It wasn't too many weeks ago that I wrote an article about a bit of not-so-subtle discrimination taking place online over at Themestream.com. And if you checked in a week later, you learned that the accumulated protests of several freethinkers accomplished the goal of having them add a topic for us, in amongst all the religious claptrap there.
Well, I'm sorry to report that it looks like it's time to protest again.
For several months, I've been an "expert" over at Expert Central. Recently, this company merged with AllExperts.com, and in the process, totally revamped much of the site. Part of this revamping was a change in the way searches are done on the site.
The new system only allows a visitor to search among the existing category names. It does not allow a search that will draw from an expert's profile, where an expert can list all sorts of things that don't have their own categories. Now, I listed several items in my profile there. One was fiction writing, and that's now where they've got me placed. But they've totally ignored my other areas of expertise, namely polyamory and, of course, freethought and related issues.
The reason? There are no categories for anything remotely resembling freethought, unless you count "philosophy." (Need I point out that AllExperts has topics on religion? No, I didn't think so.) And they certainly have nothing even close to polyamory. In fact, it's sadly lacking in information regarding alternate sexuality at all. A search on "homosexuality," for example, pulls up zero matches. A search for "lesbian" has two matches, one which is called "Sex/Lesbians!" and the other being a news & politics match. Now, the "Sex/Lesbians!" category appears to actually be useful. But come on... the title (including the exclamation mark) gives it an air of being on the raunchy side, not a category where someone would go to ask about "coming out" and such.
In private correspondence with the Founder and Director of the site, Steven J. Gordon, I was told that there weren't categories at AllExperts.com pertinent to these subjects. This I knew, of course, not being blind.
When I called him on the carpet for the lack of a freethought topic (it being somewhat discriminatory), and the lack of a polyamory or even alternate sexuality topic (which just seems foolish to me), he responded only to the topic of polyamory, stating, "Hm... would 'free love' do the trick for you?"
After accusing him of being sarcastic and not taking me seriously, I never heard back from him.
Note how he totally ignored the reference to a freethought category, focusing only on that which he probably finds amusing or worthy of ridicule: polyamory.
Days later, a general announcement was sent out announcing (among other things) new categories on such hot topics as dog and cat breeds. I emailed him with a jaunty, "Hey, how are the freethought and alternate sexuality topics coming?" His response was that he didn't know what I meant by them. I explained in detail.
It could be that I'll get through this guy's head, but I'm not holding my breath. Now, I know as well as anyone that this dude has the right to run his company any way he pleases. But I also know that when the public doesn't like something about a company, it's perfectly within their rights to raise a stink about it. So if this annoys any of you out there, please feel free to drop ol' Steve-o an email and let him know that AllExperts.com is a much shallower place than it could be.
