Difference Between Erotica Pornography

"Erotica portrays nonaggressive sexual activity between willing, sensitive, caring partners. The partners share in the initiation and choice of activities, erlatively free from the stereotype pattern of male dominance and female subservience that characterizes much pornography"
--Margaret Jean Intons-Peterson and Beverly Roskos-Ewoldsen "Mitigating the Effects of Violent Pornography pg 219

In pornography women are objects. Men act on women who aren't even women, merely bodies. Recepticles of male lust.
Erotica celebrates sexuality, while pornography reduces it to domination and submission. Pornography is harmful because it dehumanizes both men and women.

http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/Garden/1073/porn2.html


Pornography and Erotica both depict sex and intend to stimulate sexually. However, pornography is more transparent wherein one person is a subject while the other is the object. In pornography, only one person enjoys the act of sexual activity. In most porn movies, there isn't really much story but rather more on the act of fore playing and sexual intercourse. Pornography is more visual in a sense that they may expose the sexual organs of the characters. Pornography is classified into two classifications which are soft porn and hard porn. Soft porn is when there is no exposure of genitalia during the sexual intercourse whereas hard porn has lots of genitalia exposure (in fact sometimes, in porn movies they even focus the camera on the genitals). Some argue that it is already to be considered as porn once the nipple of the female boob is exposed while others say only if two nipples are shown can it be considered as porn.
In Erotica, there is a subject-subject relationship in which both (or all of them in cases like threesome activities) are enjoying. Examples of Erotica are romance novels which are actually more detailed in describing the mood and setting of the scenes. In Erotica, even the smallest detail such as the color of the lingerie the characters are wearing, are described. It is very descriptive and I think that it stimulates the audience more than pornography since the audience can use their wildest imagination to interpret the message.