Tara Tainton

If you don't think it's a universal tiff, open your eyes a bit more. Everyone has an opinion, just as in most things, but they seem to be a little more vocal on the subject of what is erotica versus pornography. One's nice and proper and the other's just plain wrong, right? No, not at all.

The words that shock so much at first don’t shock at all after a while...
it is that the words merely shocked the eye,
they never shocked the mind at all.
People without minds may go on being shocked, but they don’t matter.
People with minds realize that they aren’t shocked, and never really were:
and they experience a sense of relief.
–D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

I've reviewed and admired the sites and online presences of many other erotic authors, artists, ezines, print magazines, artists, and performers. They all have a stance on the erotica vs. porn debate and many of them attempt at explaining their own view, which is quite a feat in itself. Still, I have yet to come across a statement on any one of the sites that matches my own opinion.

Censor the body and you censor the breath and speech at the same time.
–Helene Cixous

What surprises me most is when the very authors of erotica or photographers and videographers of nudes and erotic content, as well as the models and performers themselves, all participating in and supposedly respecting the supposedly free-spirited and completely honest genres and artistic mediums, tend to fall into the trap of making a call on what's good or bad, naughty or nice. They supposedly feel the genre and writing about sex is literary, intelligent, justifiable, and important. Yet, they still make judgments within it: "My stuff is quality writing; that other stuff is just filth."

Nonjudgmental does not mean all-accepting;
it means being willing to judge an activity or relationship
on the basis of how well it works for the participants
and not on some external standard of absolute rightness or wrongness.
–Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt, The Ethical Slut

The dictionaries are no help. The definitions of erotica and porn are the same, whether it's the American Heritage Dictionary stating both are art intended to arouse sexual desire or Merriam-Webster dictating they're designed to arouse sexual desire but have no artistic or literary value at all. Now, that's what I call judgmental.

A widespread taste for pornography means that
nature is alerting us to some threat of extinction.
-J. G. Ballard

My belief? Writing and art in all their forms, on any subject and no matter how it is labeled by one source to the next, can all be beautiful, touching, and connecting or viewed as complete crap. It can appeal to one reader's senses and wishes and not those of the next. It can be labeled as art by some and a mere conglomeration of words on paper by others. Erotica and pornography? They're the same thing! Someone along the line just wanted to make the stuff they liked to read sound nicer, more proper, and acceptable while further separating themselves from others with the same tastes.

I certainly had experienced enough to know that pornography had power,
that it was something that I enjoyed writing and that
readers wanted to have given to them.
–John Preston, My Life as a Pornographer & Other Indecent Acts

John Preston's own words say it perfectly: "the only difference is that erotica is the stuff bought by rich people; pornography is what the rest of us buy." Stick the same story beneath a different cover and place it on the shelf in a different store, and it would fit the opposite label. All that matters is that someone gains something from your art. The wham-bam stuff can turn your reader on as much as a sensuous essay beginning with two lovers staring into each others' eyes for hours. And whether a piece of writing or other artistic creation serves to connect or separate (a typical way erotica is separated from porn by the judges) is completely up to the individual reader, viewer, and listener, not to the artist's actual or professed intention.

Pornography is supposed to arouse sexual desires.
If pornography is a crime, when will they arrest makers of perfume?
-Richard Fleischer

Why are we writers, artists, and performers? Because we have something to say through whichever medium we've chosen, and we don't mind sharing it. So, say it. Don't label it. At the same time, read and view it all, and get what you can from it. Who cares what store you find it offered by or in which section of the bookstore it's filed within? They're just words. You, as the reader, give them meaning and power: either positive or negative.