To me, erotica/porn are very visual genres, even in the written word. We read erotica and imagine the people and situations we find there, bringing them to life in our imaginations.

I also love actual, visual erotica/porn as well but often with a lot of hand waving over “oh, but not mainstream porn”. What do I mean by that? Who the hell knows; there have been reams of research, theory, philosophy and argument driven by the desire to “define” what is pornographic, and it still boils down to Justice Potter Stewart’s classic observation, “…I know it when I see it.”

With that in mind, I started the Cooper West tumblr to show what I mean when I say “visually stimulating, emotionally intimate, erotic porn”. Specifically, I post the pictures I feel represents the kind of erotica I write: bisexual, straight, gay, monogamous, polyamorous, kinky, vanilla. It is a wide variant, and honestly I think my tumblr would be more marketable if it was just about “hot gay men kissing!” or something targeted like that. My point in having a tumblr, though, was not to focus on marketing a small share of the genres I write in, but to broaden the cultural concept of “porn” to include images that are “erotic.” It’s a gray-area divide, no question there, but one worth exploring.

Gender Disclaimer: Most of the pictures on my tumblr are of cisgendered people; that is not because I do not respect or find unattractive transgendered or intersexed people, but because those are not the people I generally write about. I don’t feel I have the insight to adequately, respectfully portray their experiences, both sexually and culturally, and to even try would probably result in something of questionable merit. However I am always open to dialogue about those issues here on this blog, if you wish to start a discussion!

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