Actual English usage rather emphatically disagrees with you. [0]

> There's a double standard in English, where pornographic books can't actually be porn because women don't consume porn.

No, there’s not. But “romance novels” aren't that, though arguably an adjacent category (whereas “erotic fiction” is an overlapping, but not identical, category to “pornographic fiction”.)

But English does not hold that what woman consume is not porn (and, in fact, you’ll find extensive English language studies of how women consume what is uncontroversially porn.)

> The other interesting aspects of that lesson were that I wouldn't really have expected a module in a class formally offered through a Chinese university to focus on this topic, and that -- in the textbook's opinion -- the correct English vocabulary should have been "blue movie", "blue picture", "blue magazine", and "blue book".

“blue movie” is correct, if somewhat dated; the rest are, at best, never as widely used.

[0] e.g., https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pornographic_novels

You can find extensive English-language studies of many phenomena that people prefer to pretend never happen. That doesn't mean the pretense isn't there.

> “blue movie” is correct, if somewhat dated; the rest are, at best, never as widely used.

As best I could tell, the "blue" terminology is correct Indian English; I would have no qualms about labeling it incorrect American English. No one I've mentioned this to has ever even heard of the term.

> Actual English usage rather emphatically disagrees with you. [0]

This would be a more convincing rebuttal if the page was willing to describe more than 12 books as "pornographic novels".

It is absolutely American English, but dated. The people you know are probably just too young; if you have doubts here is a New York Times review of the American blue movie titled Blue Movie which uses “blue movie” (as well as “stag film”) to refer to the class of films to which Blue Movie belongs:

https://www.nytimes.com/1969/07/22/archives/screen-andy-warh...

Mostly Indian, but I've seen ocassional British reference to blue as an adjective for pornographic movies. Usually not 'blue movie', but "that's too blue for me" or something.

Also, a DVD by mail service originally based in San Francisco, GreenCine, had a sister site, BlueCine, which was porn. Otherwise, never seen it used in American context.

Try this in America and you'll get confusion and guesses that by 'blue' you mean 'sad'.

Well the Greek roots are literally "writing about prostitutes". I'd argue explicit depiction of sex for the sake of getting off is porn. In literature, drawing, photo, or video. There's even the audio form.

English also has "erotica". Which is... porn which has some non-porn value? Semi-clothed porn? Most romance fiction is more to the clothed than unclothed end of the erotica spectrum, anyway. I wouldn't class most as porn. Though there sure are some pornographic books. I was surprised to learn how many synonyms for the genitalia there are.

I mean, if you want to follow the etymology the graph root means "scrape", because you write by scratching marks into a soft surface.

But the word (actually) refers equally to writing and pictures.

One of the first erotic text adventures is literally named "Softporn Adventure". [0][1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softporn_Adventure

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/12/the-o...

That instantly brought to mind Soft Cell's song "Seedy Films". It has the line "Blue films flicker / Hands of a stranger / Getting to know you / And I'm getting to like you". It would be amusing if that is a reference that got immortalized in your textbook.

Good song btw ;)