B.K. Wright

On the other hand, there is almost no chance books about knitting or woodworking or anything else you mentioned would mention anything about sexuality. Therefore, nobody would have given those books the tag “sexuality”, thus they would not have been affected by this screwup.

I hope that makes sense.

We’ve seen this before. Everyone knows just a teaspoon full of teh gay is far more dangerous than a swimming pool of the Hitler. F Amazon.

Routledge International Encyclopedia of Queer Culture
Gay and Lesbian Historical Fiction by Norman Jones
A Lesbian History of Britain by Rebecca Jennings
The Sciences of Homosexuality by Kenneth Borris
Behind the Mask of the Mattachine by James Sears
Byron and Greek Love by Louis Crompton
Homosexuality and Civilization by Louis Crompton
Female Masculinity by Judith Halberstam
Gay Life and Culture by Robert Aldrich
Gay American History by Jonathan Katz
Hellenism and Homosexuality in Victorian Oxford by Linda Dowling
How to do the History of Homosexuality by David Halperin
Homosexuality in Greece and Rome by Thomas Hubbard

and the list is endless — anything that presents a positive or even neutral study of gay lesbian queer or homosexual subjects is no longer accorded sales rankings.

On the other hand, books like “Sex Among the Rabble” by the historian Clare Lyons or “City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920″ by Timothy Gilfoyle — and an equally endless list — still have their sales rankings. Obviously, books about heterosexual history are perfectly OK because they are accepted by their “normal” market, but books about homosexual history are obscene in the view of Amazon, whose general audience is no longer deemed to include LGBT individuals or indeed anyone interested in such things.

I’m not entirely sure what commercial effect the removal of sales rankings has. But obviously it had its promotional uses, otherwise it would not have been removed so that material deemed inappropriate by Amazon would no longer be promoted. My main objection is that this is a clear-cut case of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, that is: homophobia pure and simple.

My own website promotes Amazon product through its Associates programme, but if Amazon doesn’t wish to encourage promotion of LGBT books, then of course I will cease promoting Amazon books on my website and resign from its Associates programme.

Rictor Norton, London

1.) Shop at Powell’s Books.

2.) Along with our order, also purchase one of these books and donate them to your local library.

Until a 6’2″ somewhat butch person of color (Trangendered) can do a SIMPLE amazon.com search for size 16 pumps, I will always feel relegated to the back of the internet.

A tag is basically a simple identifier that can be added to any item to help the site and its customers know what topics the item/book discusses. So if you have a health book that happens to briefly mention sexuality, someone could give that book the tag “sexuality” at any time in the past, which is perfectly fine and very helpful with normal site functionality. The problem arose when this guy who screwed things up came along and essentially did something in the site that said “all items with the tag ‘sexuality’ will be put into the restricted adult category.” That’s how you end up with lots of books on different topics ending up with the same fate.

On the other hand, there is almost no chance books about knitting or woodworking or anything else you mentioned would mention anything about sexuality. Therefore, nobody would have given those books the tag “sexuality”, thus they would not have been affected by this screwup.

I hope that makes sense.

Dammit, sleep with one eye open then, but I communicated effectively because you understood what I meant!

I would like to know why the “flip” affected only gay and lesbian subject matter or — in the words of Amazon itself — “a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica.”

Amazon emphasized the latter to suggest that gay content wasn’t targeted, but what do those areas all have in common? Definitely the likelihood that they would touch on homosexuality.

Knitting, woodworking, mathematics, the American Revolution, the Cavalier Poets, scholastic philosophy, the Arian Heresy and the history of baseball seem to have come through unscathed.

It’s actually “mind our Ps and Qs,” which means keep your head down and don’t do anything. I don’t think you meant that.

It’s still true in spite of the fact that this appears to be an accidental mixup on the part of a foreign employee editing the international sites, which are all linked.

What’s particularly amusing are the people rushing to the defense of formerly bigoted amazon, advocating blatent discrimination in the private sector. No, the market has proven time and again that it sustains injustice and unethical behavior. That the freedom to commit harm through discrimination isn’t worth the cost in a society which values egalitarianism and equal opportunity above the liberty of some to limit the liberty of others.

Want a good book on libertarianism? Well, start with the classics. Nozick.

An overview of how the story goes…
This guy claimed he did the hacking, but then this guy tried it and said the claim was a hoax.

The most convincing answer I’ve seen so far comes from a supposed former Amazon employee who still has contacts within the company who say that it was actually a translation error. Specifically, he says a French Amazon employee screwed up the translation between “sexuality” and “erotic” and marked stuff tagged “sexuality” as adult content.

Right now, I am about 98% confident that this whole fiasco was unintentional and that it was a mistake within Amazon.

I’m not sure this was a “freak accident,” I believe their online security was compromised in a discriminatory manner.

Given the uptick in gay bashing lately, we can expect that it will strike gay online communities as well. We need to be on our Ps and Qs.

But don’t libertarians believe in elections in the context of the democratic process? And that everyone person is to be regarded as equal regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, income level, etc.?

I love the ideal, personally, as I have some libertarian views myself (drug legalization is one example. I also believe in an almost absolute freedom of speech). Freedom to form whatever contracts that wish without government interference would actually fall under the civil contact of marriage. Of course, the higher the income level, the easier it is to form contracts. Or to buy elections.

But in pratical terms, that freedom also allows for the freedom to discriminate with little or no regard to what little rule of law exists (and ideally, there would be none save for the individual conscience).

Considering Amazon has been a pretty liberal and open company all along, I have very little reason to doubt that this was all a freak accident.

“Hello,

Thank you for contacting Amazon.com.

This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.

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. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon’s main product search.

Many books have now been fixed and we’re in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.

Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.

Sincerely,

Customer Service Department
Amazon.com”

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) said it expects Amazon’s “error” to be corrected immediately. Here’s the full statement:

“GLAAD has reached out to Amazon.com and they indicate this was an error, so we expect to start seeing evidence of its correction immediately, and that any loss of visibility of gay-themed books as a result of this error will be made right by Amazon,” said Neil G. Giuliano, President of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). “When people learn about the lives of gay and transgender people and the common ground we share, the culture changes and advances. It is so important that stories about the lives of our community are available, and that companies like Amazon promote these titles in an equal fashion.”

Umm, I don’t think it’s POSSIBLE to respond to that in a reasoned way.

To claim that the effected books were “slightly” more difficult to find when they did not come up under general searches is not exactly less of an exaggeration than saying they were impossible to find (which they were, if you were not armed with an author’s name or title.) But enough of that–

I disagree with those who assume that this is only a concern if it was deliberate censorship on Amazon’s part. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t, but they allowed it to happen. They were alerted to it early on and did nothing. The way they have handled the situation shows no respect for the minority communities they effectively silenced. They were at best irresponsible in allowing their system to be gamed so effectively and disrespectful in allowing the situation to exist for as long as it has without as apology.

When you become as major a player as Amazon is in how the world gets information, there have to be responsibilities. To me, this incident is proof enough that Bezos et. al. are not interested in living up to those responsibilities, do not understand that they have obligations that go beyond the bottom line. That being the case, it is appropriate to ask elected representatives to do a little saber rattling and to start asking questions about whether a free society that values information can allow behavior such as Amazon shown to be legal. I would not advocate that people call their representatives if I thought such action would result in immediate legal changes. But it won’t. It might get this issue on a list of things to do research on, though, and I think that that is highly appropriate at this point.

If anyone in the LGBT community ever used Amazon..they are guilty as well. We need to be united in our efforts, and our spending, to support one another. So the phrase comes to mind..”physician, heal thyself.” And I challenge you to look for another post from me someday, and respond out of logic and reason, and stop treating me like the enemy. Just remember, it is the majority, using the government and law, that are keeping our rights from us. Be careful how much more power you want our government to have, being we are the minority.

Landon Bryce said that Amazon was making it “impossible” to find these books. I said it wasn’t impossible, just slightly harder than it was. You commented (in my interpretation) about how this is step in the direction of making things much harder, and that we shouldn’t pretend it’s trivial. I agreed but said I wasn’t comfortable with hyperbole like “impossible” (again, Landon Bryce’s word).

I agree with you. I don’t agree with Landon Bryce.

That’s as clear as I can make it.

Ok, but even if it was sabotage, you would think that Amazon’s PR’s people would have handled this much. much better.

You only have to see that ghastly video “Gathering Storm” to see the tip of the iceberg. What is going on underneath the waterline?

Thus, this means only ADULTS purchase anything on Amazon.

The fact is that when you input the word ‘homosexuality’ into the All Departments search engine you get ONLY the following results: books on how to PREVENT homosexuality.

Thus, there is only one conclusion to be made about this matter. At the helm is a homophobic fundamentalist evangelical IT database manager. Plain and simple. There is only one group of people in this country who would dare to do something like this. ONLY ONE. AND WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

My novels have been affected by this blatant act of Christian discrimination. Well, listen up you medieval louts. You will be hung up to dry because of this. When it is exposed that Christians are behind this, you will not hear the last of it from us.

Nazi Germany banned books and it started innocently enough. This is not your Pope’s Christian nation. This is not your Falwell’s Christian nation. This is not your Rick Warren’s Christian nation. This is a secular society, based on the US Constitution whether you like it or not, pals. We won’t rest until this is over and you are out of a job.

5 is SO wrong…

Why change NOW?

Which is why I ask, is their a new CEO??

Come on..

1. Someone external figured out a way to game the existing “adult” system in bulk and maliciously.
2. They were recklessly tweaking their “adult” filters and didn’t think through the ramifications of a particular tweak.
3. Someone internal (such as middle management) decided to push through a personal value assessment in the hopes that upper management wouldn’t notice.
4. Someone internal (such as an IT employee) was feeling vindictive.
5. Amazon has gone entirely and utterly insane, and decided to deliberately alienate their entire alt.sex readership (including GLBTs). Nothing better to get us to forget about victories in Vermont and Iowa.

A surprising number have people have concluded (5) when (1)-(4) are all much more likely.