‘Women are starting to reclaim pleasure’: Is audio erotica the future of ethical pornography?

Companies including Quinn and Femtasy are pulling in hundreds of thousands of listeners by supplying erotic audio entertainment of both the fantastical and mundane varieties. Gabby Colvin meets the fans, creators and, um, voice performers behind pornography’s next big thing

‘There is no doubt in the mind of the reader or the listener that this is something I want and enjoy,’ says blogger Girl on the Net (iStock)

For an increasing number of boys, the first conception of the female body arrives via porn. “Then how do men grow up?” asks Elisabeth Ranft, a promoter of audio erotica. “They grow up thinking a woman’s body can belong to them – that the naked female body is theirs for consumption.”

Ranft is part of the team behind Femtasy, one of the leading makers of pornography for your ears – adult content offering an audio alternative to the increasingly violent material normalised on the likes of Pornhub. Apps such as Femtasy, and rivals including Quinn and Dipsea, have become big business in the adult industry, boasting of hundreds of thousands of committed users and landing many of their female creators – Quinn’s Caroline Spiegel and Dipsea’s Gina Gutierrez and Faye Keegan – on respective Forbes “30 Under 30” lists.

While most audio erotica companies are led by women, their output isn’t strictly for women. The medium caters to all genders and sexualities, as well as a vast array of fantasies. There are romantic comedies with added ooh-ing and ahh-ing, think: “You haven’t seen each other since high school and he’s still as handsome as ever!” Others are more outlandish, say: “I’m a devilishly handsome wizard on a quest... now let me show you my wand.” Grey’s Anatomy star Jesse Williams even narrates one of them, voicing a randy bookseller named Solstice Starr in the Quinn 10-parter “The Misty Door”. There’s something for everyone, if all linked by moans and groans.

The make-up of people exploring their sexuality through the medium is ever-increasing, Ranft tells me. She remembers the Femtasy head office in Berlin receiving a letter from a woman in her Seventies who offered her thanks. “I just had my first orgasm with you!” she wrote.

“Women are starting to reclaim pleasure and understand that it is just as much about them and their fantasies as it is about their typically male partners,” Ranft explains.

Girl on the Net, an anonymous sex blogger who has been creating erotic content for 12 years, believes audio and literary pornography has an ethical edge over its visual counterparts. When she writes and records stories, she constantly reinforces themes of safety and consent – as well as genuine enthusiasm. “There is no doubt in the mind of the reader or the listener that this is something I want and enjoy,” she says.

They’re trying to get these perfect girls and these big, muscly guys and it’s so vulgar. In audio porn, they make it a little more romantic

John, an audio porn connoisseur

Ranft adds that Femtasy always aims to “educate and promote ethical sex, ethical pleasure and consent through our audios”, primarily because so many pornographic companies don’t. Studies have linked increased consumption of pornography to a range of negative behaviours, from porn addiction to violent or antagonistic attitudes towards women.

Rebecca, a 23-year-old student from Reading, first sought out audio porn as the visual porn she had grown used to watching didn’t feel ethical or positive. “You can use your own imagination,” she says. “And put yourself in those situations based on your own experiences.” She adds that she also struggled to lose her inhibitions when consuming visual pornography, instead imagining what the performers might be like off-camera. Sometimes she felt concerned for them. “I think even if I know they’re professionals and it’s not a bad time for [the performer], I don’t think it’s a good time.”

“Video porn is an extremely patriarchal industry,” furthers Ranft. “It’s men telling women what to do and women obeying, because that’s what they think it takes for them to make a career and a name for themselves.”

“You hear so many horror stories,” adds Chris Yamez, an actor who has performed stories for Quinn. “But [with Quinn] I’m completely autonomous, and they treat us so well.” He adds that being a part of the site has also changed his own understanding of sexuality. “I realised so much about how, as a man, I would like to experience intimacy versus how I’ve been shown to experience intimacy.”

Audio erotica platforms have also enabled a model for pornography in which actors and performers are paid fairly, as users pay for subscriptions rather than stream them for free. “I think people are becoming more conscious, ethical consumers,” says Girl on the Net. “The big sites like Dipsea and Quinn have done a brilliant job of helping people to understand that it’s OK to listen to porn and, in fact, [it’s] ethical and genuinely good to pay for it.”

Former ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ star Jesse Williams has lent his voice to a Quinn series of erotic audio (Getty)

One of those people is John, an audio porn connoisseur who has been listening from his home in Tennessee for more than 12 years, first stumbling across the medium while browsing the erotic fiction site Literotica. “I’m a big reader,” he tells me, “and I find that reading stories or listening is a lot more stimulating than watching videos – [they’re] just so over the top.” He says he’s always felt alienated by the lack of realism in typical visual pornography. “They’re trying to get these perfect girls and these big, muscly guys and it’s so vulgar. In audio porn, they make it a little more romantic. I search out the realistic stuff.”

He says that he’s discussed the failings of mainstream pornography with his 15-year-old son, too, and believes honest conversations will help him in the long run. “I told him, ‘Do yourself a favour and don’t watch it – you’ll process sex in a bad way and it will skew what you think it will be like’.”

He’s hoping it’ll have an effect. “Listening is probably a lot better than watching.”