t Disclaimer--I've never made any kind of categorical study of porn, so the comments below are based almost entirely on what I've happened to run across by accident on the internet

What disturbs me about visual porn, at least the kind that shows up in spam or sometimes ambushes you unawares when you think you're going to a perfectly innocent and inoffensive website, is that the women are so fake-looking and garishly costumed and made-up. To my eyes, they're caricatures or parodies of ideal beauty, not at all the real thing. And so, in a weird way I feel threatened by that type of porn in a way that I don't by, say, Natalie Portman or Miranda Otto, to name DH's current Secret Celebrity Girlfriends. It's like the porn fantasy woman is a whole different kind of being than what I am, while celebrity hotties are the same kind as me, just a whole lot prettier.

Does that even make any kind of sense?

So you'd say that one element of the category you call "sexy" is the fact that it's closer to reality? I can see that. A lot of times in the fic world there are complaints about idealized sex or idealized bodies. (There was recently a story on the Nikita board where during one chapter, the orgasm count was Nikita 5, Michael 4.) Reality is that simultaneous orgasms are not the default, or that sometimes sex is bad for any number of reasons.

Visual porn is its own weird entity. A great deal of what I have sampled (mostly recent, run-of-the-mill stuff, not much of the "classics") relies on a library of settings, events and styles that seem to have absolutely nothing to do with real-world pleasures.

(Like, anybody who tried to actually have sex on a motorcycle would probably tell you it is not very comfortable. Ditto, carpeted stairs. Same again, trying to have sex with someone who has inch-long plastic fingernails -- one wrong move, and owie!)

I think the library of visual porn events is as developed and specialized as, say, the library of written porn events among slashers. Try explaining to someone who is not into that scene about Sentinel slashers' fixation on teddy bears, or why M/K people have such a thing for turning their heroes into thrill killers and/or fetishists. It is like, a small population locked itself into a room and came up with its own "language" of erotics, that bears a passing similarity to our common language of erotics, but has gone so long out of dialogue with the common language that it is very difficult to communicate.

In a way, though the distinction I'm making is more of ideal vs. a parody of an ideal. I understand why a man would find Natalie Portman hot--hell, I'm as heterosexual as they come, and I can't help staring at her. But the porno pictures that occasionally pop up in my spam faster than I can hit the delete key are repulsive to me, and, judgmental and politically incorrect as this probably sounds, I'm disturbed and a bit frightened by the idea of it appealing to anyone.

(Off to shower and work. Back at some point.)

It's like the porn fantasy woman is a whole different kind of being than what I am, while celebrity hotties are the same kind as me, just a whole lot prettier.

I agree. They're utterly artificial. You might as well have a porn-bot.

Who is the "us" that has a common language of erotics? Isn't it all just all a collection of subgroups, many of whom don't overlap?

You don't think there's a common language of erotics? I mean, it's a pretty seriously hedged language, being spoken mostly in mass media who don't do full-on nudity or penetration, but there are a lot of images that a lot of people can agree are erotic. (Like, photo shoots in magazines; famous movie sex scenes; internet pinups.)

It may be that the common language falters when it comes to actually describing sex acts in words or pictures -- certainly, men I've talked to tend to find fanfic sex scenes hilarious, and Susan's not the only one who finds your standard porn scenario repulsive -- but there are "terms" available to the mainstream about sex and sexiness that most people reasonably understand and respond to in similar ways. Or, they might disagree about responses, but don't do the big "Huh???" that signifies total communication failure.

Personally, I find as many "conventional" descriptions of erotica as not-hot as men-porn or slash, but I guess I'm minority on that. To some degree, these alien women may really react that way, so standard man porn only asks me to suspend my disbelief the once, at the very start

Forgive me for interrupting this interesting discussion, but Nutty's tagline broke me.

"Mister Spock is on his fanny, sir. Reports heavy damage."

This is even more of a mind boggler in UK English, which translates the above as Spock being on a male somebody's ladyparts. Are we talking Kirk sexchange Mpreg?

(I mean, I'm sure it's out there.)

No, in America, your fanny is a cute way of talking about your butt.