I was one of the authors whose book was recently "de-ranked" by Amazon because, according to the company, it "excludes 'adult' material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists... in consideration of our entire customer base." It meant that I and others had trouble finding the book on the site.
My book, Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America is a thoroughly footnoted, scholarly assessment of a four-page federal statute - -not exactly racy material that must be shielded from the eyes of the young. Ok, I like to think it does have its share of passages that can get your heart rate up: talk of sodomy, showers, and submarines, lies, secrecy, hypocrisy, innuendo, and gossip -- but probably no more than Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho about a sadistic murderer and with a level of sex and violence that has made it inflammatory far beyond what Unfriendly Fire could ever hope for.
Yet American Psycho did not qualify as "adult" material. Though Ellis is not exactly straight, his novel (reportedly) is. A Twitter campaign ensued over the weekend which saw thousands of complaints and a blogosphere extravaganza calling Amazon homophobic and demanding an explanation.
Amazon subsequently dubbed the de-ranking a "glitch," as if to deny that a previous spokesperson had ever admitted the company censors what it considers adult material. A spokesperson called it an "embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error" which it would fix pronto. And the rankings have begun to return. Some then theorized that an anti-gay hacker broke into Amazon and was the culprit for the targeting of gay books.
Amazon's "glitch" explanation set off a new series of finger-pointing, this time toward gays and progressive bloggers who were charged with seeing a conspiracy at every turn, obsessed, as the left reportedly is, with inhabiting a victim mentality for all their lifelong days. This charge jibes with a prickly essay recently penned by James Kirchick claiming that gay groups that don't shut down the moment they win a battle reflect "a sense of eternal victimhood" and are the "epitome of neediness and vulnerability."
But it remains unclear how the Amazon glitch became homophobic -- unless there were so many books affected that conspiracy-obsessed, narcissistic gay authors were able to -- perhaps inadvertently -- amass a list of gay-themed books that were affected but which is dwarfed by a still-larger list of non-gay-themed affected books. All of which is certainly possible, and is the explanation Amazon is currently going with.
The fact that Amazon is censoring anything because of "adult" content -- while selling it - -seems totally indefensible. If parents are concerned, it is their job, not Amazon's, to monitor their children's use of the web -- or better yet, to prepare those who are old enough to read books that some books will contain information about tough things, such as love, relationships, and even pleasure.
My instinct has been to believe there is some explanation for all this beyond straight homophobia -- pun intended -- pulsing through the highest ranks of management at Amazon. But one of the most likely explanations -- that a mid-level employee began to tag books as "adult" using very loose criteria -- is still troubling.
If this is indeed what happened, it says some pretty bad things not only about Amazon, but about what probably a large swath of the population assumes but doesn't always articulate: that things gay are automatically sexual and, by extension, bad. It would be pretty ironic if a book about the censorship of a gay presence -- which is what "don't ask, don't tell" succeeded at accomplishing -- was censored because of its gay presence. And censored by a large company eager to profit from selling that book but all too happy to cave to social conservatives griping about gay themes appearing on a website where millions of books about everything under the sun never warrant a peep.
What's been most interesting is to see how different people have read into this episode as a marker of where gay rights stand. Emma Ruby-Sachs wrote on this site that the battle against Amazon "is a sign of significant advancement in the fight for LGBT rights." Larry Kramer told the New York Times that he didn't believe "for one second that this was a glitch" and that "we have to now keep a more diligent eye on Amazon and how they handle the world's cultural heritage." Richard Nash wrote that it doesn't so much matter if Amazon deliberately targeted gay books: "In a world where whiteness and straightness are 'norms' and males benefit from our patriarchial [sic] history, it is always the GLBTQ books, the queer books, the non-normative books that get caught in the glitches, the ham-fisted errors."
This, I think, is where the debate now stands. Too many Americans still can't separate "gay" from "sex." And I don't mean that gays should stop admitting they are sexual beings. I mean gays should be able to be proud and out about our sexuality while not being defined by it, and certainly not being defined by the sloppy assumption that our demand for first-class citizenship is somehow an instance of endemic self-indulgence, an incorrigible impulse toward uncontrollable pleasure-seeking.
As Queer theory has rightly taught, the "problem" with homosexuality in America is really a problem with straight America: until they get over the notion that gay = sex and sex = bad, we'll continue to face the harmful effects of sexual repression, we'll remain vigilant about ham-fisted homophobic glitches, and we'll proudly keep the doors to our gay rights groups wide open.
http://gawker.com/5210142/why-it-makes-sense-that-a-hackers-behind-amazons-big-gay-outrage?skyline=true&s=x
"Amazon subsequently dubbed the de-ranking a "glitch," as if to deny that a previous spokesperson had ever admitted the company censors what it considers adult material."
Um, no. The glitch Amazon is talking about was improperly broad adult filtering, not adult filtering itself.
I deal with website data and taxonomy professionally. There clearly is a selection bias here. Gay author gets de-ranked, reaches out to gay community, which looks for other gay subject matter de-ranked, etc.
Too wide a net was cast in the adult filter -- and supposedly a language barrier was involved.
But just in terms of data, it's probably not a case of gay=sex and sex=bad. It's more likely Sex=adult, Sex includes gay (and rape and reproductive medicine, etc.).
Many think Amazon was filtering on USER-SUBMITTED tags, and here you can talk about bias on users' parts. For example, Dan Savage's adoption memoir is tagged by some user "gay love" and it would be plausible to flag that keyword as implying adult content (i.e. erotica). And I saw a book by a humorist known to be lesbian whose book was tagged "exhibitionism."
The idea that "Amazon" (as if it were a person) sat there and decided they didn't want revenue from the gay is simply not plausible.
That's what you have to do with conspiracy theories. Ask yourself what it would take for the theory to be true.
"The bar for ethics in creating algorithms and classification systems should be very high. #AmazonFail proved it's not, at least at Amazon. I would venture that Amazon's classification and algorithm system have more of these discriminatory assumptions, and while their tagging system does allow users to correct for some of this, Amazon is using it's internal classification system in it's filters, not user tagging, that I can tell.
I would suggest that the company, because of its position in the market and power over both authors and publishers, as well as users and the intellectual marketplace of idea, ought to be doing a complete and public review of their classification and algorithm assumptions. Publishers and authors should push for it, and so should users. "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/14/AR2009041402985_2.html
Earthlings Unite! pretty please?
Just trying to lighten things up a bit!
The great mass of people will use tools like Amazon and Google and they ask us to trust them. This is not good enough. Further, filters like those in schools and libraries means we hand over decision making on what constitutes public morality to software makers.
LGBT are just the most obvious 'collateral damage' but what if a twelve year old girl who has been raped is unable to access information about her options?
More here http://paulcanning.blogspot.com/2009/04/let-amazonfail-be-warning.html
Until America, and the world, gets over its 'love affair' with the Sinful Self
and Original Sin and only the pontificates of organized religion standing
between you and the "salvation" of your soul, Sex will always, always = bad.
It goes with the territory.
Only conservatives, homophobes and closet-cases fixate on sex.
Many of the titles that were de-ranked were available in both print editions and in Amazon Kindle editions.
The print books started vanishing on Saturday night. Suddenly, almost the whole bestseller list in Gay romance was .... Amazon's PROPRIETARY Kindle editions.
Isn't it remarkable that a 'glitch' could take out all the books that anyone could read with nothing more than a good reading lamp, and leave only those books that could only be read on Amazon's $400 e-book device?
Oh, and did I mention Amazon is coming out with a new, big-screen edition?
That is one hell of a clever glitch, I must say.
While I don't for a moment believe this is a glitch - I think leaving kindle books ranked was an oversight and not the intent. Why would they go to so much trouble to reach out to only a small subset of general public if they were only trying to increase their kindle customer base?
I mean, if not for confidentiality clauses, the stories I could tell...
On the other hand, the public library does not try to influence returns on searches on their collections, and they don't profit if you borrow. Imagine making your own product hard to find!
Who would be hurt?
How to solve problem:
1. find program code
2. see who wrote it.
3. ask who instructed him/her to do it.
4. ask that person why.
[if no one admits to doing it, nor explains why, then.......]
5. fire everyone from this level upward to the Chairman of the Board of Directors, with no golden parachutes, no bonuses, no severence pay.
6. admit internalized homophobia at Amazon..
7. stop it.
These are not only new books that were affected, but existing titles that would have already been sorted by keywords/tags. So if a GLBT Studies textbook were tagged as gay/lesbian, but also sociology or sexual development, then it follows that other, non-GLBT books would 'lose their ranking.'
But they didn't.
Additionally, how well a book containing mature content SELLS is irrelevant to any policy that would restrict access. I can call Grand Theft Auto IV a best-selling, award-winning game, but Junior still ain't getting a copy because of it's Mature rating.
Or, if it did affect policy, wouldn't comments/user reviews also be blocked? Wouldn't want a frank discussion of salient points in a comment, would we?
All books have subject matter classifications from the moment they enter the system as well as user-created keywords. A filter can easily apply to these subject classifications rather than individual titles.
The issue is how the categories/tags were selected as adult. So far Amazon has confessed hamfistedness and cited a possible role of a language/culture barrier.
It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles - in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica.
Now, what political groups seem to have a SPECIAL interest in suppressing gays, feminists, sexual expression, and reproductive rights? I have no evidence whatever that Amazon has been pressured by anyone, but it's a very strange coincidence.
Stan Scott
New York City
Another intersting bit of info is that Amazon's Terms of Service require anyone logging in to be 18 or older. This means the site itself should have a flag that would alert parental controls that there is adult material onsite.
Why would Amazon flag only certain items as 'adult' if all its customers are presumed to BE adults?
Earthlings Unite! (Look around. Do you see anyone else here?)
The majority of book store chains have yet to dignify "SEX" itself as a category of its own.
While the reasons for Amazon's handling of GLBTQ are of concern, the prime issue for us all is that still unspoken part of the equation--- Why aren't GLBTQ and ALL things SEXUAL entitled to a "SEXUALITY", category, with its own subcategories--lifestyle, society, heath, adult/porn, history, politics etc?
More synonymous with civil rights and lifestyle, than the sexual act, the decade old "Gay/Lesbian" book categorization has optimally championed equality, while downplaying the sex, in a nation taboo about the intimacies of homosexuality.
But now,as more Americans can legitimately envision a crumbling of the anti-gay rights walls, it's time for GLBTQ communities to walk hand-in-hand with sex advocates, free speech activists, authors, performers etc, empowering sex itself to have its rightful status in book stores.
The problem might not tbe he book stores. In states' attempts to "protect " children and "marriage", book stores, even in 2008, have had to fight onerous laws that penalize, restrict and out right ban books. The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, The Association of American Publishers and the American Library Association have long crusaded against book censorship; sexuality being its most legislatively active topic. Advocating for a "Sexuality" category might even persuade National Public Radio, and most e-commerce and web hosting sites to treat sexual themes, not as tippy-toed contra-band, but synonymous with sex= life= humanity.
EVERYBODY has sexuality. To confine all books with glbt characters as "sexuality" is to suggest that hetero folks are sexless.
Some of the deranked books were mysteries whose main characters were gay. There was no sex at all in them. Is it reasonable to put Robert Parker's "Spenser" mysteries under "mysteries" but Charlie Cochrane's Cambbridge Fellows mysteries under "Sexuality" because Parker's sexy sleuth is heterosexual and Cochrane's are gay?
One of the deranked books was "Heather Has Two Mommies," a kids' book that helps explain that not all families are one-man-one-woman. Hardly a treatise on sexuality.
Easier to simply classify the books as what they are. If it's a gay romance, that's a subcategory like historical romance or paranormal romance. (Personally, I find were-snakes and other 'paranormals' a lot stranger to consider as bedfellows than two normal gay dudes.)
But those two items you mention are not "Sex," and should be assimilated within their true categories, as you suggest. Classification, not just of books, is a political as well as an organizational task. If you label something will it then be"stuck" in a category versus helping an audience to locate it? The porn industry's concern with a XXX web url, and the book sellers fights against last year's Oregon and Indiana's laws, which mandated various labelling and fees for any book that even described a sexual sentence, are examples of invalid degrees of protectionisms.
But many GLBTQ books are focussed on the sexual culture ? Why not embrace "Gay/Lesbian"--defined as books that focus on culture, sex, and some of the history/politics within a new category --SEX and Relationship.. ""Heather Has Two Mommies" is about sex and society. It would go there, along with "the "My Body, My Self" series for kids. As an author who wrote a book about socio-erotic threesomes, I know the hard way, how sexuality of any kind is restricted in everything from getting a printer, to e-commerce, to magazine and radio promotions. The Sex of all of us needs to be proudly procalimed-- appropriately and with respect-- a huge task that won't be a quickie.