Give over Amazon...

Amazon went along and banned a bunch of erotica e-books that they deemed inappropriate. Some authors are jumping up and down and asking why. That’s understandable. Amazon’s response is the standard ‘because we can’ and it’s in ‘our guidelines’ to do so. What are those guidelines? What is deemed as appropriate when it come to erotica? Is Amazon targeting all publishers or just the Indie publishers? The answer is we don’t know an answer. Amazon is chanting their guideline speech.


Whatever your feelings are concerning incest, or its portrayal in fiction, every book in the entire “erotica” genre probably contains something that will be offensive to someone. And yet it is also one of the best-selling genres in electronic literature.

http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related-erotica-titles-from-store-kindle-archive/

Exactly…

As we all know what is deemed erotic covers a wide range of situations. To me, incest, rape and pedophilia are never going to be acceptable in any form. That’s not erotica. Anyone who thinks so or writes or practices such ought to be banned/shot/imprisoned and not necessarily in that order. Just my opinion of course…

But true Erotica? That’s different. Erotica to me is consenting adults – that means 18 and over – who get all naked, rub body parts, get sexually excited and have intercourse/oral sex be in standing up, lying down, underwater, chained up etc. The number of people who do the rubbing, the genders and are they naked but for a mask or a feather stuck in their arse is irrelevant. Consenting sex is erotic. And taboo subjects like BDSM, ménage, fisting, anal sex, multiple, random sexual partners or stranger sex etc? All these books have a warning. You have the choice to read or not. Give people that choice. Don’t allow the likes of Amazon to tell you that you can only read missionary sex that happens on a Sunday after a roast dinner and apple pie and ice-cream. That’s censorship, discrimination and it’s very Orwellian.

We all know that by banning books you’re actually doing the author a favour as people instantly want to know what’s so forbidden. So really – unless the act is illegal, non-consensual sex none of us can tell another what they can read when it comes to erotica. Give over Amazon. Trust people to read the warning labels and make their own decisions.

Amarinda Jones
Penn Halligan
www.amarindajones.com
www.amarindajones.blogspot.com
Be daring...read an Amarinda book