According to a few angry Amazon.com authors, Amazon is "purging" self-published erotica e-books. That's not quite true. Erotica titles are not being purged. Amazon is deleting incest stories--most of them involving an underage character.
To my mind, incest and pedophilia are inseparable. Both pathologies involve exploitation of the weaker. There is no consent. Unfortunately, discussion and refinement of these concepts on the Amazon forums is pretty well futile. Anything less than blanket sympathy arouses indignation by the "victimized" writers. One of the banned authors tells the forum that incest fiction must be published by amazon because mainstream erotica publishers won't touch it. Entitlement, much? Disagreement is met with contempt. One of these authors writes: “Why are you posting on an erotica forum if you don’t like erotica?”
The subtext of this self-serving statement is this: if you don’t embrace pedo-incest erotica, you don’t embrace any erotica. This antilogic pisses me off. Some random author doesn't get to tell me what erotica is, or isn't. He doesn't get to decide what society will or will not accept, either. Related sentiments are trotted out on the kink boards. "You have to accept all perversion--even pedophilia--because you people are perverted." Nope. The kink boards, like collarme, have very strict rules about pedo pics or pedo fiction. Such material is quickly reported and removed.
Morality and erotica are not mutually exclusive. Decency in BDSM is not an oxymoron. Even if you live on the edge, you can still have standards.
Near as I can figure, amazon does.
