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Where do you draw the line between erotic and vulgar?
(lemmy.world)
my dick being hard or soft.
Erotic is the art of leaving doors slightly ajar. Enough to make the mind lean in and do its own private vulgarities. A fog, darkness, mystery, and tantalizing reward. It’s a half-sentence that somehow feels like a full romance story, written in ink that smudges on purpose so you have to interpret it.
Vulgar is when the same door gets kicked off its hinges and someone starts pointing at everything inside with a flashlight and commentary track. Nothing is hidden, nothing is paced, nothing is spared from narration. Media slaps face.
Erotic is when you search for the details, vulgar is when they are pushed into your face.
Generally speaking, I think it has to do with intent:
Erotic = intended to arouse / is sexual in nature.
Vulgar = intended to offend / is characterized by a lack of social acceptability.
Yeah, and the same themes can go either way. An edge lord trying to push boundaries might write acts that are downright tame for sadomasochistic erotica.
And I think tone is vital here. I've read some stuff that could have been rewritten as horror, but the tone is sensuous.
Lines do get blurred though, pulp erotica is a classic example. My knowledge of it is largely in lesbian pulp, but at the time you couldn't get away with writing a happy love story between two women, especially not an erotic one. You could however write a somewhat vulgar story about a good girl being seduced by a dangerous woman so long as the ending was unhappy for the women.
Erotic is what I like, vulgar is what everyone else likes.
So that would make Starbucks coffee vulgar. Yeah...that tracks.
You know what else is vulgar?
Tap for spoiler
OK, so, no word of a lie, I decided to enumerate an alphabetical word list of British English. "erotic" is at 30872, and "vulgar" is at 99680. The average of these is 65276, which is where you'd draw a line exactly between them. What word is at that entry? "package's".
So by sheer mathematics, you're crossing the line if you can see some guy's package. QED.
Playing by those rules, I reject the arithmetic mean and draw the line between them on the word "line".
Package in the possessive form? What's the definition?
No definition. It's purely a word list, nothing more. Specifically, I used /usr/share/dict/words, which on my machine ultimately links to /usr/share/dict/british-english.
Erotic: sexually arousing or intended for such purpose.
I don't think vulgarity is a well defined or even useful concept. It's just another remnant of Puritanism.
There's a line, a very moist line that you don't want to cross you naughty girl/boy/puppy.
Erotic = It turns me on.
Vulgar = it offends me.
Also both of those are moving targets.
I don't... or at least I try not to.
"Sex-positivity" means acknowledging and accepting the wide variety of tastes and consensual adult activities that make up human sexuality. And to do that, you have to understand that your own preferences are subjective and arbitrary, and that just because you aren't into something doesn't make it gross, obscene, vulgar or worthy of judgement.
Erotic is light sensual play with a feather.
Vulgar/perverted would be if the chicken is still attached
For demonstration of this theory, see Pink Flamingos
If I’m being completely honest, that line is in constant motion.
But are the line's motions erotic or vulgar?
Absolutely.
I think the accepted definition for these things is "I know it when I see it". A.K.A. mostly subjective.
I feel like its largely situational too.
At a school? Vulgar
On a date? Erotic
Where do you draw the line between green and salty? There isn't a line between them, they're two different dimensions.
There's a fancy word for that: orthogonal. In geometry it also means at a right angle to each other, which makes sense for dimensions in a coordinate system.
Where do you draw the line between orthogonal and adjacent?
It's more of a spectrum
Erotic is when everyone involved in the scene is in full consent of all the actions happening. Vulgar is the moment one person decides that they are no longer comfortable with the actions happening yet the scene continues anyway.
I can't describe it, but I know it when I see it.
Well, if it's in Latin it can be erotic, but never vulgar.
Erotic is sophisticated, thoughtful, sexy. Vulgar is trying to be erotic and failing because it's lazy, derivative, and misses the nuance.
Where does "tacky" fall in this? I can't see tacky and erotic but can see tacky and vulgar.
If it turns me on or disgusts me.
Why exactly would anyone want to draw this line? "Erotic" and "vulgar" are both bad looks at a funeral, you know?
Erotic is when everyone involved is into it. It turns vulgar when one person isnt.
this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
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