IS IT EROTIC OR PORNOGRAPHIC?

An ongoing discussion within the erotic writing and reading community is to define the difference between erotic literature and pornographic literature and when does erotic writing become pornographic. There's a similar discussion going on with romance writers and readers of when does romance become erotic. Since I don't read or write straight romance, I won't get into that discussion.

Here is the definition of pornography: Sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal.

Back to Erotica vs Pornography or if you prefer smut. The purpose of both, I think you'll all agree, is to sexually scintillate and stimulate the reader. Some say that pornography goes farther than erotica and therefore appeals to men more than woman. Then again, define goes farther. I know there are erotic stories that go every bit as far as pornographic stories and I can't see how gender has anything whatsoever to do with the difference. Therefore, that doesn't work for me.

Among other things, I write erotic romance or erotica. I suppose, though I have written mostly erotic romance, I have strayed over the imaginary border between erotic and smut on a couple occasions. I consider Bananaz such a story. What was the difference? Simple. Erotic and pornographic alike, both contain sex and were approximately equally explicit. Therefore one could say erotic romance is romance with pornographic scenes. The difference was in the story. The pornographic story was pornography there was no story. If you took the sex away, you were left with next to nothing. Not so with erotic stories. If you removed all explicit sex scenes, you still had a story. It may have been weakened but a good writer could smooth it out and a story remained.

The bottom line; no story it's pornagraphic, story with pornographic scenes it's erotic.

I would be interested to hear your opinion.