Keith Hartman's Blog: What's up with Keith - Posts Tagged "homophobia"

I recently had one of my works that features a description of a gay sex act taken down from the Amazon store because an employee decided that it was “offensive”. It’s not clear why the Amazon employee were offended. The work is for sale on both iTunes and Barnes & Noble, so it’s clearly not out of step with contemporary community standards. And I didn’t think that anyone could still be shocked to learn that gay men sometimes have sex.

None the less, the work has been banned from the store, and Amazon is now threatening to suspend my account and remove the rest of my work. So in an attempt to understand Amazon’s definition of “offensive content”, I decided to take a look at some of the books that they do approve of.

The following are all actually for sale on the Amazon store:

•Books encouraging the white race to rise up and dominate the “lesser” races: e.g. "The White Power Manifesto"

•Books by Nazi apologists claiming that the holocaust was a hoax e.g. "The Six Million: Fact or Fiction?"

•Books promising to “cure” homosexuals though a dangerous and discredited psychological procedure. e.g: "Reparative Therapy of Homosexuality: A New Clinical Approach"

•Straight erotica in which virgin women are repeatedly gang raped by demons until they learn to enjoy it and fall in love with Satan: e.g. "Heaven or Hell: MMMF, Group, Bondage, Domination (Ravaged by Demons Book 1)"

•Straight Erotica in which women are kidnapped and trained as sex slaves: e.g. "Captured By Him - Sold to the Master, Book 1: A BDSM Master-Slave Romance"

•Straight erotica in which women are gang raped by mutant monsters: e.g. "One long night with FOUR AGGRESSIVE CREATURES leaves innocent and curvy Sasha STRETCHED, SPENT, and PUMPED FULL"

So to sum it up: Amazon does not find books advocating white supremacy to be too offensive to sell. Amazon does not find a book claiming that the murder of 6 million Jews was faked to be too offensive to sell. Amazon does not find books advocating a damaging and discredited procedure for “curing” homosexuality to be too offensive to sell Amazon does not find straight erotica about the gang rape and sexual enslavement of women to be too offensive too sell

However, Amazon does consider a relatively mild piece of gay erotica, in which a guy gets a blow job from the bully who tormented him in high school, to be so deeply offensive that the story must be blocked from the site and the author threatened with having his account terminated.

Seriously?

Is it still 2016? Because the Amazon censors seem to be living in 1950.

Keith