9 ms·

Amazon will not sell books that 'frame sexual identity as mental illness'

59 points by digikazi 6y ago

blub 6y ago
You may want to buy the acclaimed books "Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters" and "The end of gender" before Amazon virtually burns them.
- e12e 6y ago
  > virtually burns them This is an interesting point, will they "burn" e-books already sold, like they did with "1984" (due to licensing issues)?
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    yes, I've got a friend who reads books written by people who hate him so he can understand how to protect himself better and he got pissed when they removed some hateful literature from his kindle. I understood why amazon did it but I didn't really know how to respond to him.
inglor_cz 6y ago
I wonder why huge corporations let themselves be dragged into the dark vortex of culture wars. There is nothing to gain in that blood- and vitriol soaked trenches. Or do they hope to buy themselves lenience from progressive politicians in coming cartel investigations? Will AOC (who famously helped to kill a NY Amazon project) start to love Amazon now that books that 'frame sexual identity as mental illness' are banished from its pages?
- bob33212 6y ago
  They hope the woke mob will move on to another target. They are not actually spending time censoring books submitted to them
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    That is a possible explanation, a tax to be left alone. A protection racket of sorts. The thing is, classical mob that collects "pizzo" money is vertically structured and can actually promise the payer real safety in exchange for money paid. That is not the case of the Twitter mob, anyone can start a shitstorm against anyone else.
  - waterhouse 6y ago
    Was this particular instance in response to a woke mob? The article doesn't mention it. I see it as just as likely to have been initiated by a woke Amazon employee. Although the woke are probably a minority of Amazon employees, they are likely a vocal and organized minority, enough to make the rest scared to try to make a policy that would stop this kind of action.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    If we put on our cynical hat for a second, they aren't targeting these books because anyone cares about them. The point is to assert that the woke mob have power over Amazon, a powerful company. Folding to their demands won't do anything useful, the nebulous 'woke' will make progressively more demands. If they can choose what Amazon does and doesn't sell, why stop at books nobody cares about? Keep going until actual resistance is met!
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  I'm not sure why you believe that this is something which is done upon them. A company the size of Amazon most likely has a significant LGBT community and the liberal leanings of the majority of people who have a higher level of education (presumably the majority of people in decision making positions) takes care of the rest.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    I do not really see the connection between having a lot of LGBT employees and this decision. Not every gay person is obliged to have the same opinion on teenage gender dysphoria, whether it is wise to transition someone who is not old enough to drive a car responsibly and whether it is wise to banish books from a bookstore, let alone how the ideal blacklist should look like. This kind of topics tends to be discussed by tiny, though passionate minorities. I would expect Amazon to have some TERFs, too.
    - tesseractive 6y ago
      Amazon is in Seattle. We are arguably the most trans-accepting city in the US (source: being a trans person living in Seattle). Trans people are mostly just an accepted part of the community here. And people here are generally not super impressed by the "think of the children!" wedge issue any more than they were impressed with the "OMG trans women in bathrooms!" wedge issue. I'm sure TERFs exist here, but they keep it to themselves, because it's not something to admit to in polite company.
    - corobo 6y ago
      You know gay is only one of the letters you used?
      - inglor_cz 6y ago
        They are not perfect quarters of the pie, though. There will almost certainly be more gays and lesbians than transsexuals in a random set of thousands of people. Or do you want to say that the rest of the three letters are expected to have uniform opinions on said matters?
- caslon 6y ago
  Corporations are made of employees. Even their executives are just employees! Employees, as you might know, are people! They have opinions and preferences of all sorts! The high-value workers and executives for Amazon are located exclusively in progressive areas. They probably raised a fuss and Amazon didn't want another Tim Bray situation. Given that the corporation loses nothing and gains a degree of loyalty from its employees, it wins.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    "the corporation loses nothing" Do you believe that? I would say such decisions are far from riskless, they can even jumpstart potential competitors and drag Amazon et al into future antitrust litigations. This kind of power being exercised wantonly tends to attract hostile attention. "Corporations are made of employees... They have opinions and preferences of all sorts!" They are, but we do not really know how many employees would prefer X or Y. There wasn't any internal ballot on this topic, AFAIK. It may well be the case of a tail wagging the dog.
    - caslon 6y ago
      > Do you believe that? I would say such decisions are far from riskless, they can even jumpstart potential competitors and drag Amazon et al into future antitrust litigations. This kind of power being exercised wantonly tends to attract hostile attention. I guarantee you that Amazon is still going to be here in ten years. At most for antitrust, it would have AWS and the core shopping business split up. But that would happen anyway. It's not really wantonly to take an ethical stand, even if the ethical stand is mostly for show, or even if it's outright wrong. Especially not in a field like bookselling, that Amazon has nowhere close to a monopoly in. > They are, but we do not really know how many employees would prefer X or Y. There wasn't any internal ballot on this topic, AFAIK. It may well be the case of a tail wagging the dog. We pretty much know for Amazon, though. Its valuable employees are rich people on the coasts. Overwhelmingly, this demographic is pro-LGBT and against getting put in a higher tax bracket. They aren't going to vote against liberalism.
    - inglor_cz 6y ago
- pydry 6y ago
  GitHub renamed the master branch to main just after they got flack for not canceling their ICE contract. One of those changes would have cost them real money. With Amazon they probably want to score some cheap progressive points to paper over those awkward and possibly illegal union busting tactics that threaten their bottom line.
  - cies 6y ago
    This. Big biz does not care about humans (and their rights). Amazon/Tesla behaved illegally against unionization, sell stuff made in countries with little protection for people and nature. But they put a rainbow logo on and now all is cool.
    - xiphias2 6y ago
      I can't say anything about Amazon, but if one looks at a 20 year timeline, there's no company protecting nature more than Tesla. Regarding worker rights I think that central banks destroying money by printing ,,infinite amount of dollars'' are the ones to blame, companies are generally in a hard position, that's why they can get away with inhuman tactics :(
      - cies 6y ago
        Lithium mining is by no means protecting nature. And couping a country to get cheap access is something Musk openly bragged about: https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/elon-musk-confesses-to-lithium-coup-in-bolivia-20200725-0010.html https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/elon-musk-confesses-to-l... Maybe electric is an eco net positive compared to combustion. But we are yet to find out. And the Tesla solar roofs, where are they? I'm afraid the roofs were merely a way to get good eco PR on the Tesla brand. And doing Tesla with one hand while putting rockets full of fuel on the other makes Mr Musk even more contradicting.
      - tekknik 6y ago
        > Regarding worker rights I think that central banks destroying money by printing ,,infinite amount of dollars'' are the ones to blame, companies are generally in a hard position, that's why they can get away with inhuman tactics :( Please read either the link below or a book called “the history of money” to know why you’re wrong in this statement. Central banks printing money has saved these workers you speak of. https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/12/06/fiat-currency-what-it-is-and-why-its-better-than-a.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/12/06/fiat-curre...
- wlaggert 6y ago
  In terms of stock price nothing is gained, except when pandering to potential ad clickers like Google (apparently conservatives do not click on ads ...). But the thousands of middle managers with non-technical degrees need to justify their existence. They always need to check some bullet points in their performance evaluations. This is why you see HR moving to a "new" online HR platform every year and inventing nonsense like 360 degree reviews. They can claim that they have "done" something! Same here: This ban will have been discussed for at least a week, so another week is secure for their performance evaluations. Another benefit of the culture wars is that they can be used to suppress the productive parts of the population. Especially technical people are intimidated easily (not in online comments but in real life), so if the parasites establish a sufficient number of taboos and enforce them, they control the actual workers. Taboos have been a ruling class tool since the dawn of time.
- saykou 6y ago
  These companies are filled with left activists in people ops and PR, who are much more vocal and active then the technology department. The bully the company into these positions.
- lm28469 6y ago
  > I wonder why huge corporations let themselves be dragged into the dark vortex of culture wars. There is nothing to gain in that blood- and vitriol soaked trenches There is plenty of money to make and we all know this is the only thing that matter for corporations.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    > There is plenty of money to make How exactly?
    - lm28469 6y ago
      "Oh wow look at our new car it's so LGBT friendly, inclusive and __empowering__" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPLnthpzR1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPLnthpzR1U
      - inglor_cz 6y ago
        I do not doubt that they try, but is there any evidence that this kind of P.R. operations actually helps with sales? This is where I am skeptical.
- unix_fan 6y ago
  Pandering in big tech is nothing new. Apple likes to support minorities, but they completely forget about their slave labor in Asia. As a minority myself, these actions will make sure I keep some distance between me and these companies.
bongoman37 6y ago
So its interesting that books like 'Mein Kampf' are fine and available in 10s of translations but books like above are banned.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  Hitler is dead as a political force, the argument over who gets to determine what is deviant and what is normal is very much still in play.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    I wish I could share your confidence about him being as dead politically as he is physically.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      practically no one takes hitler seriously and the handful of counter-examples are marginalized, mentally ill, and socially outcast. but more importantly, hitler's thought is not influential among anyone except to see how he got so far making so many mistakes. hitler's thought is not even influential among self-identified neo-nazis except as a sort of figurehead. I wouldn't expect you to agree with me until you see this for yourself.
      - ben_w 6y ago
        > hitler's thought is not even influential among self-identified neo-nazis except as a sort of figurehead. I wouldn't expect you to agree with me until you see this for yourself. Then allow me to surprise you: My first draft was trying to compare the use of Nazi iconography to Che Guevara T-Shirts, I deleted that paragraph because I wasn’t entirely sure what point I was trying to make with the comparison.
      - readflaggedcomm 6y ago
        It may seem so if the epithet frequently misses its mark, which is inevitable when it's so casually abused.
chordalkeyboard 6y ago
This is probably fine because mental illness is an ill-defined category. One hopes they will remain consistent. Unless it gets problematic and then we will just have to be content with inconsistency about things we care about.
- DanBC 6y ago
  Yes, but it's important because the direction of travel is de-pathologisation. Being trans is not a disorder. Trans people sometimes have an underlying condition. In ICD10 that's Gender dysphoria, which is classed as a mental health problem. In ICD11 it'll be gender incongruence, which will be classed as a sexual health problem. So, internationally agreed science and medicine says that being trans is not a mental health condition. This matters because people calling it mental illness are often trying to deny access to healthcare. They'll say that transition is complex, and that other things should be tried first. What they mean is transition is bad and that as many people as possible should be prevented from transition and that conversion therapy should be imposed on these people.
  - wayneftw 6y ago
    The "science" here has absolutely been affected by decades of lobbying and coercion. > In 1973, after intense lobbying by gay and lesbian groups and new scientific information from researchers like Evelyn Hooker and Kinsey, the APA declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder[33] with a vote of 58% of the membership supporting the measure. [0] I'm not saying that every lobbying effort was wrong - but you have to admit a couple things here: 1. Topics that are surrounded by controversy are way more susceptible the effects of political agendas. [1] 2. Psychology is a soft science. [2] So, it's even more susceptible. [0] https://lgbt.wikia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_psychology https://lgbt.wikia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_psychology [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politicization_of_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politicization_of_science [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_and_soft_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_and_soft_science
high_derivative 6y ago
This seems on the surface about protecting LGBTQ+, but it seems the kicker is really about treatment for transgender teenagers. There is a movement to stop any kind of discussion about therapy on gender dysphoria other than transition. Trans activists seek to cast all therapeutic interventions other than transitioning in the same light as conversion therapy. I think we will deal with the fallout of this activism for decades to come: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/calls-to-end-transgender-experiment-on-children-k792rfj7d https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/calls-to-end-transgender-...
- throwaway53453 6y ago
  I have been friends with a few trans folks in the past, and more than one has suggested that things are going too far. The prevailing opinion I get is they just want to be left alone (after going through what is a traumatic situation), but they keep getting dragged into this culture war crap by a very loud and dangerous minority.
  - fock 6y ago
    this resonates well with an article in a german liberal newspaper about the fight for a "third sex". While the newspaper was merrily engaging in this culture war by their website, this article (from the actual physical paper) clearly mentioned that this problem (which by the way was akin to changing a single letter from a supposedly too aggressive variant to a "better" one) was only applicable to maybe 300 people in total, because even with a higher prevalence of chromosome defects, most people tend to grow/live happily one way. So we had a 1 year discussion about this problem, which was not a problem at all (just the wording was considered "offensive" by a single individual) occupying our parliament for hours. For me, this seems like a kind of tyranny by the few (since the change in wording doesn't change any of the liberties this one person has...)
- morelisp 6y ago
  Hormone blockers are not "transition" and the hormone treatments given to trans teenagers are regularly prescribed for cis people of all ages for other reasons.
NestedLoopGoBrr 6y ago
This was already posted yesterday and ended up being an absolute disaster of a thread, filled with many people expressing their conviction that transgender individuals are suffering from a delusion. I really hope dang is paying attention this time, because if this is the kind of discourse Hacker News and by extension, YCombinator considers to be reflective of the beliefs of the community, it says a lot about whether or not trans members are welcome here or at YC at all.
- fock 6y ago
  before you get flagged to death: would you mind telling me, what's so bad about the idea to talk with people about their problems and try to find a solution for them before you go all out on them with hormones and scalpels? I understand that an exorcism-like setting and forcing them into any program is not ok, but why can't we ask them: are you really sure, your problem is a lack of meaty breast and the availability of a penis?
- vertex-four 6y ago
  There’s a reason my recent HR training had an entire section on how not to put the company at risk by being open about one’s beliefs about trans people. Fact of the matter is transphobia is the norm and they’d rather us dead than working alongside them.
  - esarbe 6y ago
    Yeah, society has some weird fixations. Sex, sexuality and gender are very much taboo topics and anything that can not be put in nice little boxes is considered deviant and obviously bad. Although I think that may be changing. Since we're slowly (maybe too slowly) transitioning into from a culture that has accepted that fact that reproduction does not have the primacy it once had, we can relax our collective fear of extincting for lack of children and focus our fear and panic where it actually belongs.
  - readflaggedcomm 6y ago
    Surely bravery underlies the punishments or dismissals which reward acting according to society's norms. Or maybe fear drives profits.
dependsontheq 6y ago
Every bookstore in history has made decisions about which books to sell and which not. Amazon in this case is just a bookstore and should make a decision, if it’s market power is too big we should split it apart ( an online bookshop is not any kind of regulated utility and should never be one).
- xiphias2 6y ago
  Amazon already made the decision a long time ago: all books from A to Z. They are just renegging their position, which is against what it was built for at the beginning.
SunlightEdge 6y ago
Call me niave, but what is wrong with conversion therapy in theory? I get the historic roots of it being linked with anti-gay/LGBT activities and it being problematic about 'fixing' what essentially are healthy sexual functioning (e.g. it's fine to be gay). But it's not black and white and surely 'some' gay/bi men and women suffer distress and would prefer to be straight. And likewise for 'trans' children and adults - perhaps there are effective ways to reduce/eliminate gender dysphoria. Do such methods really always have to seem bad. Note: I am neutral on this / have many gay friends. It's purely from a theoretical perspective.
- detaro 6y ago
  "In theory" questions are a bit moot if the practice has never worked, and are at least adjacent to "is brainwashing/slavery/... always so bad if the victim thinks its happy with it" from an ethics perspective. Especially if the "in theory" arguments are then used to defend the abusive/broken real world practices, and as an excuse to not fix external causes of distress. I.e. "actually, being gay is ok" as a position of society is way more effective for good outcomes than any attempt at "treatment" ever has been, and the vast majority of arguments along "treatments" are being used to attempt to slow or reverse that development.
- tesseractive 6y ago
  Well, I know both gay and trans people who have survived conversion therapy, but there's a really high incidence of suicide among people who have been through it. Also, the people I know have described literal torture as being part of existing conversion therapy techniques. There is also no evidence of it actually working. All of these things seem to counsel against conversion therapy being an accepted practice.
- lsiebert 6y ago
  It's not been shown to be effective, there's no reason to change it, and it can be harmful to the mental health of LGBTQ+ folks. That's what the American Psychiatric Association says: "https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/news-releases/apa-reiterates-strong-opposition-to-conversion-therapy https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/news-releases/apa-reiter..."
bjeds 6y ago
My, possibly naive, view is that this has nothing to do with the "benefactor" of a policy (transgender people, in this case). It is more about power, politics and influence for the people who institute the policy. 15-20 years ago, working in tech was a good job in the sense that being a mechanical engineer, doctor, or lawyer was a good job. Today, these are the most powerful, richest, and most influential companies in the world, and people who like power are involving themselves more than they used to. 15-20 years ago, these companies were more meritocratic in a domain knowledge sense: the "nerds" were powerful because they had knowledge and could build stuff. Nowadays "politicians" (in the corporate sense, people good at office politics) have realized they cannot compete with the nerds who've been building stuff since they were kids, so to get a piece of the pie there's a political fight to redefine what's important. Now "values" are important instead. Those who have the values have the power and influence. I'm personally looking to move to a different industry than the tech companies. Some industry with less power and less prestige. Those will attract more interesting people who care about what's important.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
xiphias2 6y ago
This was banned: https://m.barnesandnoble.com/w/when-harry-became-sally-ryan-anderson/1125792437 https://m.barnesandnoble.com/w/when-harry-became-sally-ryan-...
auganov 6y ago
I wish more would just rally against the concept of mental illness itself. It's such a ridiculous concept and it's exactly moments like these that reveal how it's nothing more than whatever people want it to be. Until we've got mind reading technology most of psychology and psychiatry will remain glorified polling.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
tyronehed 6y ago
How fascinating it is to see conservatives being all about the free market until it goes against them. Indeed, Amazon is a private business and they certainly have the right to sell only those items they deem worth of selling. In the same way they decline to sell neo-Nazi paraphernalia, they have the right to refuse to sell anti-LGBTQ+ objects. A similar, equally-fascinating example is the outrage conservatives express when those other free enterprises called Google and Facebook decline to allow individuals such as the former president on their platforms. Consistency is a bitch.
- disposekinetics 6y ago
  I fully believe they are a free to do what they want up until they run into illegal anti-competitive practices, but I can still be disappointed that I had to go elsewhere for a book for the first time in around a decade. In my case I read this book because Amazon took the time to remove it. I would not have read it otherwise.
- hntrader 6y ago
  "they certainly have the right" Nobody is arguing that they don't have that right, so this is little more than a strawman. Expressing disagreement (or even dismay) with a company's decision isn't inconsistent with support for a free market, either.
dalbasal 6y ago
Are we having a discussion about amazon having censorial power, or how amazon should wield this power? The vast majority of decisions at amazon don't attract media attention. They're just decisions. Sell this. Promote that. Reorder. Don't reorder. If you control 75% of the book market... you are censor-ish. even if these decisions are neutral, they still shape the book business in a censor-like way. Amazon are sitting in a censorial seat. So are the other, content-centric monopolies like google & facebook. Youtube videos, websites, blogs, books, etc. When you go to produce one of these, you consider: what will google/fb/amzn think? Will it appear in feeds? Will it rank? Will it get an 18+ rating?. What makes or doesn't make that censorship is market share. A "true" censor, censors all the papers. An editor only edits one. If there is only one magazine, magazine censorship is default. In any case, I find a lot of current anti-censorship discussions off-mark. There appears to be some cultural/moral/normative shifts in boardrooms. Are you unhappy with the power in those boardrooms, or with whatever specific decision got made last tuesday. I get the feeling that the latter is the main one.
kodah 6y ago
I came here to learn about the current state of the trans community and learned nothing because of a lot of dissenting information in either direction. This is my attempt to consolidate and learn from facts, feel free to correct things or add to this in the thread. - A number of folks invoke what they've heard people who call themselves activists say only to get a response from someone saying that's not a real activist. On one hand this is akin to no true Scotsman and on the other I can see the situation that invokes, "that doesn't represent me" as difficult to process. It might be helpful if HN users who are knowledgeable can educate the non-educated on who actual trans activists are so that when the non-educated are hearing a reactionary voice they are able to identify that to themselves and others. - Russia has a very wide law that patently shuts down any conversation about trans-people and adjacently gay folks as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_gay_propaganda_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_gay_propaganda_law - Some non-zero amount of trans folk do not approve of the Tavistock Center in the NHS (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/calls-to-end-transgender-experiment-on-children-k792rfj7d https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/calls-to-end-transgender-...). Earlier/easier access to hormone blockers seems to be one complaint, but ill-preparing patients for "immediate and long term consequences" seems to be another which a high court recently ruled on. (https://www.itv.com/news/london/2021-01-20/tavistock-centre-child-gender-identity-services-rated-inadequate-by-cqc https://www.itv.com/news/london/2021-01-20/tavistock-centre-...) - Hormone blocking seems to be the main course of treatment in children while in therapy (that last part also seems very key). The intent behind this is that a child and their parents can make the choice to transition without having to undo the affects of puberty in the future which are costly and painful. The Mayo Clinic says that the only long term affects with puberty blockers has to do with bone density and fertility. (https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gender-dysphoria/in-depth/pubertal-blockers/art-20459075 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gender-dyspho...) - Some non-zero amount of kids struggle with gender identity because they're struggling with sexuality in societies that openly struggle with accepting more diverse sexuality (being gay). This points to a need for continued societal growth in order to impact the medical system less. - The article centers around a book called When Harry Became Sally written by Ryan Anderson who is clearly a religious and conservative voice (https://www.amazon.com/Ryan-T-Anderson/e/B00A0P0MR6?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1615659930&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Ryan-T-Anderson/e/B00A0P0MR6?ref=sr_n...)

59 points by digikazi 6y ago

blub 6y ago

You may want to buy the acclaimed books "Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters" and "The end of gender" before Amazon virtually burns them.

e12e 6y ago
> virtually burns them This is an interesting point, will they "burn" e-books already sold, like they did with "1984" (due to licensing issues)?
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  yes, I've got a friend who reads books written by people who hate him so he can understand how to protect himself better and he got pissed when they removed some hateful literature from his kindle. I understood why amazon did it but I didn't really know how to respond to him.

inglor_cz 6y ago

I wonder why huge corporations let themselves be dragged into the dark vortex of culture wars. There is nothing to gain in that blood- and vitriol soaked trenches. Or do they hope to buy themselves lenience from progressive politicians in coming cartel investigations? Will AOC (who famously helped to kill a NY Amazon project) start to love Amazon now that books that 'frame sexual identity as mental illness' are banished from its pages?

bob33212 6y ago
They hope the woke mob will move on to another target. They are not actually spending time censoring books submitted to them
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  That is a possible explanation, a tax to be left alone. A protection racket of sorts. The thing is, classical mob that collects "pizzo" money is vertically structured and can actually promise the payer real safety in exchange for money paid. That is not the case of the Twitter mob, anyone can start a shitstorm against anyone else.
- waterhouse 6y ago
  Was this particular instance in response to a woke mob? The article doesn't mention it. I see it as just as likely to have been initiated by a woke Amazon employee. Although the woke are probably a minority of Amazon employees, they are likely a vocal and organized minority, enough to make the rest scared to try to make a policy that would stop this kind of action.
- roenxi 6y ago
  If we put on our cynical hat for a second, they aren't targeting these books because anyone cares about them. The point is to assert that the woke mob have power over Amazon, a powerful company. Folding to their demands won't do anything useful, the nebulous 'woke' will make progressively more demands. If they can choose what Amazon does and doesn't sell, why stop at books nobody cares about? Keep going until actual resistance is met!
VBprogrammer 6y ago
I'm not sure why you believe that this is something which is done upon them. A company the size of Amazon most likely has a significant LGBT community and the liberal leanings of the majority of people who have a higher level of education (presumably the majority of people in decision making positions) takes care of the rest.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  I do not really see the connection between having a lot of LGBT employees and this decision. Not every gay person is obliged to have the same opinion on teenage gender dysphoria, whether it is wise to transition someone who is not old enough to drive a car responsibly and whether it is wise to banish books from a bookstore, let alone how the ideal blacklist should look like. This kind of topics tends to be discussed by tiny, though passionate minorities. I would expect Amazon to have some TERFs, too.
  - tesseractive 6y ago
    Amazon is in Seattle. We are arguably the most trans-accepting city in the US (source: being a trans person living in Seattle). Trans people are mostly just an accepted part of the community here. And people here are generally not super impressed by the "think of the children!" wedge issue any more than they were impressed with the "OMG trans women in bathrooms!" wedge issue. I'm sure TERFs exist here, but they keep it to themselves, because it's not something to admit to in polite company.
  - corobo 6y ago
    You know gay is only one of the letters you used?
    - inglor_cz 6y ago
      They are not perfect quarters of the pie, though. There will almost certainly be more gays and lesbians than transsexuals in a random set of thousands of people. Or do you want to say that the rest of the three letters are expected to have uniform opinions on said matters?
caslon 6y ago
Corporations are made of employees. Even their executives are just employees! Employees, as you might know, are people! They have opinions and preferences of all sorts! The high-value workers and executives for Amazon are located exclusively in progressive areas. They probably raised a fuss and Amazon didn't want another Tim Bray situation. Given that the corporation loses nothing and gains a degree of loyalty from its employees, it wins.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  "the corporation loses nothing" Do you believe that? I would say such decisions are far from riskless, they can even jumpstart potential competitors and drag Amazon et al into future antitrust litigations. This kind of power being exercised wantonly tends to attract hostile attention. "Corporations are made of employees... They have opinions and preferences of all sorts!" They are, but we do not really know how many employees would prefer X or Y. There wasn't any internal ballot on this topic, AFAIK. It may well be the case of a tail wagging the dog.
  - caslon 6y ago
    > Do you believe that? I would say such decisions are far from riskless, they can even jumpstart potential competitors and drag Amazon et al into future antitrust litigations. This kind of power being exercised wantonly tends to attract hostile attention. I guarantee you that Amazon is still going to be here in ten years. At most for antitrust, it would have AWS and the core shopping business split up. But that would happen anyway. It's not really wantonly to take an ethical stand, even if the ethical stand is mostly for show, or even if it's outright wrong. Especially not in a field like bookselling, that Amazon has nowhere close to a monopoly in. > They are, but we do not really know how many employees would prefer X or Y. There wasn't any internal ballot on this topic, AFAIK. It may well be the case of a tail wagging the dog. We pretty much know for Amazon, though. Its valuable employees are rich people on the coasts. Overwhelmingly, this demographic is pro-LGBT and against getting put in a higher tax bracket. They aren't going to vote against liberalism.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
pydry 6y ago
GitHub renamed the master branch to main just after they got flack for not canceling their ICE contract. One of those changes would have cost them real money. With Amazon they probably want to score some cheap progressive points to paper over those awkward and possibly illegal union busting tactics that threaten their bottom line.
- cies 6y ago
  This. Big biz does not care about humans (and their rights). Amazon/Tesla behaved illegally against unionization, sell stuff made in countries with little protection for people and nature. But they put a rainbow logo on and now all is cool.
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    I can't say anything about Amazon, but if one looks at a 20 year timeline, there's no company protecting nature more than Tesla. Regarding worker rights I think that central banks destroying money by printing ,,infinite amount of dollars'' are the ones to blame, companies are generally in a hard position, that's why they can get away with inhuman tactics :(
    - cies 6y ago
      Lithium mining is by no means protecting nature. And couping a country to get cheap access is something Musk openly bragged about: https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/elon-musk-confesses-to-lithium-coup-in-bolivia-20200725-0010.html https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/elon-musk-confesses-to-l... Maybe electric is an eco net positive compared to combustion. But we are yet to find out. And the Tesla solar roofs, where are they? I'm afraid the roofs were merely a way to get good eco PR on the Tesla brand. And doing Tesla with one hand while putting rockets full of fuel on the other makes Mr Musk even more contradicting.
    - tekknik 6y ago
      > Regarding worker rights I think that central banks destroying money by printing ,,infinite amount of dollars'' are the ones to blame, companies are generally in a hard position, that's why they can get away with inhuman tactics :( Please read either the link below or a book called “the history of money” to know why you’re wrong in this statement. Central banks printing money has saved these workers you speak of. https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/12/06/fiat-currency-what-it-is-and-why-its-better-than-a.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/12/06/fiat-curre...
wlaggert 6y ago
In terms of stock price nothing is gained, except when pandering to potential ad clickers like Google (apparently conservatives do not click on ads ...). But the thousands of middle managers with non-technical degrees need to justify their existence. They always need to check some bullet points in their performance evaluations. This is why you see HR moving to a "new" online HR platform every year and inventing nonsense like 360 degree reviews. They can claim that they have "done" something! Same here: This ban will have been discussed for at least a week, so another week is secure for their performance evaluations. Another benefit of the culture wars is that they can be used to suppress the productive parts of the population. Especially technical people are intimidated easily (not in online comments but in real life), so if the parasites establish a sufficient number of taboos and enforce them, they control the actual workers. Taboos have been a ruling class tool since the dawn of time.
saykou 6y ago
These companies are filled with left activists in people ops and PR, who are much more vocal and active then the technology department. The bully the company into these positions.
lm28469 6y ago
> I wonder why huge corporations let themselves be dragged into the dark vortex of culture wars. There is nothing to gain in that blood- and vitriol soaked trenches There is plenty of money to make and we all know this is the only thing that matter for corporations.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  > There is plenty of money to make How exactly?
  - lm28469 6y ago
    "Oh wow look at our new car it's so LGBT friendly, inclusive and __empowering__" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPLnthpzR1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPLnthpzR1U
    - inglor_cz 6y ago
      I do not doubt that they try, but is there any evidence that this kind of P.R. operations actually helps with sales? This is where I am skeptical.
unix_fan 6y ago
Pandering in big tech is nothing new. Apple likes to support minorities, but they completely forget about their slave labor in Asia. As a minority myself, these actions will make sure I keep some distance between me and these companies.

bongoman37 6y ago

So its interesting that books like 'Mein Kampf' are fine and available in 10s of translations but books like above are banned.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
Hitler is dead as a political force, the argument over who gets to determine what is deviant and what is normal is very much still in play.
- ben_w 6y ago
  I wish I could share your confidence about him being as dead politically as he is physically.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    practically no one takes hitler seriously and the handful of counter-examples are marginalized, mentally ill, and socially outcast. but more importantly, hitler's thought is not influential among anyone except to see how he got so far making so many mistakes. hitler's thought is not even influential among self-identified neo-nazis except as a sort of figurehead. I wouldn't expect you to agree with me until you see this for yourself.
    - ben_w 6y ago
      > hitler's thought is not even influential among self-identified neo-nazis except as a sort of figurehead. I wouldn't expect you to agree with me until you see this for yourself. Then allow me to surprise you: My first draft was trying to compare the use of Nazi iconography to Che Guevara T-Shirts, I deleted that paragraph because I wasn’t entirely sure what point I was trying to make with the comparison.
    - readflaggedcomm 6y ago
      It may seem so if the epithet frequently misses its mark, which is inevitable when it's so casually abused.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago

This is probably fine because mental illness is an ill-defined category. One hopes they will remain consistent. Unless it gets problematic and then we will just have to be content with inconsistency about things we care about.

DanBC 6y ago
Yes, but it's important because the direction of travel is de-pathologisation. Being trans is not a disorder. Trans people sometimes have an underlying condition. In ICD10 that's Gender dysphoria, which is classed as a mental health problem. In ICD11 it'll be gender incongruence, which will be classed as a sexual health problem. So, internationally agreed science and medicine says that being trans is not a mental health condition. This matters because people calling it mental illness are often trying to deny access to healthcare. They'll say that transition is complex, and that other things should be tried first. What they mean is transition is bad and that as many people as possible should be prevented from transition and that conversion therapy should be imposed on these people.
- wayneftw 6y ago
  The "science" here has absolutely been affected by decades of lobbying and coercion. > In 1973, after intense lobbying by gay and lesbian groups and new scientific information from researchers like Evelyn Hooker and Kinsey, the APA declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder[33] with a vote of 58% of the membership supporting the measure. [0] I'm not saying that every lobbying effort was wrong - but you have to admit a couple things here: 1. Topics that are surrounded by controversy are way more susceptible the effects of political agendas. [1] 2. Psychology is a soft science. [2] So, it's even more susceptible. [0] https://lgbt.wikia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_psychology https://lgbt.wikia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_psychology [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politicization_of_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politicization_of_science [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_and_soft_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_and_soft_science

high_derivative 6y ago

This seems on the surface about protecting LGBTQ+, but it seems the kicker is really about treatment for transgender teenagers. There is a movement to stop any kind of discussion about therapy on gender dysphoria other than transition. Trans activists seek to cast all therapeutic interventions other than transitioning in the same light as conversion therapy. I think we will deal with the fallout of this activism for decades to come: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/calls-to-end-transgender-experiment-on-children-k792rfj7d https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/calls-to-end-transgender-...

throwaway53453 6y ago
I have been friends with a few trans folks in the past, and more than one has suggested that things are going too far. The prevailing opinion I get is they just want to be left alone (after going through what is a traumatic situation), but they keep getting dragged into this culture war crap by a very loud and dangerous minority.
- fock 6y ago
  this resonates well with an article in a german liberal newspaper about the fight for a "third sex". While the newspaper was merrily engaging in this culture war by their website, this article (from the actual physical paper) clearly mentioned that this problem (which by the way was akin to changing a single letter from a supposedly too aggressive variant to a "better" one) was only applicable to maybe 300 people in total, because even with a higher prevalence of chromosome defects, most people tend to grow/live happily one way. So we had a 1 year discussion about this problem, which was not a problem at all (just the wording was considered "offensive" by a single individual) occupying our parliament for hours. For me, this seems like a kind of tyranny by the few (since the change in wording doesn't change any of the liberties this one person has...)
morelisp 6y ago
Hormone blockers are not "transition" and the hormone treatments given to trans teenagers are regularly prescribed for cis people of all ages for other reasons.

NestedLoopGoBrr 6y ago

This was already posted yesterday and ended up being an absolute disaster of a thread, filled with many people expressing their conviction that transgender individuals are suffering from a delusion. I really hope dang is paying attention this time, because if this is the kind of discourse Hacker News and by extension, YCombinator considers to be reflective of the beliefs of the community, it says a lot about whether or not trans members are welcome here or at YC at all.

fock 6y ago
before you get flagged to death: would you mind telling me, what's so bad about the idea to talk with people about their problems and try to find a solution for them before you go all out on them with hormones and scalpels? I understand that an exorcism-like setting and forcing them into any program is not ok, but why can't we ask them: are you really sure, your problem is a lack of meaty breast and the availability of a penis?
vertex-four 6y ago
There’s a reason my recent HR training had an entire section on how not to put the company at risk by being open about one’s beliefs about trans people. Fact of the matter is transphobia is the norm and they’d rather us dead than working alongside them.
- esarbe 6y ago
  Yeah, society has some weird fixations. Sex, sexuality and gender are very much taboo topics and anything that can not be put in nice little boxes is considered deviant and obviously bad. Although I think that may be changing. Since we're slowly (maybe too slowly) transitioning into from a culture that has accepted that fact that reproduction does not have the primacy it once had, we can relax our collective fear of extincting for lack of children and focus our fear and panic where it actually belongs.
- readflaggedcomm 6y ago
  Surely bravery underlies the punishments or dismissals which reward acting according to society's norms. Or maybe fear drives profits.

dependsontheq 6y ago

Every bookstore in history has made decisions about which books to sell and which not. Amazon in this case is just a bookstore and should make a decision, if it’s market power is too big we should split it apart ( an online bookshop is not any kind of regulated utility and should never be one).

xiphias2 6y ago
Amazon already made the decision a long time ago: all books from A to Z. They are just renegging their position, which is against what it was built for at the beginning.

SunlightEdge 6y ago

Call me niave, but what is wrong with conversion therapy in theory? I get the historic roots of it being linked with anti-gay/LGBT activities and it being problematic about 'fixing' what essentially are healthy sexual functioning (e.g. it's fine to be gay). But it's not black and white and surely 'some' gay/bi men and women suffer distress and would prefer to be straight. And likewise for 'trans' children and adults - perhaps there are effective ways to reduce/eliminate gender dysphoria. Do such methods really always have to seem bad. Note: I am neutral on this / have many gay friends. It's purely from a theoretical perspective.

detaro 6y ago
"In theory" questions are a bit moot if the practice has never worked, and are at least adjacent to "is brainwashing/slavery/... always so bad if the victim thinks its happy with it" from an ethics perspective. Especially if the "in theory" arguments are then used to defend the abusive/broken real world practices, and as an excuse to not fix external causes of distress. I.e. "actually, being gay is ok" as a position of society is way more effective for good outcomes than any attempt at "treatment" ever has been, and the vast majority of arguments along "treatments" are being used to attempt to slow or reverse that development.
tesseractive 6y ago
Well, I know both gay and trans people who have survived conversion therapy, but there's a really high incidence of suicide among people who have been through it. Also, the people I know have described literal torture as being part of existing conversion therapy techniques. There is also no evidence of it actually working. All of these things seem to counsel against conversion therapy being an accepted practice.
lsiebert 6y ago
It's not been shown to be effective, there's no reason to change it, and it can be harmful to the mental health of LGBTQ+ folks. That's what the American Psychiatric Association says: "https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/news-releases/apa-reiterates-strong-opposition-to-conversion-therapy https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/news-releases/apa-reiter..."

bjeds 6y ago

My, possibly naive, view is that this has nothing to do with the "benefactor" of a policy (transgender people, in this case). It is more about power, politics and influence for the people who institute the policy. 15-20 years ago, working in tech was a good job in the sense that being a mechanical engineer, doctor, or lawyer was a good job. Today, these are the most powerful, richest, and most influential companies in the world, and people who like power are involving themselves more than they used to. 15-20 years ago, these companies were more meritocratic in a domain knowledge sense: the "nerds" were powerful because they had knowledge and could build stuff. Nowadays "politicians" (in the corporate sense, people good at office politics) have realized they cannot compete with the nerds who've been building stuff since they were kids, so to get a piece of the pie there's a political fight to redefine what's important. Now "values" are important instead. Those who have the values have the power and influence. I'm personally looking to move to a different industry than the tech companies. Some industry with less power and less prestige. Those will attract more interesting people who care about what's important.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

xiphias2 6y ago

This was banned: https://m.barnesandnoble.com/w/when-harry-became-sally-ryan-anderson/1125792437 https://m.barnesandnoble.com/w/when-harry-became-sally-ryan-...

auganov 6y ago

I wish more would just rally against the concept of mental illness itself. It's such a ridiculous concept and it's exactly moments like these that reveal how it's nothing more than whatever people want it to be. Until we've got mind reading technology most of psychology and psychiatry will remain glorified polling.

deleted 6y ago
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tyronehed 6y ago

How fascinating it is to see conservatives being all about the free market until it goes against them. Indeed, Amazon is a private business and they certainly have the right to sell only those items they deem worth of selling. In the same way they decline to sell neo-Nazi paraphernalia, they have the right to refuse to sell anti-LGBTQ+ objects. A similar, equally-fascinating example is the outrage conservatives express when those other free enterprises called Google and Facebook decline to allow individuals such as the former president on their platforms. Consistency is a bitch.

disposekinetics 6y ago
I fully believe they are a free to do what they want up until they run into illegal anti-competitive practices, but I can still be disappointed that I had to go elsewhere for a book for the first time in around a decade. In my case I read this book because Amazon took the time to remove it. I would not have read it otherwise.
hntrader 6y ago
"they certainly have the right" Nobody is arguing that they don't have that right, so this is little more than a strawman. Expressing disagreement (or even dismay) with a company's decision isn't inconsistent with support for a free market, either.

dalbasal 6y ago

Are we having a discussion about amazon having censorial power, or how amazon should wield this power? The vast majority of decisions at amazon don't attract media attention. They're just decisions. Sell this. Promote that. Reorder. Don't reorder. If you control 75% of the book market... you are censor-ish. even if these decisions are neutral, they still shape the book business in a censor-like way. Amazon are sitting in a censorial seat. So are the other, content-centric monopolies like google & facebook. Youtube videos, websites, blogs, books, etc. When you go to produce one of these, you consider: what will google/fb/amzn think? Will it appear in feeds? Will it rank? Will it get an 18+ rating?. What makes or doesn't make that censorship is market share. A "true" censor, censors all the papers. An editor only edits one. If there is only one magazine, magazine censorship is default. In any case, I find a lot of current anti-censorship discussions off-mark. There appears to be some cultural/moral/normative shifts in boardrooms. Are you unhappy with the power in those boardrooms, or with whatever specific decision got made last tuesday. I get the feeling that the latter is the main one.

kodah 6y ago

I came here to learn about the current state of the trans community and learned nothing because of a lot of dissenting information in either direction. This is my attempt to consolidate and learn from facts, feel free to correct things or add to this in the thread. - A number of folks invoke what they've heard people who call themselves activists say only to get a response from someone saying that's not a real activist. On one hand this is akin to no true Scotsman and on the other I can see the situation that invokes, "that doesn't represent me" as difficult to process. It might be helpful if HN users who are knowledgeable can educate the non-educated on who actual trans activists are so that when the non-educated are hearing a reactionary voice they are able to identify that to themselves and others. - Russia has a very wide law that patently shuts down any conversation about trans-people and adjacently gay folks as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_gay_propaganda_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_gay_propaganda_law - Some non-zero amount of trans folk do not approve of the Tavistock Center in the NHS (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/calls-to-end-transgender-experiment-on-children-k792rfj7d https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/calls-to-end-transgender-...). Earlier/easier access to hormone blockers seems to be one complaint, but ill-preparing patients for "immediate and long term consequences" seems to be another which a high court recently ruled on. (https://www.itv.com/news/london/2021-01-20/tavistock-centre-child-gender-identity-services-rated-inadequate-by-cqc https://www.itv.com/news/london/2021-01-20/tavistock-centre-...) - Hormone blocking seems to be the main course of treatment in children while in therapy (that last part also seems very key). The intent behind this is that a child and their parents can make the choice to transition without having to undo the affects of puberty in the future which are costly and painful. The Mayo Clinic says that the only long term affects with puberty blockers has to do with bone density and fertility. (https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gender-dysphoria/in-depth/pubertal-blockers/art-20459075 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gender-dyspho...) - Some non-zero amount of kids struggle with gender identity because they're struggling with sexuality in societies that openly struggle with accepting more diverse sexuality (being gay). This points to a need for continued societal growth in order to impact the medical system less. - The article centers around a book called When Harry Became Sally written by Ryan Anderson who is clearly a religious and conservative voice (https://www.amazon.com/Ryan-T-Anderson/e/B00A0P0MR6?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1615659930&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Ryan-T-Anderson/e/B00A0P0MR6?ref=sr_n...)