Read Full Exposure: Opening Up to Sexual Creativity and Erotic Expression for Free Online

have one, after all. It’s feminist spin control. The reason so many women use it today is because it’s one of those great words that all the

    radical women grabbed and said, ‘We’re not going to let this word be a curse. It’s our body, and we’re going to control it.’ ”
    I couldn’t help daring him. “Why don’t you try it here? Because everyone is so sympathetic, just go ahead and say, ‘Susie, you have a beautiful cunt!’ ”
    He couldn’t do it. I wonder if he craved the embarrassment. I guess I should have led a chant, a cunt wave.
    We do need more words. But we don’t even use the ones we have with the kind of style and equal-mindedness of which we’re capable. We’re afraid that if we let the dangerous words out, sex will be more dangerous, life will be uglier, we won’t know what to expect. I personally believe we need the surprise; there’s nothing uglier than our present silence and denial. We’re choking on our sex names, hiding behind the fine discriminations between this one and that one. If I can say “intercourse” with one breath and “fucking” with another, I have just relieved a small moment of vocabulary bondage. I have a cunt, I also have a clitoris, a pussy, a vagina, a fertile mind—and sometimes I have a rainbow of a feeling that begs for as many names as you can give her.
    CHAPTER SIX ‌
    GRADING
    The difference between pornography and erotica is packaging.
    John Preston

    A s long as I have been talking about sex, there has been a persist-ent question in every gathering I have attended: “What is the difference between pornography and erotica?” It’s an eternal hot coal that will not be extinguished no matter how much sand I shovel on it—and that’s my first impulse with this “non-question.” It is, in truth, an anxiety-driven plea for benediction rather than a genuine inquiry.
    The erotic versus pornographic debate will limp along as long as sexual speech is suspect, and only an elite disclaimer (like the ones used by many museums nowadays) can open any of it to public discussion. If we thought of sex as a matter of taste and individuality, as we do with the foods that we eat, we wouldn’t ask stupid questions like, “Is it erotic food or is it pornographic

35

    food?” “Is it the sort of food for men or the sort of food for women?” “Should it be eaten in public or hidden in the cupboard at home?” No, we would say, “Eat! This is what keeps you alive.”
    I’m exhausted with the argument, and so is everyone else. I don’t want to discuss porn versus erotica anymore. I want to say, “Oh, dear, I’m sorry, we covered that last year. It was announced on a loudspeaker during a national air-raid drill last August, and if you were absent, you’ll have to look it up yourself at the library.” I inten-tionally want to stymie any further investigation into this hoax of a dispute because anyone who does dare to answer it with authority is thwarting any genuine progress in sexual expression. The very debate itself is reactionary, and it needs to have its pious little robes ripped off.
    Here’s what people want to hear when they ask what the difference is between erotica and porn: “Yes, upon careful examination, experts have decided that my fantasies and my sexual identity are beautiful, healthy, and a real turn-on besides…but that person over there, sitting in the corner, now their sexual expression is total rot.”
    Then, depending on whether you like the buzz of the word porn or the insinuations of erotica, you pin the beneficial label on yourself and the icky label on the other person. Voilà, another perfect discriminating pose is accomplished!
    What’s really rotten is creating such a misleading discrimination to begin with. The truth of the matter is that your sexual speech is no better, more attractive, or healthier than anyone else’s. The smartest thing to say to yourself when you encounter a style of sexuality unknown to you—which