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An Open Letter To Amazon.com
Apr. 12th, 2009 09:26 pmAmazon.com has implemented a new ranking system in which books with LGBTQ themes or characters, no matter how mild the content as well as other books about alternate sexual situations such as sex with disabilities and certain feminist books have had their rank stripped from them. This means that searches no longer show them. I'm not just talking about fiction here. Critiques of "don't ask don't tell" and other obviously non-erotic nonfiction fall under this. Anti-suicide books fall under this. This system is both capricious and reprehensible. Incest, bestiality, and pedophilia are not yanked from the shelves, nor are books with homophobic themes. As a side effect (or perhaps intended effect) of this, The first book that appears when one types "homosexuality" into the search box is A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. I'm sad to say that you, my dear readers, shall have to wait a bit for tales of my Seder, though when they come, I assure you, they will be full of the usual amusement and igry.
Dear Amazon.com,
You have just lost a customer, because I don't support businesses who try to hide me away. I am bisexual. That's right, I am, and I'm ashamed that I've ever given you a single cent of my money. I am ashamed because you have tried to make me ashamed, but I am not ashamed of what I am, but of what you have become.
I've always been more attracted to women than to men, and in middle school, I actually scraped up the courage to tell my very liberal supportive mother I thought I was a lesbian-
-Only to be told that it was very common for someone's sexuality to fluctuate during puberty, and I probably wasn't anything of the kind. When in eighth grade, I had my first crush on a boy, I was deliriously happy, because it meant I was normal. I could stop worrying. I could go back to deluding myself until I made out with my best friend on a sleepover. I will never share a bed or even a room with another woman again without remembering that it isn't so innocent anymore.
After that, there was no more denial. I faced up to what I was, came out to my dad, my grandparents, and my friends, (not right away, it took me two years, and my family is liberal) and waited for the right moment to tell my mom. I would have come out to her too, if my best friend, not realizing she didn't know, accidentally outed me. The only reason I never came out online is that I'm not out to my siblings, and my sister reads my blog. It is a mark of how appalled I am that I am coming out in this way right now.
I am not adult content. Actually, my story is very very teenage. I'm certainly less adult content than American Psycho or Playboy, neither of which have been deranked, and yet it is my story and stories like mine that you seek to protect your customers from even knowing the existence of. Why must queer books be singled out this way? Are you afraid?
I am. I don't want queer kids searching for answers to see only A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, You Don't Have to be Gay and Can Homosexuality be Healed?. For this is poison for people, kids, already struggling to figure out what they are. These books tell them that they are sick and wrong, and sinful for the way they feel.
Books are and have always been friends. When and even before I struggled with my sexuality, I had books full of characters struggling too. I had comfort and hope, and people I understood, printed out on the page in front of me. You seek to deny that comfort, that hope, that reassurance for the queer kids who come after me.
This hurts me. You hurt me. It hurts me that you deem me so shameful, so perverted, that I must be hidden away, locked tight so that no one need know that I exist, much less that I think and feel, and talk. It hurts me that my parents barely cared when I told them what you did. It hurts me.
This hurts me as a queer person, a woman, and a person with disabilities, because according to you, as a person with disabilities, I should be asexual. I should be a poor little thing with an oxygen tank in a corner, not a bisexual woman with a healthy interest in sex. I see, so I'm two things that don't exist, not just one. If the idea of people with disabilities offends you, then your world is sadly small and shallow.
Whenever a child reads a book, they take their minds out of their parents' control and into their own. With the information they find, they can make up their own minds about the world around them and the printed one in front of them. Your measures will change no one's mind, but they will stifle.
You will not silence us. Even as you try to hide us, we will still be there out in the open, on your televisions, your radios, in your bookstores, in your homes, and out on your streets. We exist. This is the truth, and you can't take it away.
So Amazon, rank you
Sincerely,
Attackfish
Dear Amazon.com,
You have just lost a customer, because I don't support businesses who try to hide me away. I am bisexual. That's right, I am, and I'm ashamed that I've ever given you a single cent of my money. I am ashamed because you have tried to make me ashamed, but I am not ashamed of what I am, but of what you have become.
I've always been more attracted to women than to men, and in middle school, I actually scraped up the courage to tell my very liberal supportive mother I thought I was a lesbian-
-Only to be told that it was very common for someone's sexuality to fluctuate during puberty, and I probably wasn't anything of the kind. When in eighth grade, I had my first crush on a boy, I was deliriously happy, because it meant I was normal. I could stop worrying. I could go back to deluding myself until I made out with my best friend on a sleepover. I will never share a bed or even a room with another woman again without remembering that it isn't so innocent anymore.
After that, there was no more denial. I faced up to what I was, came out to my dad, my grandparents, and my friends, (not right away, it took me two years, and my family is liberal) and waited for the right moment to tell my mom. I would have come out to her too, if my best friend, not realizing she didn't know, accidentally outed me. The only reason I never came out online is that I'm not out to my siblings, and my sister reads my blog. It is a mark of how appalled I am that I am coming out in this way right now.
I am not adult content. Actually, my story is very very teenage. I'm certainly less adult content than American Psycho or Playboy, neither of which have been deranked, and yet it is my story and stories like mine that you seek to protect your customers from even knowing the existence of. Why must queer books be singled out this way? Are you afraid?
I am. I don't want queer kids searching for answers to see only A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, You Don't Have to be Gay and Can Homosexuality be Healed?. For this is poison for people, kids, already struggling to figure out what they are. These books tell them that they are sick and wrong, and sinful for the way they feel.
Books are and have always been friends. When and even before I struggled with my sexuality, I had books full of characters struggling too. I had comfort and hope, and people I understood, printed out on the page in front of me. You seek to deny that comfort, that hope, that reassurance for the queer kids who come after me.
This hurts me. You hurt me. It hurts me that you deem me so shameful, so perverted, that I must be hidden away, locked tight so that no one need know that I exist, much less that I think and feel, and talk. It hurts me that my parents barely cared when I told them what you did. It hurts me.
This hurts me as a queer person, a woman, and a person with disabilities, because according to you, as a person with disabilities, I should be asexual. I should be a poor little thing with an oxygen tank in a corner, not a bisexual woman with a healthy interest in sex. I see, so I'm two things that don't exist, not just one. If the idea of people with disabilities offends you, then your world is sadly small and shallow.
Whenever a child reads a book, they take their minds out of their parents' control and into their own. With the information they find, they can make up their own minds about the world around them and the printed one in front of them. Your measures will change no one's mind, but they will stifle.
You will not silence us. Even as you try to hide us, we will still be there out in the open, on your televisions, your radios, in your bookstores, in your homes, and out on your streets. We exist. This is the truth, and you can't take it away.
So Amazon, rank you
Sincerely,
Attackfish
