Pornography or Erotica?
» Erotica
People often wonder: what is pornography? A sometimes-useful distinction in America where local standards can make some forms of sexually themed self-expression a crime.
People often try to distinguish between erotica and pornography. Which can be a useful distinction in discerning and explaining what for you is sexual art and sexual trash.
Francine Prose, meditating on Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita:
Like many distinctions, the border separating the erotic from the pornographic has been blurred and redefined not by some natural evolution of culture and language, but by capitalism’s imperative to help the consumer readily locate the product he wants to buy. Beyond any meaning they once possessed, and beyond the connotations that still reward consideration, the words erotic and pornographic have by now become niche-marketing tags. They are designations like those in the film-rating system, employed to answer the logical questions any potential customer might sensibly ask—How naked? How deep? Which orifices? How much does it cost? Most important is the unspoken inquiry beneath every purchase decision: What do my desires reveal about who I am?
You have your own definitions and distinctions, even if you aren’t aware of them. Irresistibly people feel a need to rationalize and justify enjoyments others might find questionable or disgusting.