Erotic art has always been a phrase that made my heart sink or my manhood shrivel. It usually seemed to fall into one of two categories, art done by and for people who mistake sexual arousal for artistic appreciation, or pretentious pornography. “I do erotic art,” they say, “nothing seedy.”

Oh how disappointing, I cry inside, seediness is part of the turn-on for me. It is the very striving for tastefulness that makes it so lame. If I feel disgust when looking at porn it is not about it being unstylish or dirt on the floor or even s*** on the model's face. What appalls me is if any of the acts were non-consensual or the feeling that either the models or I were being exploited.

Pornography has long been an inspiration to me. I like its functionality: if it turns you on it’s good. Pretensions to artistic merit always seemed to get in the way of the sex, as if someone was introducing another agenda into the meeting. I love the cackhandedness of amateur porn and am left cold by the pseudo-glamorous production line varieties that flood the internet and the newsagent’s top shelf. I like to see a cat litter tray in the background and a half- finished novel on the nightstand. I do not want to feel that some pornographer’s corny taste in erotica was barging in on my fantasy life, styling it with tasteful decor and professional lighting. My fantasies generally play out in suburban neutrality where I can kid myself that they could really happen.

Sexual arousal is a deft decision maker: we are either turned on or not. So we often find what excites other people mystifying. They must be faking it, surely? No one is turned on by tying moccasins to their genitals or causing train crashes or John Prescott, are they? We can look at each other’s sexual fantasies and they can seem like our worst nightmares. But that may be exactly what they are, for sexual fantasies and nightmares often share roots in our deepest subconscious fears, and fear can be a terrific aphrodisiac.

It was fear of a different kind that gripped me as I approached the Trolley Gallery in East London, fear of disappointment. I was off to see the Erotic Awards finalists’ exhibition. I was dreading a show of sub-Helmut Newton, sixth-form fetish fantasies set in sci-fi clichés or, golly gosh, I say, isn’t sex sooper fun Carry On “humour”.

What I found was a curiously heartwarming display of what is hot and socially innovative in the sex industry. The Erotic Awards have been going for 13 years and are organised into 18 categories covering every aspect of sex culture from publications and photography to performers, websites and events. The finalists include Jemima Stehli, the artist, who has shown with the very proper Lisson Gallery; Candy Bar, a lesbian striptease club; Becki Lee, who crochets vaginas; and Chris-Student, a sex worker who has had particular success with disabled women and has pioneered the “discreet hospital visit”.

The emphasis seems to be on originality and social responsibility. This is exemplified by one nominee who runs a website: electroman.com.au. He partially finances a hospice in India for terminal cancer sufferers by selling special electrodes he has developed for genital stimulation.

Wanting to research things thoroughly, I visited Fettered Pleasures on Holloway Road, a nominee in the Innovation category, suppliers of a wince-inducing range of SM gear. Even my well-oiled imagination had to work hard to picture what some of the sculptural items were for. A good rule of thumb seems to be “when in doubt, it’s probably a butt plug”.

Like all good awards shows there is a Lifetime Achievement category. Nominees are William Levy, the intellectual who founded Suck, the first European sex paper, with Germaine Greer; Irina Ionesco, the 70-year-old French erotic photographer; and Sunset Strip, Soho’s oldest and much loved strip bar that welcomes a wide range of clients including groups from Deafblind UK.

It is this fulfilling of everyone’s human needs that I find so endearing. The awards will be given out at the Night of the Senses on September 2, a huge event described as the “Glastonbury of sex”, where many of the nominees will also perform. Proceeds go to Outsiders, a charity led by Dr Tuppy Owens, which for 27 years has been helping disabled people to find relationships.

All this is a long way from the orchestrated outrage about the sex industry in the tabloids, what Owens calls “double porn” in that the reader is twice rewarded, once for sharing in the disgust and once in being titillated by the porn itself. Owens tells me that PayPal has suspended the ticket sales for the Night of the Senses on grounds of obscenity, which sums up the stigma still surrounding any exploration of sexuality.

It would be interesting if the awards were taken seriously and screened on the telly like the Booker or the Turner. Imagine the dinner party conversations: “I don’t normally use male escorts but I thought I should try out all the nominees in the male sex worker of the year category so that I had an informed opinion.”

I left the exhibition in the afterglow not of sexual arousal or artistic inspiration, but with a good humoured respect for certain quarters of a world much misunderstood.

Tuppy Owens and co have a healthy and responsible attitude to an industry that has always been with us and is not going to go away. They ignore the mainstream gloss and celebrate the innovative niches and, dare I say it, the good people in a gloriously mucky business.

Erotic Awards Finalists Exhibition, Trolley Gallery, Redchurch Street, London E2 (020-7729 6591), today to Sept 24