Quote:
Originally Posted by catsittingstill
And they might be interested in _Heather Has Two Mommies_, as it is a children's book. But--oops!--it was labeled as "adult" and disappeared from Amazon searches. Pure accident, I'm sure, nothing to do with homophobia at all, but you can see how these mistaken impressions get started.
Just like all those other books, biographies of people who, among all their other traits and achievements, also happen to be gay or lesbian; books about social and political activism that happen to be aimed at, among other audiences, gays and lesbians; romances whose characters just happen to be gay or lesbian; that kind of thing. Just a coincidence, I'm sure, that the books removed from the searches--which did indeed, as Amazon said, range through many categories--had that one thing in common.
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All of the examples you're citing were filtered when the adult tag was mistakenly applied to multiple categories. The problem was resolved within a couple of days of being found. Did all 50,000 affected books have some relation to homosexuality? I don't know - I've never seen a list of all of the books. All I've seen are a couple of lists of 100 or so books - not even a quarter of a percent of the books affected. There's been a lot of jumping to conclusions over that .20%.
I'd agree that the Playboy centerfolds should be on the filtered list. If you go into a Borders or Barnes/Noble store you'll find that same book shelved with the photography, not in the sexuality section. Perhaps some of Amazon's categorization comes from the publisher?
Do a search for 'gay erotica' on Amazon. Over 2000 hits. Gosh, their filter must be broken! Or, maybe their filter is smart enough to include adult items if your search phrase contains adult terms. (That's only a guess, I have no real idea.)
Or, do a search for 'Joy of Sex'. You'll find not only the various editions of the straight sex manual, you'll also find 'The Joy of Gay Sex'. Again, homosexual item not being filtered.
And oddly enough, if I type in 'Heather', the first autofill suggestion is "Heather has two mommies".
Can anyone give me a current example of a book that ought to show up in a search, that isn't?