Porn vs. Erotica

I refuse to make a distinction between "erotica" and "porn."

If I see material that depicts something that could be sexy, I call it porn. I don't care whether or not its intent is to get people off. It could be "purely for artistic purposes." If it shows anything that's sexually explicit, I consider it porn.

I don't think we need to differentiate between what's sexy art and what's sexy but doesn't count as art. This creates a system where we value the art more and the non-art less. It's another way of saying that eroticism for its own sake is negative, and I think that's a big pile of hooey. I think something that's purely intended to cause orgasms can be beautiful, and something intended just for aesthetic beauty can be erotically titillating. I jill off to "erotic art" all the time.

The difference between the two terms is also heavily tied in with censorship. Material can be deemed obscene and banned if the government decides that it has no artistic merit. Creating a linguistic distinction between porn and erotica opens us up to this kind of censorship. If we've already labeled some things as "less than artistic," it's a small step for the government to label them obscene.

Now, I know that the word "pornography" comes from inauspicious roots. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word as the following:

The explicit description or exhibition of sexual subjects or activity in literature, painting, films, etc., in a manner intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic feelings; printed or visual material containing this.

So it's true that the very definition of the word creates a distinction between aesthetically arousing and erotically arousing material.

You could argue that we should apply the term "erotica" to all sexually explicit material. This new word doesn't have the connotation of artlessness and baseness. Why not apply it without discrimination? That's a valid point. I just like the word "porn" better.

Porn came first. Before we started calling things "erotica" instead of "pornography," we didn't have a word for sexually explicit art that (supposedly) wasn't erotically thrilling. It's the creation of the new word that's given us a hierarchy. Now we're trying to decide which sex acts we can depict: which ones are "artistic," and which ones aren't. It's just another form of sexual elitism.

So let's just cut the bullshit and call it all porn. Just like there shouldn't be a scale of kink, we don't need a scale for the "artiness" of our sexual materials.