Careful Now!

We interrupt this haphazard Halloween Horror Month to bring you... an annoyed rant.

This morning, when I was blearily checking over the BBC News website to see what was happening in the world, I happened to notice this story: Amazon removes abuse-themed e-books from store. And what passes for my soul died a little, for I knew what this was all about.

For those who don't know, I write erotica e-books when I have the time. I haven't written for a while (which I'm trying to rectify) because hey, between my own problems and Nick's it's hard to find the time to be able to sit down for a few hours in the right mindset to be able to write. And in the eighteenish months since I started doing this, I've seen several little "moral panics" pop up about the "filth" on sale in online bookstores. This is just the latest one, but it bothers me more because of some of the wording and things being bandied around.

Okay, to get a few things straight: I don't like bestiality, incest or rape porn, and have never written any. That being said, I'm still anti-censorship enough to be really uncomfortable with the idea of banning them, because they're fantasy, not reality. And because every time this comes up, I never see Lolita, The Story of O or The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty included in the lists of things to ban. I've seen this double-standard before, when In The Realm Of The Senses got classed as "art" with its full-on hardcore sex scenes, while at the same time 39 other films were being prosecuted for being "obscene" despite having little to no simulated sex at all in them, just horror (the infamous Video Nasties of the early 1980s). So yeah, this bugs me. A lot.

So this time it's the "rape/forced-(pseudo)-incest" books being targeted, with the occasional bit of bestiality thrown in. Well to be quite honest, I always did wonder how those books were getting past Amazon's censors when most of the erotica writers I knew were fighting to get a cover with a "hand-bra" past them. Plus whenever the press gets onto this topic they're always the ones they point to as examples of the "depraved filth" out there. So there's a small, almost traitorous part of me that's not sad to see them go. But the BBC - and the article which started this latest witch hunt off - claim that "the search function automatically suggested explicit topics to readers typing seemingly innocuous keywords - without age verification taking place."

Well, duh. Search engines don't and can't check for age, for one thing. It would give extra work to the engine and thus slow it down, and unless we're now suggesting scanning something like a driving license or ID card in every time we want to look up something online (which would screw me over as I have neither) everyone's just going to lie anyway. So as stupid ideas go, that one ranks right up there with "try before you buy underwear". Secondly, what "innocuous keywords" were being used? Because I tested several - even some I knew should come up with erotica because I wrote them - and couldn't even get to my own books, as Amazon has already filtered them away from innocent and/or easily offended eyes months ago. And as I said, I don't even write any of the stuff referenced here.

So, having dealt with that issue, I now move on to the far worse one - the language of the article that started this all off.

"kindle filth"
"depraved amateur literature"
"illegal and immoral acts"

My gods, it reads like a Daily Mail artic-oh.

Let's ignore the subtle call to harrass the poor author they've focussed on (by pointing out what she says in her author blurb and pointing out that she "hasn't done much to hide her identity" - oh boys, everyone uses a nom de plume in this business) and focus instead on their persuasive language. In case you hadn't guessed, that's the quotes above. They're very carefully crafted to create an emotive response from the reader - in this case a knee-jerk one. Ironically, erotica does the same thing, but with a different response in mind. And it's exactly the same kind of wording used for the video nasties panics, the violent video game panics, and so on. I take specific offence at the use of the word "amateur" to describe erotica authors. We're published, people buy our works, we make money from this. What, exactly, is "amateur" about that?

*sigh*

So it goes on. Despite the popularity of books like 50 Shades of Grey; a book that was originally Twilight fanfiction and therefore is probably far more appealing to "underage" readers (and which also isn't under an age filter), we're still shaming anything that doesn't fit our narrow definition of "acceptable" smut. We're clucking our tongues disgustedly at books featuring fantasy creatures having sex with humans while smiling down on Lolita. Pearl-clutching at fantasies while ignoring the slut-shaming of real rape and abuse victims. And most people are going to fall for it.

And that, more than anything, makes me angry and sad.