Procrastination post

[oyceter]

• About #AmazonFail: I haven't been tracking every post on it, though I think I have the gist. I am currently still deciding what to do; I have an Amazon credit card, and the extra $25 gift certificate every so often is really nice when I'm not allowing myself to buy books due to the student budget. On the other hand, I think I will start researching other credit cards with award systems and consider switching. While I do completely believe that taking the sales ranking off was an individual error—I worked in web dev and I know how things can slip through the cracks—that does not mask the underlying problem: Amazon has categorized books that positively portray (or sometimes just plain portray) LGBTQ relationships as adult. That's not something that happened as an individual error.
  
  I study information organization, and no matter how ordinary and boring of a topic it sounds like, as with all things in life, it is influenced by politics. Why else are people so concerned with terminology, like "Oriental" vs. "Chink" vs. "Asian American" vs. "ABC" vs. "BBC" vs. "Chinese"? It matters. Not only that, it matters whether something is categorized as "general" fiction versus "Asian" fiction; the underlying assumptions in a great deal of information organization are based on structural discrimination, and it's no different with Amazon's system. And this isn't new. Check out the Dewey Decimal system and what's listed as "other" and what isn't.
  
  More on Amazon's information organization here and here.


• I'm still trying to think of a theme for hosting the next Asian Women Carnival; any suggestions?


• For Wiscon, I'm on the Andrea Smith panel and the one about science and oppression. Yay, excuses to reread Octavian Nothing, Steerswoman, and Conquest! Does anyone know if the shounen panel made it through? Otherwise, I am considering doing spontaneous panels again.

Comments

[oyceter]

Hrm, maybe a future issue? I feel sort of weird dedicating the second one to men.

I dunno, I was thinking of something transnational, maybe about diasporas and connections between countries and... something.

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's why I figured down the line. Y'all got hella more to talk about :)

[oyceter]

I'll definitely ask ciderpress about it, though, because I think there's a lot there about sexuality and the white gaze and etc.

[ciderpress.livejournal.com]

I definitely agree that there is much to be said about gender, gender identity, gender stereotypes, gender roles and the same wrt sexuality and Asianess. I would like to keep the next one focused on Asian women but this is definitely something we should explore as a theme in the future!