Monday, April 13, 2009

Amazon Gay "Glitch"? I say, boycott until "glitch" is fixed

Amazon, thy name is irony.

Think about it. Amazons are a lesbian icon. I'm so completely appalled by Amazon de-ranking all gay and lesbian material. It's incredible! I don't see how this is going to stand and I'm definitely not buying anything from Amazon until this changes. Here's a list of the classic gay and lesbian literature they've pulled from their rankings. Amazing. Giovanni's Room, by James Baldwin, Stone Butch Blues, by Leslie Feinberg, Rubyfruit Jungle, by Rita Mae Brown, Tipping the Velvet, by Sarah Waters, Maurice, by E.M. Forster, The Charioteer, by Mary Renault, even E. Lynn Harris, who writes bestselling pop novels. The list goes on and on. Even non-fiction books about gay history, gay images in film, gay travel! This is just another example of confusing "gay" with "sex". Because isn't being gay all about having sex, like, all the time? afterellen.com and afterelton.com have an excellent combined editorialthat discusses this very issue. This is the result of our culture equating homosexuality with sex, pure and simple.

As of Monday morning, Amazon is saying this was just a "glitch." Wow. That's quite a glitch.

Here's something truly horrifying. If you enter "homosexuality" in Amazon's search field, the top results are: A Parents' Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, Can Homosexuality Be Healed? and Jesus, The Bible and Homosexuality. See search results from this morning here.

Here is a good roundup of links, including samples of letters, where to go on amazon to complain, petitions to sign, etc. And here is another round up some relevant links.

This morning, the brouhaha is reaching the mainstream media. AP has picked up the story. The Seattle Post-Intelligencerinvestigates the issue in a blog. This is where I got the tip about search results in Amazon.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I hadn't heard about this one. Kinda weird it hasn't been talked about more.

The name is truly ironic.