Life & Wisdom Quote by Ellen Willis

Willis slips a blade under one of culture’s most self-flattering distinctions: the idea that “erotica” is tasteful art while “porn” is degraded smut. The line works because it refuses to argue about content and instead interrogates the judge. “In practice” is the tell - she’s not interested in lofty definitions, she’s calling out how the category gets made on the ground, in living rooms, courtrooms, and magazine offices, by people eager to launder their own arousal into something respectable.

The punch is the grammar of inevitability. “Attempts to sort” sounds like rational curation, but “inevitably” collapses that project into a confession of bias. Willis frames the distinction as a pronoun game: me gets the noble label, you gets the dirty one. It’s satire by way of exposure - a quick flip that reveals how moral hierarchy often tracks proximity. Desire we recognize becomes “sensual”; desire that unsettles us becomes “pornographic,” a term that’s always ready to do social work: shaming, excluding, policing.

Context matters. Willis wrote as a feminist critic in the thick of the “porn wars,” when anti-porn feminism, free-speech arguments, and emerging sex-positive politics were battling over whether explicit imagery was liberation, exploitation, or both. Her subtext is not that all porn is harmless or all erotica is equal; it’s that the cultural gatekeeping around sexuality routinely disguises taste, class, gender norms, and fear as ethical clarity. The quote doesn’t settle the debate - it forces you to notice who gets to call their pleasure art.