Porn vs. Erotica

What are the differences?

State Your Case...

Porn has more beaver shots.

Hmm. Very succinct.

Erotica=beats around the bush

Porn=all about the bush

Couldn't have said it better myself......

yep, same thing: jerk-off material.

"erotica" is just a nicer way of saying it & is often used in place of "soft core".

either way, it's still meant for getting messy to.

I've always thought that the difference was more in methods than in purpose. Erotica aims for your imagination, porn aims for your eyeballs.

I think erotica could be a genre in which the writer/photographer/artist/filmmaker explores and expresses different aspects and nuances of her/his own sexuality, or sexuality in general, without the impediment of prudishness and censorship.

But, yeah, usually it's just soft-core porn.

Interesting take....

Porn, vs. erotica...


cant we all just get along!!!

erotica usually has some forced, very bad plot to the movie and is more, as said above, soft.

No, we cunt.

I think any old sex act can be porn....but erotica has a connotation of containing art.

I think erotica focuses less on the particulars of the act and more on the significance of it; that is, how it feels, not what's going on. Porn, on the other hand, is more about just showing what they're doing as directly as possible.

I think any distinction between porn and erotica is in the eye of the beholder. As someone (I believe a judge) once said "I don't know how to define pornography but I know it when I see it."

Debates I've witnessed about porn "versus" erotica -- treating them as mutually exclusive -- tend to reflect two things. One is a tendency towards literalism, trying to define a clear distinction (e.g one involves words, the other involves images; OR porn involves "explicit" sexual imagery, penetration, sexual acts, while erotica is "softer" and has some kind of "artistic merit" that porn lacks).

For any such attempts to define a distinction, I could find counter-examples, so I tend not to take such distinctions too seriously.

The other tendency I think of as "squeamishness". Because people sometimes think of erotica as "tasteful" and porn as "not tasteful", this gives "erotica" a respectability and "artistic merit" denied to porn. (I'm big with the quote marks, huh.) I've noticed that a number of members of this site are pretty squeamish about thinking of SGs as "porn", preferring to think of it as "erotica" instead, as though the label of porn somehow makes it less noble or dignified or something.

Frankly, I don't care. In one of the earlier Is-SGs.com-Porn? threads, someone clearly made the point that the removal of "pornographic" imagery from the category of art in our culture is a quite recent phenomenon.

My own view is that pornography and erotica are flip sides of a coin, and not at all mutually exclusive. They should reflect each other. To me, if erotica is not pornographic enough, then it's just sanitised and dull. If pornography is not erotic enough, then its creators/participants are probably not using their imaginations enough. I want my erotica pornographic, thank you, and my porn to be erotic.

In that vein, I'm happy for SGs to be classified as erotica and/or porn, and for it to reflect and display both aesthetic beauty (in a variety of ways) as well as overt sexuality.

Sorry for rambling. But you did ask.

Porn is a place where young aspiring actresses can break into the industry and make themselves known. Erotica is a place where they can go after their careers wash up. I'm looking at you Shannon Tweed.

Oh God, he's found me out! *puts on clothes and runs away*

Someone once said that erotica gives you some feathers; with porn, you get the whole chicken.

bukkake is LIFE!

Only when done under the supervision of a professionally qualified feminist.

Personally, I prefer erotica...I plays off my intense desires to see whats under a woman's shirt, or what she might look like without clothes on, or tied to the bedpost.......

Sometimes it takes an awful long time to jerk off to hardcore porn...(sometimes it doesnt ) but as a whole Erotica is a LOT sexier.

I think the difference is a lot like going up to a girl or boy in a bar and either engaging in sexy conversation full of double-entendres and playful flirting or just walking up to said person and saying "I wanna fuck you"

The former is much more fun

You do realise, toxicboy, that you've assumed a distinction between erotica and porn, rather than made a convincing case for why you even believe there is a distinction in the first place.