Amazon faced criticism last week after customers discovered offensive T-shirts which promoted rape and domestic abuse, being sold on the site.
The t-shirts carried slogans such as “Keep Calm and Rape a Lot,” “Keep Calm and Grope a lot,” and other vulgar versions of the slogan “Keep Calm and Carry on,” England’s famous slogan from World War II.
Solid Gold Bomb, the company behind the t-shirts, apologized for the shirts and said they were computer generated via an “automatically generated scripted computer process running against 100s of thousands of words.†The apology also said the company did not condone rape and that the t-shirts in question would be deleted.
Yahoo! Finance pointed out that Amazon profited from the sale of the T-shirts, assuming it took its typical 7 percent cut. UK deputy Labour leader, Harriet Harman, insisted the company should give all profits to a women’s refuge for the absolutely outrageous designs.
“These T-shirts are not harmless fun. They are dangerous and intimidating. In promoting rape and normalizing abuse, they create a context in which violence against women is acceptable,†said Sophie Bennet, campaigns and policy officer for Object, a UK women’s rights organization.
Solid Gold Bomb, which yesterday had taken its Facebook and Twitter pages off-line, issued no further comment, other than their printed apology.
Source: Newser.com