Buying from Amazon has, for many years now, made me uncomfortable, but I’ve continued to do it … until now. I have had plenty of reasons to ditch Amazon — it is obviously, and in multiple ways, a predatory and intentionally unethical company — but I could never quite resist the convenience. But when Amazon decided to memory-hole a perfectly reasonable book simply because it outrages a handful of “activists” who claim — primarily on Twitter, and quite falsely — to represent all trans people, that brought me right up to the invisible line.
And then, oddly enough, the thing that pushed me across it was the deletion of Anderson’s book from AbeBooks — which is to say, Amazon decided to prevent hundreds (thousands?) of independent used bookstores who post their inventory on AbeBooks from selling When Harry Became Sally, obviously without asking those bookstores their views on the subject.
I had much the same thought, for the same reason. I haven’t completely renounced Amazon, but I will at least buy my books elsewhere from now on. It will be interesting to see how many of the indies step up to proudly support Anderson here, and by “interesting,” I mean I’m not holding my breath.