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Amazon Censorship Expands
Nom du Keyboard writes "Recently word leaked out about Amazon removing titles containing fictional incest. Surprisingly that ban didn't extend to the 10 titles of Science Fiction Grand Master Robert A. Heinlein that incorporate various themes of incest and pedophilia. Now, it seems that the censorship is expanding to m/m gay fiction if it contains the magic word 'rape' in the title. Just how far is this going to be allowed to proceed in relative silence, and who is pushing these sudden decisions on Amazon's part?"
A fairly large part of Amazon's business practice, aside from efficient JIT inventory/shipping, is customer profiling and recommendation(an extension of the classic retail upsell, only every recommendation isn't for a magazine or service plan, and beaten over your head!). Given their fair expertise in this area, and generally commanding lead in online bookselling, it seems unlikely that this is a case of "poor, poor, Amazon, haunted by the lawsuits of angry parents whose offspring's attempt to search for sparkle-ponies dumped them into the M/M Rape BDSM section". Surely they can trivially keep team pathologically sensitive from finding anything they don't search for, and wave the free speech flag to cover the rest.
Thus, one is inclined to suspect that(since books about incest, rape, or whatever are presumably sold for a profit just like any other book) somebody inside or outside the company is being pushy for reasons ideological rather than financial, and that they are being surprisingly quiet about it(unlike say, the tremulous morons at the Parent's Television Council, who are explicitly ideological; but ontologically incapable of being quiet). Who exactly that might be is rather puzzling...
Well, actually first they came for George Orwell.
And lots of people spoke up, so they promised not to do it again.
I guess this time they decided to pick on an easier target.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Heck, not only that, but a good portion of the classical Greek literature goes away too. Homer and Hesiod? Gone, because of the sibling incest between Zeus and Hera. Sophocles and Aeschelus? Gone, because of the 2 most famous instances of parent-child incest (Oedipus and Electra) in all of literature.
I am officially gone from
It was pretty common in Ancient cultures for relatives to not just have sex, but also marry. Even amongst the Romans who were advanced enough to know the negative consequences.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
First off, it's their store, and it should be their decision to sell or not sell any particular book.
Well, by this logic I could say that Pre WW2 Nazi-affiliated Libraries in Germany were entirely in their right to burn every book they didn't like. Their nation (their leaders were legally elected by their country) ,their rules. The same happened in Spain during Franco's regime, or with Mussolini in Italy.
You could say that there's a distinction between a Library and a bookstore, but from a social and cultural standpoint Amazon is the modern equivalent of Library of Alexandria. It could be fine from a an economic and commercial perspective (but even in this case it's doubtful, considering that the negative backslash is more perceived directly from their main customer targets), but from an ethical, cultural and social perspective it's way more obscene than anything that could be written in those books.
Excuse my "commie" point of view, but I have little to no regard to the free market "sanctity" when it directly damages culture,even if controversial. It should be a tool to improve society*, not the way around.
*Somebody could argue if such books should be considered "culture" or just morbid rape fantasies that creates more serial rapists, and amazon is doing us a favor by removing them. I'm not a psychoanalyst, and I can't comment on such arguments. But if the same could be said for consumption of videogames, Hip Hop, or "esoteric" literature, then I wonder how I've not yet raped and burned down an entire city.
When the Uhura-Kirk kiss came on, CBS waited for a firestorm of protest calls. They received just one. A redneck-ish man who called and said something like "I don't approve of white folks and black folks kissing, but if it's Kirk, then it's OK."
How DID the congregation react?
About 1/3 knowingly nodded, about 1/3 got wide-eyed & looked at each other, and the remaining 1/3 looked pissed that he would say such a thing. I think he got letters after that one.
So, yeah, about 2/3 of the people had not really read the Bible, which I expect to some extent (who knows how long they have been following this faith), but was also revealing to me.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.