Pornography on the Kindle is caught in a strange catch 22. People love using their e-readers to read pornography, because no one can tell when they buy it or read it. This sells more e-readers. But at the same time, Amazon doesn’t want to be known as the place where people go to buy porn, because that could turn off more general audiences.
So, as The Atlantic reports, Amazon still sells porn, but it’s been making it consistently harder to find by making it so that many porn titles don’t show up in Amazon’s default “All Departments” search—they must be searched directly in Books or the Kindle Store. But it seems that bestsellers, such as 50 Shades of Grey, get a free pass.
Porn writers such as Selena Kitt are upset that Amazon is biting the hand that feeds it, and that Amazon won’t even tell them what changes they need to make to keep their works from getting cut from search. (Of course, on the other hand, some people seem to be incensed that Amazon allows any pornography at all.)
Amazon’s policies may be unnecessarily opaque, but reading Kitt’s essay, you can at least see a possible motivation for the company’s apparent Puritanism. Kitt herself, like Santiago and kinukitty, believes that the appeal of porn on the Kindle is precisely that it allows for reading of content surreptitiously. Porn may have helped make the Kindle successful, but a big part of the reason that the Kindle is so perfectly made for porn is that it doesn’t look like it’s made for porn. Women (and men, too) who want to read porn on the Kindle don’t want to be buying their porn from some place that screams porn! Amazon’s advantage as a seller of porn is precisely that it sells lots of things that aren’t porn, and that it is known primarily for selling things that aren’t porn.
Of course, Amazon isn’t the only place you can go to get porn, especially if you subscribe to one of those fetishes that are too outré for Amazon to want to sell it to you. There are dozens of fetish porn sites on the Internet where people write stories and post them for free, and e-book conversion apps are a dime a dozen.
Perhaps the best lesson to take from this is, if you are looking for porn on Amazon, do your search directly in Books or the Kindle Store, rather than using “All Departments.” You’ll find more titles that way.
Wanting to keep impressionable children from stumbling across porn is hardly “puritanism.” It’s simply good parenting.
Modern puritanism lurks elsewhere. That sad old New England tradition that rules need to be made lest someone be happy has been inherited primarily by environmentalists and the food police. They’re today’s spoil sports, banning plastic shopping bags over the opposition of 70% of the voters (Seattle’s city council) and trying to outlaw large soft drink cups (NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg). Gun controllers also seem bothered that some people enjoy shooting guns and that kids like to play with toy guns.
This Atlantic story about Amazon hiding porn-related products is coming a bit late. According to a friend who is a software developer for Google-Seattle, friends at Amazon have told her that they’ve been busy coming up with ways to hide porn for over a year. Given those ‘also viewed’ and ‘also purchased’ links that Amazon generates, it’s no simple task.
Defining porn requires human judgment as well as consistent policies. Amazon doesn’t like to spend money on humans, and its culture of secrecy and fear of controversy makes having a consistent policy within Amazon hard to maintain, much less a policy the public can understand.
Years ago I worked nights at a hospital and once, picking up meds from the pharmacy, I couldn’t help but notice the well-past-her-prime pharmacist on duty was reading so-called romance fiction. Seeing that I’d noticed, she told me it was the only way she could get romance. I think of that sad, lonely woman whenever someone tries to make porn bold and exciting. Not so.
For readers of porn, the Kindle’s advantage is a lack of those revealing ‘bodice ripper’ covers. No one need know how lonely, and devoid of romance your life is. That’s sad.
Amazon has also completely removed many books, both fiction and non-fiction, with themes of “diverse” sexual orientations and practice. These include books throughout the LGBT areas. Amazon refuses to give any answers as to exactly what is objectionable in the books it removes from sale. Amazon’s actions are especially sleazy since many of the authors published through Amazon’s own vanity publishing arm, CreateSpace. Thus an author of a lesbian-themed book could pay Amazon several thousand dollars to be published and sold through Amazon, and then Amazon cuts off the sales immediately. Amazon’s book banning encompasses both paper and Kindle Ebooks. There is much discussion of Amazon censorship in the “support groups” for publishers at Amazon.
In 1972 Denmark legalized uncensored porn after a period of five years experiment showed an eighty per cent decrease in crimes of sexual violent such as rape.
It follows that the censoring of acted rape scenes that are common sexual fantasies will increase real rape of women and children in the real world.
“Ah they say porn was a lot different then”
“In the Sixties there was a wide choice of all material I know because I was making it along with a few other acquaintances that al considered themselves professional photographers and whose work was their passion. All sexual fantasies except children under 16, the age of consent was allowed.
Porn has a steep social cost to it. Check out convicted rapist and kidnapper, Ariel Castro’s, own words in describing how porn contributed to his sick obsessions: http://fox8.com/2013/08/01/ariel-castro-im-not-a-monster-im-sick/
It’s not just an issue of liberty and free speech.
Btw, this statement from Castro was made just this morning in Cleveland.
Everybody drinks water too. The fact that Ariel Castro was able to drink water every day and not dry up and blow away contributed to these foul crimes.
I’m sorry, I’m being flippant, but millions if not billions of people look at porn and only a small percentage of them end up becoming this evil. When you dislike something it’s tempting to make it responsible for all kinds of nastiness, but ’tis not that simple.
I shop with reusable bags and somehow I still manage to have plenty of fun. (I also feel a little better knowing that our marshlands won’t be choked with plastic bags, does that make me a kill-joy?)
I was only pointing out that Castro *himself* identifies porn as a problem in his progression to criminal behavior. He didn’t identify drinking water as a problem. He’s also not the first convicted rapist to make that connection about their own activities. We can question their conclusions, but when someone self assesses in that way, I think it is noteworthy.
Well sure he’s going to say that. He’s going to try to put the blame on anything other than himself. That doesn’t mean we should believe him.
“I didn’t mean to shoot all those people! It was the gun! It made me do it!” “See? See? We need to outlaw guns! They’re evil!”
I know people who not only read porn but write it—including in some pretty bizarre fetishes. To my knowledge, none of them has ever tried to enact his or her fantasies in the real world.
@Chris, and porn is such an easy thing to blame. We’re already uncomfortable about it, and it’s easy to nod along and say, “Yep. If it weren’t for that, he wouldn’t have done it.” Doesn’t make it true.
It’s a chicken and egg thing. Did he read porn because it fed his fantasies and because he was wired that way, he decided to move his fantasies from paper to real life? Or did the porn cause him to act that way? I’m inclined to go along with the former.
I write it, and I’ve read a fairly wide selection (avoiding most of the bizarre fetishes, though), and I fancy myself pretty well adjusted and unlikely to harm anyone.
You are correct Chris, to note that there is an element of blame shifting in Castro’s behavior, and it is definitely abhorrent. People who do ANYTHING wrong will often try to weasel out from under responsibility for their actions.
But maybe it’s a false dichotomy to say that you’re either completely normal or a rapist if you a porn user. There are plenty of wrecked marriages/relationships over porn use by people who fall somewhere in between.
For all the people you know who are readers/writers and seem okay, there are also relationships suffering because the objectifying of persons into objects of gratification, separate from the daily stuff of commitment (ie, that’s what porn is), which of course is a tough act to follow in a REAL relationship, that needs communication, give-and-take and so forth. To pretend like this stuff is completely harmless seems unrealistic. Sadly, I have known many families who have suffered because of it.
No ill will meant here, I just wanted to try to discuss it. It’s not that long ago that porn use was viewed by society as aberrant behavior, but not so with guns. I guess I just wonder if it is really progress to view it as safe and normal.
I’m sure it does also highlight some of my own insecurities. I admit that, too. Thanks for discussing.
I figured those horrible and cowardly things Castro said would get some pornography debates going again — though I must admit I didn’t think I’d see it first here.
Andrea, in response to your concerns, which I do not discount, I think it’s worth considering some interesting recent research into this issue, and perhaps giving that research more credence than anecdotal evidence — particularly the anecdotal evidence of a serial rapist. More than four years ago, a Clemson University report (reported on here by the New York Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/2.1353/study-finds-online-porn-reduce-incidence-rape-article-1.390028) tied reductions in sexual assaults to increases in access to online pornography. There have been a number or studies before and since looking into the same issue. They seem to suggest that societies which restrict access to sexually explicit materials end up seeing higher levels of sexually related crimes. Pornography may often serve as an outlet for an at-risk minority (who may in fact be non-neurotypical when it comes to their sexual responses).
In any case, as others have said, the words of a kidnapper and rapist who is clearly attempting to absolve himself of any responsibility should carry no weight with us. Ted Bundy said the same thing the day before they executed him, and, though he was much more coherent than Castro, I think his motivation was the same wretched and execrable ducking of personal culpability.
So I wouldn’t rush to judgment about the evils of pornography. On the other hand, I have heard that firefighters have been having to remove a lot more mis-applied handcuffs since Fifty Shades became popular, so there are certainly some troubles we can lay pornography’s door…
David, thanks so much for such a thought provoking reply. I’m going to read that study (will send it to my Kindle!) tonight. I really do appreciate this discussion.