Censorship

Silencing raunchy, but poetic, voices

by Michelle Chihara

TERMS OF SERVICE: Jender violated them, but she's not sure how.

If you build a free Web page at XOOM.com, you can choose a "women's circle" theme, where you're offered pictures of makeup compacts, purses, and bright red lips saying, "e-mail me!" But if you don't use XOOM's standard graphics, and instead you build a Web page with lyrical, frank, and erotic poetry by lesbian spoken-word artists, your page is likely to violate XOOM.com's terms of service.

At least, that's how things have panned out for Ren Jender, the founder and host of one of Boston's best and biggest poetry slams, the Amazon Slam, which has won the Boston Phoenix's "Best Poetry Slam" award for the past two years. Jender had been publishing poetry from her slams on XOOM.com since December of 1999. Then, without warning or explanation, her site was pulled on April 3. Despite repeated requests for an explanation, XOOM.com has not explained to Jender what terms of service she violated. "They just tell you that you violated the terms of service, and that you should try to figure out how yourself. I'm assuming it's because of `obscenity,' but if they don't say why they kicked you off, then you can't argue. You can't say, `We're not obscene.' " Jender's site featured explicit language, but "no nudie pictures."

Legally, it's well within XOOM's rights to terminate their Web hosting service if they deem a site to be in violation of their policies. Their terms of service state, "We want to be completely honest about our policy. XOOM.com values freedom of expression on our site but we do not guarantee the right to free speech. We believe our community will thrive when there is freedom to present what you want, but not at the expense of others." Spokeswoman Frances Burn said that NBCi, XOOM's parent company, declined to comment.

"I just think it's a shame," says Jender. "I got a quick education in all this, and I saw that there aren't a lot of good women's sites out there. A lot of things that say they're for women are really for mothers. Which is fine, if you're a mother. Or they say, here's the new diet. If you type in the key word `girl' online, you get the real porn. And that's fine, but there need to be other representations out there."