censorship

SOPA Ain't Over Yet

Posted by figleaf on Wed, 2012-01-18 11:26

Image from ICanHasCheezeburger.com. Cached as a bandwidth-conserving courtesy
Image from ICanHasCheezeburger.com anti-SOPA site lifeaftersopa.cheezburger.com. Used, as I always attempt to do on this blog, with correct acknowledgement and link back to the host site.

So there's a big call to action today by right-minded internet users and providers about the thuggish powerplay cooked up by a collection of 20th-Century-nostalgic content middlemen (RIAA, MPAA, Rupert Murdoch, et. al) and some of their stupider lackies in Congress.

The issue isn't protection of intellectual property -- people who create content really ought to be able to seek compensation for it!  Instead the issue is about how much "security theater" hampering needs to happen in order to protect that intellectual property.  Proponents of bills like SOPA and PIPA believe that every American should be treated like criminals (how do you like seeing those lingering, un-skippable FBI warnings on every #%!#% DVD you try to play?)  They believe further that no measure is too draconian, no inconvenience is too great, no destabilization of the entire fucking infrastructure of the internet is too great, and, in the case of SOPA especially, no legislation too capricious.

Just the threat by sites major and minor to go dark today has had some effect.  But, as this post by Joan McCarter of Daily Kos makes clear, the results are more cosmetic than substantial.

The weekend was good for opponents of SOPA and PIPA, notably for the assurances to Rep. Darrell Issa from Majority Leader Eric Cantor that a SOPA vote in the House wouldn't happen "unless there is consensus on the bill."

Judiciary Chair (and copyright violator) Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) is going to try to force consensus by resuming the markup on the bill next month. From his press release:

Stop Online Piracy Act Markup to Resume in February

Washington, D.C. - House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today said that he expects the Committee to continue its markup of the Stop Online Piracy Act in February.

Chairman Smith: "To enact legislation that protects consumers, businesses and jobs from foreign thieves who steal America's intellectual property, we will continue to bring together industry representatives and Members to find ways to combat online piracy.

"Due to the Republican and Democratic retreats taking place over the next two weeks, markup of the Stop Online Piracy Act is expected to resume in February.

"I am committed to continuing to work with my colleagues in the House and Senate to send a bipartisan bill to the White House that saves American jobs and protects intellectual property."

Which means the legislation is far from dead, and Smith just as hell-bent on passing this bad legislation as ever, with a big assist from the MPAA.

Which means tomorrow's internet blackout, in which hundreds of sites are participating, is still absolutely necessary.

It also means members of Congress have to hear from us. You can use this form to send an email to your representative, and this one to contact your senators to tell them to oppose this bad bill.

Source: Daily Kos

Three weeks ago it looked like this thing was a sure shot to pass quietly.  The authors of the bill, and their stenographers in Congress, have roughly zero intention of giving up.  Don't you give up either.


Tags:

Well This is Embarrassing! Google Instant-ing "Naked," "Tony Comstock," and "Decapitation" Render Grossly Different Results

Posted by figleaf on Wed, 2010-09-08 18:39

So economics blogger Felix Salmon mentioned that economics blogger Tyler Cowen had tweeted that the new Google Instant feature might be more a distraction than a benefit.

Salmon quoted Google’s Matt Cutts on how he thinks Instant is instead a powerful and useful research tool

I was recently researching a congressperson. With Google Instant, it was more visible to me that this congressperson had proposed an energy plan, so I refined my search to learn more, and quickly found myself reading a post on the congressperson’s blog that had been on page 2 of the search results.

Ben Gomes mentioned this during the Q&A, but with Google Instant I find myself digging into a query more. Take a query like [roth ira v]. That brings up Autocomplete suggestions like [roth ira vs traditional ira], [roth ira vanguard], and [roth ira vs 401k]. Suddenly I’m able to explore those queries more just by pressing the up/down arrow key. I can get a preview of what the results will be, add or subtract words to modify my query, and hit enter at any time… When I was in grad school, I had a professor who mentioned that peoples’ information need often change over the course of a search session. Google Instant makes that process even easier: people can dig into a topic and find out new areas to explore with very little work.

Matt Cutts said it here.

Felix Salmon uses Cutts to bolster his claim that, as a blogger, Cowen might enjoy the benefits of the “serendipitous diversions” he frets might instead… well… divert him.

Well gee, I’m a blogger too so I’m pretty excited about the possibilities Cutts, Cowen, and Salmon endorse.

So giving it a try I went to the Google Instant page and gave it a quick whorl.

So I first started typing “Tyler Cowen” and sure enough, before I’d made it to “Tyler Co” there was the first reference to Cowen, and by the time I’d typed his full name I’d discovered (ok, confirmed) that in addition to being a voracious reader, prolific blogger, and political libertarian he’s also deeply interested in autism. Good call.

Then I started typing “Felix Salmon.” And oh boy, that was even quicker — he was first up in the list by the time I’d typed “Felix S!” And with just a little more twiddling I discovered that not only does he use the phrase “recipe for disaster” I stumbled across a vaguely interesting link to alternatives to salmon at a somewhat automated-looking site called Halibut-Recipies-on-line.com (no link since I’m not vouching for it.) So that’s a distraction if not an entirely serendipitous one.

Anyway, that was all going so well I thought I’d start typing “Tony Comstock.”

Now the funny thing is that I got… nothing! Google Instant has nothing at all to say about Tony.

Which is kind of funny since roughly two years ago Comstock, a former war documentary filmmaker who now tries to make a living making erotic documentaries of non-Hollywood-looking, ordinary couples, has actually been in correspondence with none other than Matt Cutts! On a topic (Google’s type-ahead tips) not at all unlike this one. Nor is that the only link — their correspondence was followed fairly closely around both the sex-oriented and non-sex-oriented (e.g. James Fallows) blogosphere.

Feh.

So no Tony Comstock in Google Instant. Fine. I blog a lot about relationships, gender, and sex so… I figured I’d search Google Instant for something fairly common to couples in relationships. Fellatio? Nope, no Google Instant. How about cunnilingus? Nope. Ok, how about sweet old ordinary “naked?” Eh, not that either.

Eh. Fine again, Google is obviously trying to be sensitive about topics that might disturb sensitive people. And children.

So…

I decided to confirm this by trying Google Instant on something that disturbs me enormously: “decapitation.”

Uh oh! Oh, that’s very bad. More than I really wanted to know! And waaaayyy too instantly!

Worse? By the time you’ve typed “graphic beh” you get items #1, “graphic beheading.” Worse still? Instant anticipated item #2? That would be “graphic beheading videos!“

Changing direction for a moment, how ‘bout rectal tears? Eww, yup. Though (mercifully?) no anal fissures.

Violent sexual assault? Eww, that cheerfully pops up too! (But you have to type through the empty Instant desert of “violent sex” to get there.)

And, gross, turns out by the type you type the letters “lynchi” “lynching photos” is item number two!

All pretty darned offensive and disturbing if you ask me.

And not the usual bailiwick for this blog so even assuming there was some kind of positive “serendipitous distractions” in the department of inhuman violence those latter instant keywords wouldn’t do me a bit of good.

Last call? Does “orgasm” show up in Google Instant? Not even faked ones!

No help for me then. No help for Comstock either.

Instantly helpful for the Klan and other racists, Al Qaeda and other beheaders though. Good job Google!

Update: Not sure where this fits in but if you look up the classic quip about movie rating systems, it turns out that Google Instant renders results for both “kiss breast” and “cut off breast.” Not much of an attaboy but at least they’re not as knee-squeezingly adolescent as the MPAA’s ratings guidelines.

Update #2: As QoB points out in comments to this post, it turns out that as I began writing this post Lux Alptraum had already done a post on Google Instant’s red-light districting over on (duh, not work-safe if you dislike cliché porn images) Fleshbot. But of course I wouldn’t have seen it with Google Instant because it returns hits for neither “Lux Alptraum” nor “Fleshbot.”

Though it turns out if you try the keywords “Google Instant Red-light” you do find an unfiltered version of Alptraum’s post at a mirrored livejournal feed. Though I’m sure the folks at Google would argue that hey, no sexuality-related filtering algorithm is perfect… but they’re working on it. Just wish they’d work as hard on their beheading-video filters!


Tags:

Russ Meyer Would Be Thrilled: My Attempt to Debunk Australian Censorship of Small-BreasAdult Women Fails

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2010-01-28 23:45


Photo by Flickr user Wombatunderground1. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Feminist* author Courtney Martin, widely respected-by-feminists* blogger at premier feminist* website Feministing* quotes Australian feminist* porn-for-women blogger Ms. Naughty by way of decrying…

...censorship prompted by decidedly non-feminist Australian Senators Barnaby Joyce and Guy Barnett. The censorship in question? Small breasts, which at least in Joyce and Barnett’s understanding of anatomy, are found only on underage girls.

Quoth Martin…

So many jokes come to mind here, but I’m going to leave the analysis to Ms. Naughty on Australia’s weird ban:

Why ban small boobs? I can only assume it stems from paranoia that flat chests somehow stir up the pedophiles. And you only need to mention that “p” word to start a full-scale moral panic in Parliament.

Shall we put such hysteria aside and look at what this ruling is saying to Australian women? Basically, it’s classing a certain normal female body type as obscene. It’s declaring all flat chests to be automatically juvenile, something that should not be viewed by anyone because of a fear that it will stir up “base instincts” in certain people.

“Can the Classification Board be any more insulting or sexist?”

Read the quote in context here.

For what it’s worth Barnett and Guy have also pressed the board to outright ban all depictions of female ejaculations and, even weirder, they’re evidently working to restrict photos where inner (but not outer!) labia are visible.

So far anyway the comments at Feministing have been pretty positive in the sense that even those who aren’t totally thrilled by porn still think impositions like this are going too far.

In fact, pretty much around the world people of all stripes are taking a… pretty dim view of the board’s actions.

So I’m going to be contrary and try to give the stupid morons the benefit of the doubt.

Opposition to the small-breasts ruling have been pretty hyperbolic and the analysis has sounded a bit slippery-slope-y so I thought I’d look around and see if I could find the real scoop.

Turns out there’s not a lot. In fact the only credible source of a pro-small-breasts-ban line of reasoning comes from the the Australian anti-censorship site that seems to have broken the original story, SomebodyThingOfTheChildren.com.

According to them the Australian Classification Board says their intention is to ban only images of underage models. Well, and images of small-breasted of-age adults if they might be mistaken for underage models.

In other words even though there’s surprising unanimity in choosing to illustrate articles with photos of actress Keira Knightley, it’s at least somewhat likely magazines and videos depicting her wouldn’t be covered by the ban because she’s known to be an adult.

On the other hand, publications the board evidently has completely banned include 18 U.S. C. 2257-compliant U.S. magazines with titles like Barely Legal, Finally Legal and Purely 18. In other words publications that expressly intend their models to be perceived as of-age adults… and who, since the publications are under perpetual threat of F.B.I. investigation, are verified to be actually of-age adults.

Which means that, yup, even if accusatory articles are hyperbolic the underlying story appears to be accurate: in Australia pornographers are now officially required to discriminate against women with small breasts.

Senators Barnaby Joyce and Guy Barnett, and no-doubt Russ Meyer approve.

\* I’ve been debating a bunch of anti-feminists who claim all feminists are man-hating, hairy-legged, lesbian-separatist, female-supremacist sex haters lately and, at least according to them this post, nor Courtney’s, nor Ms. Naughties can exist, let alone say anything that isn’t straight-up conservative about erotic images of adult men and women. So I thought I’d emphasis the point. Not that it would matter — they’re inclined to see feminism as an evil monolith than Mary Daly was inclined to see men, period, at all. So I thought I’d rub it in.


Tags:

Australia Bans the Only Porn Movie I've Actually Enjoyed

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2009-08-27 23:28

Ms Naughty of Porn for Women Blog says the only commercial porn movie I’ve had the patience to watch in years, Jennifer Lyon Bell’s Matinee

In Berlin last year I had the honour of meeting Jennifer Lyon Bell, an American filmmaker with a compelling vision for erotic film. Her film Matinee is a gorgeous work of art, well written, masterfully acted and beautifully filmed. It is a wonderful addition to the growing canon of well-made, female-focused erotic films and I consider it to be part of the new wave of sex-positive movies that are forging a new path in porn.

Naturally this means the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification has banned it.


She said it here.

As I mentioned in my review (I saw it at the Sex 2.0 conference last spring) I had pretty much the same impression of the film. Ms Naughty quotes Bell and her backers as saying that was exactly what she was trying to convey

It’s just two characters enjoying sex in a realistic way that fits with their characters’ personalities. Consensual sex, nothing weird. Why on earth would that be dangerous to watch?

And, seriously, I don’t see how there’s anything possibly offensive or objectionable to the movie except that a) it has direct sex in it and b) the female partner leads the entire way from the first kiss to rousing him to erection to unwrapping and putting on the condom to insertion. Oh, and c) there’s nothing daring or defiant or “gender-bendery” or “toppish” about her actions, nor anything inconsistent with what any two heterosexual lovers might do when they’re both a bit melancholy about their circumstances and are used to finding emotional connection and comfort in sex.

On the other hand that might indeed be the offensive part. Final quote from Ms Naughty:

The organisers rightly point out that the OFLC didn’t have a problem with Lars Van Trier’s Antichrist, which disturbingly depicts a scene of female genital mutilation and seems to be misogynist in intent. Jen’s film, which only shows two people having nuanced, meaningful, tender sex, is apparently more offensive than that.

Not sure what to say here. Violently injuring genitals is ok. Romantic sex heterosexual sex not so much.

Incidentally the OFLC also banned two Tony Comstock’s films about romantic homosexual sex. He and everyone else assumed they were balking at the homosexuality part. Starting to sound like it’s the romance part they can’t handle.

$%!*#@!!!


Tags:

Snark of the Week: Maybe Why Amazon *Really Does* Need to Filter "Adult" Content

Posted by figleaf on Wed, 2009-04-15 08:30

Commenting on a post about the #Amazon(filter)Fail at Pandagon Ms Kate went for the cross-post mashup snark of the week

...sometime ago, an inside contact on these things told me that a big part of this “offensive” content problem is the simple fact that wingnuts buy a lot of “adult content”, and that makes it so that people who buy an item that is tangential – say, a very floridly illustrated bible – get recomendations for all sorts of bondage-themed novels and the like.

It isn’t that the search engines are recommending things that are inappropriate – it is that the people who buy certain things tend to buy certain other things that are solidly adult content.

Ms Kate on 04/14 at 08:01 PM

She said it here.

Ouch! The reference, in case you missed it, being to last month’s red-state/on-line porn report.

—-

I originally meant to stop here but after sleeping on it I realized that minus the delightfully snarky wingnut porn/religion angle Ms Kate’s hypothesis doesn’t sound that far off.

People do order a lot of erotic material online in areas where eyebrows would be raised if local vendors sold it… let alone if local residents purchased it.

I think I’ve mentioned that during the whole eBay craze I had some friends who resold clothes from yard sales. They stumbed across a huge stash of very large women’s shoes from an out-of-business shop and put them online… and they were snapped up almost instantly. They tracked down more such shoes and… they were instantly snapped up. Eventually they actually ordered new extra-large shoes made and for several years did a booming business. It actually took them a while to realize their primary market was midwestern and southern cross-dressing men who socially couldn’t afford to buy them for themselves in local stores.

The other day a somewhat skeptical Rachel Kramer Bussel mentioned a rumor she keeps hearing that Barnes & Noble hates erotica. Which, if true would be funny since I’m pretty sure the big reason for their leap to national prominence over much larger and better-established vendors in the then-mail-order days was that unlike anyone else they included the sort of erotica titles (from “anonymous” Victorians to specialty fetish to Mapplethorpe coffee-table photography) that… you can find in their stores today. (They also, years ahead of their time, carried LGBT titles including LGBT erotica.) Which, again, must have helped lower the reluctance threshhold… or the blunt availability threshold… for thousands or millions of readers.

Anyway, given the possibly natural tendency for the shy and embarrassed to pay “I just read it for the articles,” it’s probably fairly common to order somewhat thematically-similar “straight” titles associated with the erotic materials for “oh there must have been a mix-up in my order” excuse making if I was designing a “you might also like…” or “people who bought this also bought…” feature for an on-line bookstore I’d probably add tweaks to make sure kids who selected the 80’s hit “Indiana Jones” presented with the 80’s schlock-porn hit “Indiana Jane.”

Doh! I just realized why this line of thinking seemed so familiar!

A while ago I ordered a Tony Comstock video, Heather Corinna’s S.E.X, and Pamela Drucker’s cross-cultural adultery report Lust in Translation and Amazon suggested that people who bought those titles also bought… Tracey Rihll’s Catapult: A History (Weapons in History)! Which at the time I saw as completely, 100% random… but maybe not.

I’m not saying that’s what Amazon did, just that I’d probably do that if I was coding out suggested sales. Although evidently unlike Amazon I’d also give users a chance to opt in or out.


Tags:

Good news re: #AmazonFail -- Amazon Page Ranks Seem to be Restored

Posted by figleaf on Tue, 2009-04-14 16:50

As of a couple moments ago both Leslea Newman’s Heather Has Two Mommies: 10th Anniversary Edition (Alyson Wonderland) and Heather Corinna’s S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-To-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College have had their Sales Rankings restored at Amazon.com. I haven’t checked any of the other books that were delisted over the weekend but, since I’m pretty sure this really was a language-based rather than a prejudice-based error I’m pretty confident it’s a general rollback.

I’d say “click those links, confirm the ranking is still there, and then help drive their sales ranks even higher… and help make up for sales losses over the weekend… by buying copies.” Except I’d have to add that as an Amazon Affiliate I’d be getting a (fractional) cut. (I’m not saying don’t buy from Amazon in general, at all. I am reluctant to appear eager to benefit financially.)

You can just support the authors and Powell’s Books, instead of the authors and me, if you buy Heather Has Two Mommies here and S.E.X. here. Or you can support the authors and Barnes & Noble, instead of the authors and me, if you buy Heather Has Two Mommies here and S.E.X. here. Or you could check Indiebound.com for an independent bookseller near you and support the authors and a local business.


Tags:

Amazon Coughs Up Plausible Story, Offers Credible Apology

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2009-04-13 21:25

Blogging reporter Andrea James of the 148-year-old, now all-online Seattle Post-Intelligencer says


Amazon calls mistake ‘embarrassing and ham-fisted’

Amazon.com has offered a response to the AmazonFail fiasco.

Because there’s so much attention to this, I’ll offer spokesman Drew Herdener’s comments unfiltered:

This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.

It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles – in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon’s main product search.

Many books have now been fixed and we’re in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.

She said it here.

There have been a number of conspiracy theories going around the web, all of them plausible. According to actual Amazon people, what happened was an employee was dinking around in code used to filter raw porn (which Amazon catalogues and/or resells) from their more regular fair. The employee, at the company’s French subsidiary, evidently plugged in some keywords that sounded good to him and… since Amazon worldwide is effectively driven by a single database… he wiped out 50,000 plus titles worldwide instead of whatever handful he’d meant to wipe out in French.

Oops.

I learned web programming from a moonlighting Amazon employee. Over the years I’ve worked on commercial websites with several former Amazon employees. And, of course, I’ve developed or contributed to several dozen database-driven websites (including this one) and so… wow, does that local-change-goes-global story work for me.

Add that to their admission, from an official spokesperson, that they were embarrassingly ham-fisted about the whole thing, start to finish. And while I’m not at all above rubbing their noses in it if they don’t clean it up pretty darn quickly, professional courtesy and acute personal awareness of how bloody easy that sort of thing can be when the internal goal is as much interconnection of data as possible means I’m strongly inclined to forgive them. Not forget, forgive.

Because, seriously, it’s not something they, or we, ought to forget. Because this was a nice preview of what happens when you do forget! I’ve been as guilty as anyone of just defaulting to Amazon links, and I’ll make an effort moving forward to remember other book vendors as well as Amazon just because of the perils of eggs in one basket.

But I’m also very inclined to forgive in the technical sense of seeing wrong, or being wronged, but making an affirmative act out of not retaliating for what Occams razor says pretty much had to be a complex to unravel but ultimately simple (and, um, easy to make, though I won’t say how I know except that years ago I caught mine sooner than they caught theirs) error.

I wanna see those Sales Rankings restored though. Soon.

(Via Hortense at Jezebel.)


Tags:

Not Looking Good... or Fair... or Reasonable... or Intelligent: Possible Reply from Amazon...

Posted by figleaf on Sun, 2009-04-12 19:33

One Amazon.com link I will post, however, is this post from Heather Corinna on her Amazon book page for S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-To-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College.


Is this book (or its author) too gay for an Amazon?
3:01 PM PDT, April 12, 2009, updated at 4:41 PM PDT, April 12, 2009
My book, like many, many others, has recently been deranked by Amazon.

In other words, it is no longer listed in the sales ranks with other books of its subject or genre, no matter how good my sales are, or if my sales are above others who are currently listed. As well, my book, as is the case with many others, is not currently listed anymore in the subject heading appropriate to it. That deranking can massively impact us as authors, and also can impact consumers, particularly those who are trying to seek out material on a subject broadly without knowing what books are available by title or author. And with books that serve any sort of marginalized population or subject matter, finding them offline is often tough. Deranking books like mine further marginalizes the already marginalized.

The books this primarily appears to have impacted are those by gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender authors, young adult or children’s books addressing sexuality, some sexuality books in general (including reference books), as well as some feminist titles. Some of the titles recently deranked besides mine include: James Baldwin’s, Giovanni’s Room, Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain, Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, E. M. Forster’s Maurice, Various, I Do: an anthology in support of marriage equality, Alex Sanchez’s Rainbow Road, The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students, Kate Bornstein’s Hello Cruel World, Milk: A Pictorial History of Harvey Milk, Dan Savage’s The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant, The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability: For All of Us Who Live with Disabilities, Chronic Pain and Illness, [Jessica Valenti & Jaclyn Friedman’s] Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape, Ruth Bell’s Changing Bodies, Changing Lives: Expanded Third Edition: A Book for Teens on Sex and Relationships, Jessica Valenti’s Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters, Toni Weschler’s Cycle Savvy: The Smart Teen’s Guide to the Mysteries of Her Body, Ellen DeGeneres: A Biography and many, many more.

At this time, there is no clear statement from Amazon as to what, exactly, is going on. However, one author, writing in, received the following reply:

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.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,

Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage

The trouble with that reply is that there is PLENTY of very explicilty “adult” material which has NOT been deranked, and we don’t need to guess much about if it is or isn’t adult when we simply look at some of the titles: Girls Gone Wild: Girls on Girls, Surrender the Booty 3: The Search for More Arse, Jenna Jameson: Ultimate Collection, Girls Kissing: Volume One, Ron Jeremy: The Hardest Working Man in Showbiz, Candy Girl: A Year In The Life Of An Unlikely Stripper, Hot Babes...

My book is intended for young adults, and is GLBT-inclusive, and penned by me, a queer author. It is not salacious, it is not pornography: it is a sexuality, sexual health and relationships reference book. Heather Has Two Mommies is a supportive and classic children’s book about gay families. Hello, Cruel World is a suicide prevention book (which just happens to be written by a transgender author). That’s a short list, but the point is, many of the books that have been deranked are not adult books at all, nor adult or salacious material, but what nearly all of them, so far, do seem to be are tagged or labeled in some way as GLBT, or as books addressing sexuality in a non-heteronormative or gendernormative way.

To give you an idea of how this deranking has impacted a given subject you’d search for, take a look at the current list for books on homosexuality.

You’ll perhaps notice a prevailing theme, and see that if I were looking for books on how what is WRONG with homosexuality, I’d find exactly what I needed there. But if I were merely researching to topic as a whole — or, horror of horrors, did not want to read what was wrong with me and why I needed fixing — I’d find a strange lack of well-rounded material on the subject, including some of the most cornerstone books on or about homosexuality. Huh.

This obviously isn’t about adult material. It seems painfully clear what it is likely about, and all we can hope is that a) we’re wrong in seeing what we are, or that this is some kind of glitch Amazon will fix immediately, and/or b) that if we’re not wrong in our perception of this event, Amazon realizes that, even for a private business who has the right to discriminate however they choose, this kind of discrimination is wrong.

To keep up with what’s been going on, you can see the twitter feed #amazonfail here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=amazonfail

The following open letter is also very informative: http://booksquare.com/open-letter-to-amazon-regard ing-recent-policy-changes/

I put a letter into Amazon early this morning myself, but have yet to get a response.

Why am I blogging this here? In part because I’d hope, as an author Amazon feels comfortable making a profit from, the least I can do is voice my concerns right here, where my book lives at Amazon. But also, because until this is cleared up, and we all have some explanation and the matter is rectified — and I’ll adapt this post if and when it does — I’d prefer consumers bought my book somewhere else, where we’re all as sure as we can be a company isn’t engaging in sexual discrimination.

Again, not ok at all. If they’re serious, and we’ll see how serious they are, then screw them.


Tags:

Amazon.com Delisting Sex-Ed, Disability Sex, and LGBT Books But... Not Girls Gone Wild?

Posted by figleaf on Sun, 2009-04-12 19:17


Photo by Flickr user figleaf (hey, that’s me!) Used under a Creative Commons license.

So I’ve been thinking about (finally) writing a book. Weird to think that if I wrote it about how to make money off of date-raping drunk young women my Amazon.com sales rank might shoot up to 1,404, but if I wrote about date rape in the context of the Two Rules of Desire in the no-sex class paradigm my Amazon sales rank might be… well, you might expect it to be a lot lower. Turns out, though, that evidently as of some time today it would more likely be… non-existent! Wiped out. Erased. Expunged.

From Twitter (Links with “twurl.nl” are URLs that are automatically shortened to fit Twitter’s 145-character post limit.)

Audacia Ray: http://twitpic.com/37ur0 – #amazon has dumped sales ranking for “adult” books. and all the info/reviews about Naked on the Internet are GONE

Audacia Ray: It’s not just “adult” themes but also LGBT books. I hope there’s a good explanation, but I fear there isn’t http://twurl.nl/w2y2dz

Audacia Ray: I’m trying to believe that the #amazon erasure of Naked on the Internet has to do with biz of remainders (its almost 2 years old)

Audacia Ray: But books older than mine have listings w/covers/reviews on #amazon even if out of print, like Carol Queen’s 1995 Exhibitionism for the Shy

Audacia Ray: So fucking bizarre. my book’s page is back, its in stock. sales rank is indeed missing. http://twurl.nl/7yd2vz

There’s actually quite a lot of buzz about this (at least a little while ago @AmazonFail was the #2 search item on Twitter.) I’ve singled out Dacia because a) her book is about sex, not a sex book, b) because her posts capture the general sense of surprise so well, c) because she’s pretty cool, and because I’ve been meaning to link to her last not one but two wonderfully reflective posts for a day or two.

(Update Speaking of cool people, see also Heather Corinna’s take on this.)

Other books recently gone missing from Amazon’s Sales Rank and other metrics (gee, wonder why the following links all go to Barnes & Noble pages? Gee, wonder why there are no links to Amazon pages in this post?)

Miriam Kaufman, Fran Odette, and Cory Silverberg’s The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability : For All of Us Who Live with Disabilities, Chronic Pain, and Illness unranked on Amazon.com

Heather Corinna’s S.E.X. : The All-You-Need-To-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College unranked on Amazon.com

Audacia Ray’s Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing in on Internet Sexploration unranked on Amazon.com

The Joy of Sex: The Timeless Guide to Lovemaking unranked on Amazon.com

Meanwhile, over at Amazon.com you can still find sales ranks for Girls Gone Wild: Girls on Girls (2008) Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,404 and other charming works.

About that last one? The “one of these things that’s not like the other ones?” The one that Amazon hasn’t suddenly stopped sales-ranking? Here’s a nice “customer review” of this instructional video

66 of 75 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The New Girl-on-Girl – Barely Legal, February 18, 2008
By Jenifer M (Orange County, CA, USA) – See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)
What started out as girls flashing their tits (for a free Girls Gone Wild T-shirt) – has more recently evolved into a bellwether of female sexuality (in the new century) – that captures some of the freshest and most spontaneous girl/girl action you’ll find in any video series today.

These aren’t actresses performing on film – but real girls, being sexy – and doing what just comes naturally. Sure, you’ll still see young women flashing, hiking their skirts, or completely baring their souls (or the physical equivalent) – just for the fun of it! But you’ll also find babes who (instinctively) know their way (exploring) around their friend’s feminine form – and who feel just as comfortable doing so – as they would around their own.

You’ll also find lots of girls kissing (another GGW trademark)

[Quick note about GGW: if you think that last bit was about me being “down on porn” then stop it. Porn’s not the point. This is about consistency, fairness, exercise of sound judgment, commercial competence, and abiding contempt for knee-squeezing twittery. —fl]

Yeah, so if you want to see “documentary” footage of legalized, commercial date rape of drunken “real girls” no problem. If you’re a sexual human being with, say, disabilities… or just in need of honest ideas… and want advice or inspiration? Amazon appears to be snubbing the kind of authors and works you probably care most to read.

I’m sort of hoping the overreactions aren’t called for. But… at the very least it seems pretty awkward. If it turns out to be true I’ll remove all references to Amazon.com from my website (including the book ads in my right-hand column) and swap in links to Powells Books or Barnes & Noble.

Which, if it was just me wouldn’t be a very big deal for Amazon at all. But then if it turns out to be true I’d probably recommend everyone else I know remove their references as well. (Even that might not be such a big deal for Amazon because… while I’m going to wait a little bit a heck of a lot of other people online aren’t waiting to de-link them at all.)


Tags:

Watching Official Language... Attempt Gymnastics

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2008-11-24 16:46

Bill Posner of Language Log says

Back in January I discussed the claim by the Federal Communications Commission that the buttocks are a “sexual or excretory organ”. To my amazement and dismay, this nonsense continues. The matter has now reached the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Here is ABC’s brief and here is the FCC’s response.

I don’t find the FCC’s response at all persuasive. It consists in large part of the claim that in the rule the phrase “sexual or excretory organs” should be interpreted as meaning what they want it to mean, as “body parts whose public display is deemed offensive by prudish people” rather than as what it actually says. It will be interesting to see what the Court makes of it.

Read the quote in context here.

Pesky technicalities! And it’s a bit of an oddity that buttocks are prohibited (presumably, since as flesh-covered muscles they’re not excretory) as “sexual organs” when there’s no prohibition on the depiction of hands and mouths. Unless by “sexual organs” they mean not organs “commonly involved in sexuality” but “organs used entirely and only for reproduction.” I have no idea at all how the prohibition works on breasts (an erogenous big deal in Anglo circles) but not, say, necks and earlobes (an erogenous big deal, and actually kind of taboo, in other cultures.) And don’t say they’re “excretory organs” either because the generally agreed upon definition of excretion is “The removal of a waste product from the body.” If the FCC’s regulation included “secretion“ (“Secretion is the process of segregating, elaborating, and releasing chemicals from a cell, or a secreted chemical substance or amount of substance. In contrast to excretion, the substance may have a certain function, rather than being a waste product”) they’d still, obviously, be on shaky ground, especially since, oh, say, skin is also a secretory organ.

None of this is to say the FCC should just open the floodgates and allow television programming like Californication, Sex in the City, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The L-Word... oh wait! Actually I really don’t think they should open it up — representations of sexuality on broadcast television already make an oxymoron of the term “adult content” even with clothes on.


Tags:

User login