Erotica

cinematica, carismatica, pero ella no tiene modal.

Erotica, bombastomica,

ojo machiavelico, mucha vanita.

Mucho drama.

dalliance is? Naughty, cordial...

Erotica.

Erotica, one night, being naughty...

You know? Imagine banging a posh bird.

Yeah.

[laughs]

... from cum.

It was called EroticaGate?

Yeah.

What? Who was upset?

I don't know where to begin.

I mean, one thing is that we could start to differentiate pornography from erotica, because porne means female slaves, female slavery.

Erotica, eros, has some idea of mutuality and mutual pleasure.

So we could first, you know, the culture gives us the idea that dominance and passivity or conquering is what's not mutual pleasure, is what sexuality is about.

You know, when I'm speaking to audiences of men, I always try to convince them that cooperation beats domination.

Before we get serious, I thought I'd start with a joke.

What is the difference between erotica and pornography? Erotica is using a feather, pornography is using the whole chicken.

And who said it? Woody Allen.

And this joke is widely considered to be a brilliant classic piece of comedy writing.

I put it down and I was like, whatever.

I think for me, and I don't think it's prudishness on our part whatsoever, because, you know, I have read Erotica.

And if you pick up Erotica, you know what you're picking up.

You are picking up a glorified story.

one shot sexy essentially and when they're well written they do the job that they're supposed to do but I think if you're reading a novel where that's not the main thrust of the story sorry I couldn't think of another way to say it but it's not I think in those moments it's a little bit like oh no because when you talk to your friends and you might you know you know it's 2026 you might be quite candid with your friends you're not candid to that level you might be telling them this he did this weird thing or this funny thing happened you know the doorbell rang mid go or whatever you know you don't go into the graphic anatomical detail and I also think that when it's in a story and you've fallen in love with the characters it can be quite jarring because you're like oh well I was really in love with him on the page and in his clothes and being a rodeo guy but I don't like the way he's doing this and it's kind of turning me off it's a really weird yeah

But let me just share one more thing for Goddess Ngame that I just remembered that I think will be also helpful.

I remember years ago, someone who I know who wrote Erotica.

What's her last name? Name was Rachel, but I don't remember the rest of her name.

Rachel goddess, Rachel, who is an erotica writer.

It's all the rage with readers at the moment.

And RNZ has a new podcast called Erotica by the Fire.

It's out now.

Hosted by writer Shoshana McCullum and comedian Donna Brookbanks.

Great to have you here.

Thank you so much for having me.

Erotica by the fire.

Why? Why? Why? Why are