“Safe sex? Safe sex? Who’s going to SAVE sex?”
— Betty Dodson
I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons…
— William S Burroughs
When it began to emerge that Amazon.com had removed thousands of gay, lesbian and feminist themed books from their online sales rankings, Twitter users donned the spandex and red cape and came to the defense of sexual literacy, forcing the issue into public discussion.
Last weekend a number of authors sensed something was amiss — 57,310 books no longer generated a sales ranking once searched for on the Amazon.com website. Most had one thing in common: they were written by a gay author, or made some reference to sex or sexuality. Complaints to Amazon revealed that their materials had been re-classified as �adult’ under a new policy in which Amazon was attempting to clean up its act and become more �family-friendly’.
The digital book burning included Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar, Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, and Planet Waves contributor Alex Chee’s novel Edinburgh. The works of Susie Bright, and gay rights activist Michelangelo Signorile, were also plucked from the ranking system. Yet again, somebody tried to ban D.H. Lawrence, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, all of whom apparently lost sales ranking on key titles.
The censorship plan actually didn’t really work that well. Allegedly un-family titles, including Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds, remained on the lists. For some authors, the US edition was de-ranked while the British edition kept its ranking.
This LA Times blog has a more complete list of the books that made it and those that didn’t.
The rankings matter because they determine how high up a title is listed when a customer goes to search for it; removal potentially renders a work invisible from the would-be purchaser. Amazon’s motives for the move — which it claims to have reversed — are unclear, but most speculation seems to involve preventing books with sexual content from coming up in searches done by kids. Yes, once again, we have to keep the existence of sex a secret from kids. God only knows, they might grow up knowing something about sex, or even knowing that it exists.
The buzz grew and a well-earned PR-nightmare began to unfold for Amazon. The tale of selective, puritanical de-ranking cut like lightning through the online consciousness – Twitter became host to an unprecedented online uprising as thousands of users began to generate posts of anger and protest under the tag вЂ?amazonfail#’, a remarkably rapid reaction which placed huge pressure on Amazon to respond. It was the perfect storm. Amazon could not keep up with the pace, their once solid reputation severely tarnished in a matter of Twitters.
Words may be the primary tool of the patriarchy, but we can use them as a means of getting free. The other night I was working with a female client, 39, who wants to be free and she said: What can I do? I suggested that she be sexually literate, and only deal with guys who are sexually literate. I gave her a copy of ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’, that I had purchased from none other than Amazon.
What was the astrology? Venus retrograded into the final degree of Pisces on the weekend, hovering over the Aries Point. It was a global event, massively projected through worldwide derision; whatever was brewing under the surface of Amazon’s early explanations was fishy enough to cause a ballsy and firey uprising.
That the decision was put in place right before Venus stationed direct indicates that Amazon did not consult its’ astrologer prior to making this move. New things implemented just prior to an important planetary station, particularly an inner planet, have a tendency to backfire.
The event also rings with the Chiron in Aquarius vibe, which included a lot of freaking out and lawsuits involving the Beat Generation writers. Chirion in Aquarius is now in full bloom, conjunct Neptune with Jupiter heading into the mix. The rumbling of tweets last weekend are an indication of movement under that surface. People cared enough to speak out.
while it may be true that amazon hatched a conspiracy to hide these books, it also may not be true.
here is an alternative version of what may have happened to cause these books to become hidden aka ranked as adult, while non-feminist heterosexual adult content remained out in the open: http://womensmediacenter.com/ex/041309b.html
e.:
You’re on to it. Our ability to let our bodies speak for themselves is a threat to who and what it is trying to control us. The funny thing is, what is there left to control us for?
This feels as though a cathedral was built on a mesa whose bottom has been worn away centuries ago. The cathedral is standing dead center on a flat rock balanced precariously on one fine point.
And the mesa is scared shitless of the wind.