If you follow Neil Gaiman on Twitter, you already know this, but for the rest of us: Amazon.com has made the sickening and, apparently, homophobic maneuver of hiding sales ranks for a slew of books with LGBTQ content. These sales ranks are tied in with whether/how books appear on sales lists and come up in searches on Amazon. In other words, we’ve got an issue of visibility and accessibility as well as (un)equal treatment here.

When Mark Probst, author of a gay YA novel, wrote to Amazon asking why his book’s sales rank had vanished, he received a letter clearly implying it was because his book was deemed “adult” material. Since then, dozens (hundreds?) of other books with LGBTQ content with stripped sales ranks have been noted.

Affected books include works of literary fiction and nonfiction. Many (my beloved, squeaky-clean Edwardian romance Maurice, by E.M. Forster, among them; Isabel Miller’s Patience and Sarah) are classics. Some have no sexual content or speak in the gentlest of metaphors; others have sex scenes but hardly such that they’d be considered erotica by the average reader. Some are YA books—e.g., Alex Sanchez’s Rainbow Boys, the groundbreaking anthology Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence. Some are children’s books; Leslea Neuman’s Heather Has Two Mommies has been stripped of its sales rank. There are even pregnancy guides on the list—lesbian pregnancy guides, but pregnancy guides nonetheless.

In other words, these are not “adult” materials. Yet they’re being treated as such by Amazon simply—apparently—because of their LGBTQ content. It’s just the latest example of the fallacious equation of “gay” with “pornographic” made by narrow-minded people who can’t stop thinking about the “sex” in “homosexual.”

Meanwhile, there’s plenty of straight romance and erotica (and pregnancy guides) that has not been issued the same treatment. Even Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds hasn’t measured up as “adult” content on the Amazon scale.

The Meta Writer community on LJ is keeping readers abreast of the situation. Check out their round-up of what’s known and how we can respond to the situation. My personal suggestions: call or write to Amazon, sign Meta Writer’s petition, and spread the word.

ETA, 4/12/09: Not surprisingly, Amazon’s response at this time is that there was a “glitch.” I’ll be interested to see how this plays out once the work week begins. What a weekend! And I have to say… whatever the reasons behind this phenomenon (programming error, bias, whatever), I’m incredibly proud of the public’s response. Because whatever the reasons, this isn’t the kind of thing people should keep mum about. Whatever the reasons, Amazon has heard loud and clear that we don’t like it.

At least one thing I’ve read today suggests that books stripped of their rankings were flagged by Amazon users as “adult.” Obviously I don’t know if that’s true, but it reminds me of an article I read recently (I wish I could remember where!) about the current practice on many Web 2.0 sites of allowing users to flag content as “objectionable.” This isn’t anything new; I remember several years ago the kerfuffle when LiveJournal restricted user icons that featured female breasts, including nonsexual images of breast feeding, and the wave of disabling erotic fanfic communities.

In any case, even as peer flagging cuts down on spam and pornography, it also results in “just plain folks” getting their blogs, Flickr, Facebook, etc. accounts frozen because someone else thought their content was “objectionable.” Then begins the appeal process… the review process… and probably they’ll get their stuff back eventually, but it’s a hassle, and in the meantime that content is inaccessible.

I realize that Web 2.0 sites need some kind of review process in place to ensure that users adhere to their terms of use, but often it seems that the process consists of muting the “offender” first and asking questions later. Or, rather, waiting for the “offender” to ask the questions. The process puts a whole lot of power in the hands of the people doing the flagging, whether they’re doing it out of genuine good will, out of spite, or out of… whatever.

And, of course, the people most likely to flag “objectionable” content are those who find the most content to be “objectionable”—the people who believe everyone adhering to their morals is more important than intellectual freedom.

Oops, that turned into a bit of a rant. But it’s my blog. No apologies. And no flagging either—one of the benefits of being a free agent.

ETA, 4/13/09: I haven’t heard any definitive follow-up yet, but I wanted to add a link to Carlie at Librarilly Blonde’s round-up on the issue.

ETA, 4/15/09: Aaaand another fine round-up from Librarilly Blonde.

The weekend started with a handful of known items whose rankings had been stripped. By Sunday afternoon, there were dozens. By the end of the weekend, it looked like the number of affected items was probably in the hundreds. But the final count?

Over 57,000 (rankings restored… for now).

My friend E. shared an interesting op-ed from the Washington Post about the social constructs behind algorithms. Whatever the “glitch” in Amazon’s metadata algorithms (or whatever they’re pinning the blame on), humans wrote the algorithms. At every level of human involvement, judgments were being made, prejudices expressed.

I’m still hoping Amazon will step forward with a more satisfying explanation.