The title is nicked from the Body Language column in the latest print edition of Mail & Guardian.

Karin Schimke talks about a new anthology entitled 'Open; An erotic anthology" and the intention of bringing 'respected and respectable women writers" onboard, 'to dip their pens into saucy ink".

The debate of necessity mentions two loaded words in 'erotica' and 'pornography' and it's a natural not a logical progression in a debate about sex and literature, to go on to define both these descriptions that are not only relative to specific people and situations but also meaningless after endless debate.

If one likes a sexual scene in literature it's erotic, if not it's labelled porn, end of story.

Schimke focuses on a combustible zone when she speaks of the gap that exists between the polar opposites in how the woman is viewed and seen, especially by the man.

"Between the ancient sexual extremes of Virgin and Slut is the vast unmade bed of real ever-changing sex." This anthology could go a long way towards filling in this gap as men are mostly too one- dimensional to embark on a multi-faceted exploration into this divide with only words as weapons.

The negative about involving a collection of intimate stories by women about sex with the dichotomous and very archaic battlelines drawn between erotica and pornography is that the writing gets lost in the tendencies to shoot straight from the hip without any forethought.

A label like porn tends to stick just as well as one like rascist or plagiarist and is just as easy to throw without any justification at all.

Erotica tends to arouse while porn tends to brutalise but as Schimke admits, the dividing line "lies in the realm of individual perception."

This anthology coupled with this column has taken on too vast a territory and, although I have not read any of it yet, my feeling is that it should have been left as an anthology of writings about sex by women.

Taking on decrepit debates over definitions and meanings of porn and erotica as well as the nucleus with immenent critical mass that is the dividing line between the Vrgin and the Slut is an over ambitious attempt to punch in a higher weight division and dillutes the impact of the anthology. Is it a book or is a feminist attack on a straw man sneaking in underneath the radar?

Erotica for this writer is understated, memorable for subtlety and nuance but I've also seen erotica in magazines and books labelled porn so I'm no innocent bystander.

As a teaser for the anthology, this column should not have mentioned the words porn or erotica at all and left the reader to determine their own interpretation as those words simply direct the prospective reader into channels that no sane person would have taken voluntarily.

Overall it's too loaded and intimidating where the reader feels obligated to take a stance on what is a mass of ideological, political and extreme heaps of garbage accumulated over many decades of a concentrated disenfranchising the average person of their right to enjoy sex.