing #amazonfail

ETA: A link to affected books: http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/11992.html
ETA2: Amazon has twitter: http://twitter.com/amazon
Below is the email I sent - I wish I could take credit for it, but it is all zillah975, who is way more eloquent than I.


Good morning,

I understand that Amazon has now come out and explicitly stated that you are excluding LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning) books -- all of them, regardless of content -- from your searches and rankings based on the erroneous and offensive notion that they are somehow all "adult material." Even the ones for kids.

A quick check shows that this appears to have already been implemented, and in the most hypocritical fashion. For instance, the Harold Robbins novel "Heat Of Passion", with its scantily-clad woman on the cover and the blurb just below the title that reads, "The phone next to the bed rang and Jonny stirred beside me, her bare leg cocked over my thigh, her knee warm pressed against my...", and a review that includes the phrase "[d]ashing if improbable adventures alternate with libido-laced sex scenes", still has its ranking. However, Edmund White's critically-acclaimed novel "The Beautiful Room Is Empty" no longer does. Neither does "The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students", nor Christopher Isherwood's brilliant and moving short novel "A Single Man."

So, in short, a crappy pot-boiler with graphic heterosexual sex is totally not considered "adult material", but a college guide is? This is blatant discrimination, and not what I would expect from a company of your stature.

Sales rankings are a vital feature, and to exclude all LGBTQ material from them due to the possibility that some of them may contain explicit material is outrageous and utterly unacceptable.

This decision must be reversed. I look forward to hearing that it was a terrible error and has been corrected. Until then, I will not be purchasing from Amazon, and will be encouraging my friends to take their business elsewhere as well.

Sincerely,

Comments

[purple-hazed.livejournal.com]

Oh, I just read about this on a comminity as well. I kinda predicted this kinda thing would happen, but everyone thought I was paranoid!!!

I will not be using Amazon again until they change this, only money talks nowadays.

[vixalicious]

Me neither, and I buy a lot of crap off Amazon. Bad move to offend the demographic that typically has more discretionary income during a recession!

[shirecreature.livejournal.com]

I'm a little confused about this rankings thing - if you are searching for LGBT books - they are going to show them - or they aren't? What do the rankings have to do with?

[vixalicious]

I was confused by that at first myself, but basically what it means is that all the lists that Amazon makes won't contain any of these books. So say you were looking for the top-selling novels. Amazon has a list of their top selling novels, but if that novel has any LGBT themes, it won't be included. Basically, they're saying if it's gay, it's porn.

[vixalicious]

Including self-help books and educational books like "Heather Has Two Mommies."