“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.