This is a big soap-box issue for me. Censorship pisses me off. And Amazon.com is trying to shut down my voice. It's not going to happen without a fight.
Amazon.com has forgotten it's roots.
Amazons, those women of the ancient world - strong, fierce warriors.
Today you might call them dykes. And the dykes are not happy. Don't mess with the Amazons. You won't survive to make a second mistake.
Amazon (USA, Canada, GB, Denmark and Japan as far as I know) has decided over the Easter weekend to alter how books can be found on their website.
Amazon, everyone's friendly neighborhood book-and-what-have-you site has decided to strip "Adult" works of literature of their popularity ranking. Now ... what does this have to do with the angers?
A book's popularity rating determines how readily it will display as a result for a typed in search on their site. Taking that rating right off of a book will pretty much remove it as an item that comes up when you try and search it.
MY big problem with this? They seem to be targeting Lesbian and Gay works of literature FAR, FAR more than they're targeting literature aimed at heterosexual audiences ... even erotica (ie ... Kama Sutra).
I copied this short list of some of the hetero-aimed titles that HAVEN'T been removed:
--Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds by Chronicle Books (pictures of over 600 naked women)
--Rosemary Rogers' Sweet Savage Love" (explicit heterosexual romance);
--Kathleen Woodiwiss' The Wolf and the Dove (explicit heterosexual romance);
--Bertrice Smal's Skye o'Malley which are all explicit heterosexual romances
--Alan Moore's Lost Girls (which is a very explicit sexual graphic novel)
and of course you can still buy a book on training fighting dogs or magazines that promote cock-fighting, even though they've received lots of requests to do so including from the HSUS and the ASPCA.
But those which are being cut?
Mostly Gay and Lesbian works, self-help and autobiographies, and of fiction and non-fiction. Not the least of which is Bastard Out of Carolina, a novel by Dorothy Allison - who taught at Columbia College while I was attending. A book, written by a lesbian author, yes - but does not deal with lesbian or gay issues - but rather, address child abuse.
So - Amazon.com thinks it's a good idea to wage war on the Gays? That just because they "mean well" with their right wing moral standard it's not considered censorship, but "protecting the children" or upholding some sort of social decency?
I don't know what their game is - but Amazon.com certainly isn't making any friends - and in a time when even the big business are going under and cutting back - losing the customers you DO have doesn't seem like good business sense to me. Losing the Gay's business is simply not a good idea. The Gay's (for the most part) still have disposable income. Think again, Amazon.com if you're going to be seeing any of it.
So right now - interlaced with this anti-Amazon.com message, also is an opportunity for eden fantasies to supply the material Amazon.com is dropping for it's "adult" content". Not least of which, again, are self help books for parents to help connect with their gay, teen youth or young adult books (again, focused for GLBT audiences) with coming out stories or suicide prevention. Things related to sexuality - resources that should never be added to the burning fire.
And this is where I may come off as sounding like a hypocrite, but consider:
For your general needs that you might have traditionally gone to Amazon.com for, (books, dvds, music, electronics, etc) you may want to consider buying everything possible from small local stores. Big corporations like Amazon take money away from family businesses and our communities. We may think we're doing ourselves good by saving a few bucks at the cheap corporations with massive buying power, but when we choose to invest instead in our communities and our neighbors, we're investing in our own futures and making choices that will, in the long run, improve the quality of our lives by improving the places where we live.
Shopping from a large corporation comes with great risk. The larger they become, the fewer options we have. When all our local book stores have been put out of business, from whom will we buy literature when the big corporations prove themselves bigots or polluters or exploiters or corrupt in so many possible ways? Most small book stores (or hardware store, or grocery store or skateboard shop, or craft store...) are not going to have every book you might want to buy, but they are often very willing to order anything you want. That's my 2 cents, and that might be about all it's worth in this day of corporate greed and massive takeovers, but my hope is renewed every time my hard earned money becomes my neighbor's hard earned money rather than disappearing into some incomprehensible entity.
As it is, I feel eden fantasies is still a niche market, though I don't know where the money trail is headed, for the time being I feel like it is at least being put back into THIS community.
Again - eden fantasies - consider this YOUR oppertunity to pick up the erotic torch, where others have dropped it.
Amazon.com has forgotten it's roots.
Amazons, those women of the ancient world - strong, fierce warriors.
Today you might call them dykes. And the dykes are not happy. Don't mess with the Amazons. You won't survive to make a second mistake.
Amazon (USA, Canada, GB, Denmark and Japan as far as I know) has decided over the Easter weekend to alter how books can be found on their website.
Amazon, everyone's friendly neighborhood book-and-what-have-you site has decided to strip "Adult" works of literature of their popularity ranking. Now ... what does this have to do with the angers?
A book's popularity rating determines how readily it will display as a result for a typed in search on their site. Taking that rating right off of a book will pretty much remove it as an item that comes up when you try and search it.
MY big problem with this? They seem to be targeting Lesbian and Gay works of literature FAR, FAR more than they're targeting literature aimed at heterosexual audiences ... even erotica (ie ... Kama Sutra).
I copied this short list of some of the hetero-aimed titles that HAVEN'T been removed:
--Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds by Chronicle Books (pictures of over 600 naked women)
--Rosemary Rogers' Sweet Savage Love" (explicit heterosexual romance);
--Kathleen Woodiwiss' The Wolf and the Dove (explicit heterosexual romance);
--Bertrice Smal's Skye o'Malley which are all explicit heterosexual romances
--Alan Moore's Lost Girls (which is a very explicit sexual graphic novel)
and of course you can still buy a book on training fighting dogs or magazines that promote cock-fighting, even though they've received lots of requests to do so including from the HSUS and the ASPCA.
But those which are being cut?
Mostly Gay and Lesbian works, self-help and autobiographies, and of fiction and non-fiction. Not the least of which is Bastard Out of Carolina, a novel by Dorothy Allison - who taught at Columbia College while I was attending. A book, written by a lesbian author, yes - but does not deal with lesbian or gay issues - but rather, address child abuse.
So - Amazon.com thinks it's a good idea to wage war on the Gays? That just because they "mean well" with their right wing moral standard it's not considered censorship, but "protecting the children" or upholding some sort of social decency?
I don't know what their game is - but Amazon.com certainly isn't making any friends - and in a time when even the big business are going under and cutting back - losing the customers you DO have doesn't seem like good business sense to me. Losing the Gay's business is simply not a good idea. The Gay's (for the most part) still have disposable income. Think again, Amazon.com if you're going to be seeing any of it.
So right now - interlaced with this anti-Amazon.com message, also is an opportunity for eden fantasies to supply the material Amazon.com is dropping for it's "adult" content". Not least of which, again, are self help books for parents to help connect with their gay, teen youth or young adult books (again, focused for GLBT audiences) with coming out stories or suicide prevention. Things related to sexuality - resources that should never be added to the burning fire.
And this is where I may come off as sounding like a hypocrite, but consider:
For your general needs that you might have traditionally gone to Amazon.com for, (books, dvds, music, electronics, etc) you may want to consider buying everything possible from small local stores. Big corporations like Amazon take money away from family businesses and our communities. We may think we're doing ourselves good by saving a few bucks at the cheap corporations with massive buying power, but when we choose to invest instead in our communities and our neighbors, we're investing in our own futures and making choices that will, in the long run, improve the quality of our lives by improving the places where we live.
Shopping from a large corporation comes with great risk. The larger they become, the fewer options we have. When all our local book stores have been put out of business, from whom will we buy literature when the big corporations prove themselves bigots or polluters or exploiters or corrupt in so many possible ways? Most small book stores (or hardware store, or grocery store or skateboard shop, or craft store...) are not going to have every book you might want to buy, but they are often very willing to order anything you want. That's my 2 cents, and that might be about all it's worth in this day of corporate greed and massive takeovers, but my hope is renewed every time my hard earned money becomes my neighbor's hard earned money rather than disappearing into some incomprehensible entity.
As it is, I feel eden fantasies is still a niche market, though I don't know where the money trail is headed, for the time being I feel like it is at least being put back into THIS community.
Again - eden fantasies - consider this YOUR oppertunity to pick up the erotic torch, where others have dropped it.
