The folks at Amazon seems to think all gays are like this

Looks like Amazon.com has been treating books by and about gays the same way that they treat pornography:

“American Psycho” is Bret Easton Ellis’ story of a sadistic murderer. “Unfriendly Fire” is a well-reviewed empirical analysis of military policy. But it’s “Unfriendly Fire” that does not have a sales rank — which means it would not show up in Amazon’s bestseller lists, even if it sold more copies than the “Twilight” series. In some cases, being de-ranked also means being removed from Amazon’s search results.

Amazon’s policy of removing “adult” content from its rankings seems to be both new and unevenly implemented. On Saturday, self-published author Mark R. Probst noticed that his book had lost its ranking, and made inquiries. The response he got from Amazon’s customer service explained:

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.

Probst wrote a novel for young adults with gay characters set in the old West; he was concerned that gay-friendly books were being unfairly targeted. Amazon has not responded to the L.A. Times request for clarification.

Our research shows that these books have lost their ranking: “Running with Scissors” by Augusten Burroughs, “Rubyfruit Jungle” by Rita Mae Brown, “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic” by Alison Bechdel, “The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1″ by Michel Foucault, “Bastard Out of Carolina” by Dorothy Allison (2005 Plume edition), “Little Birds: Erotica” by Anais Nin, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” by Jean-Dominque Bauby (1997 Knopf edition), “Maurice” by E.M. Forster (2005 W.W. Norton edition) and “Becoming a Man” by Paul Monette, which won the 1992 National Book Award.

Books that remain ranked include: “Naked” by David Sedaris, “Tropic of Cancer” by Henry Miller, “American Psycho” by Bret Easton Ellis, “Wifey” by Judy Blume, “The Kiss” by Kathryn Harrison, the photobooks “Playboy: Helmut Newton” and “Playboy: Six Decades of Centerfolds,” “Naked Lunch” by William Burroughs, “Incest: From ‘A Journal of Love’” by Anais Nin, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” by Jean-Dominque Bauby (2007 Vintage International edition), “Maurice” by E.M. Forster (2005 Penguin Classics edition).

Carolyn Kellog of the LA Times sees this as being a general censorship issue:

As troubling as the unevenness of the policy of un-ranking and de-searching certain titles might be, it’s a bit beside the point. It’s the action itself that is troubling: making books harder to find, or keeping them off bestseller lists on the basis of their content can’t be a good idea.

But I think that Metavirus of Library Grape is closer to the mark when he identifies this as a direct attack on gays:

It just goes to show you that society is perfectly happy to let the degenerate gays live their lives as long as they relegate themselves to bathhouses, beauty parlors and florist shops. People only become forced to denounce the gays when they actually step out from the shadows, ridiculously try to assert that they’re a Normal part of every facet of our daily existence and demand equal treatment under the law. Why aren’t those horrible, prancing gays more discrete? Why are they always “flaunting” their sexuality? Why can’t they have the decency to just LIE about who they really are? Why don’t they all just crawl into a glory hole in San Francisco and leave the respectable, moral people in society to live their lives in peace?

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 12th, 2009 at 8:47 pm and is filed under Media, Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.