Audio erotica: Tune in and turn on the female pleasure revolution

I’m on the Tube and Demi Moore — yes, that one — is whispering in my ear that she wants me to kiss her. But this isn’t just a commuter daydream. I’m listening to the new scripted erotica podcast Dirty Diana, which stars a husky-toned Moore as a woman who has stopped sleeping with her husband and started recording other women’s fantasies.

Over six 35-minute episodes, (one is released every Monday until August 17), Diana (Moore) goes from bored businesswoman to sexually-explorative documenter of erotic confessions. Although some of the sound effects are a bit heavy handed (creaky bar door opening! Bottle of fizzy kombucha pouring!), the dialogue feels realistic and, at times, funny. Lena Dunham, Melanie Griffith and Gwendoline Christie have cameos in later episodes.

Carrie’s (Griffith) fantasy is set in a brothel, “I don’t know, maybe I’ve been watching too much West World,” she jokes. The trailer is full of moaning, cicadas and a seductively slowed-down version of Dream a Little Dream of Me.

On the whole, it’s more storyline than softcore porn, although the first episode does feature Moore and Liz, played by Andrea Riseborough, sharing an orgasm. Moore, 57, who also executive produced the podcast, has said that making Dirty Diana has made her confront her own desires.

“My sexuality has felt like it’s dangerous… and that I should just keep it under wraps,” she says. “This podcast has been an incredible opportunity of opening into areas that I’m not comfortable with... It’s like a safe way of exploring.” She’s not the only one plugging in and getting off. Dirty Diana is just the latest offering in female-led audio erotica, from self-guided masturbation tutorials to crowdsourced sensual stories.

It’s a booming sector which occupies the sweet spot between “sexual self-care” (the global sexual wellness market is expected to reach nearly £100 billion by 2026, according to Forbes) and the ongoing obsession with all things podcast. In the UK, six million people tune in to a podcast each week — an increasing number of them women.

And although “ethical”, feminist porn films are a growing trend, many women are moving away from the visual medium entirely and opting for an audio experience instead. In 2019, Caroline Spiegel (sister of Snapchat founder Evan) launched the website Quinn, intended to be a “much less gross, more fun PornHub for women”. There are no videos, just erotic stories and audio tracks with titles such as Snugglef*ck. Spiegel says her goal was “to make a product that makes sex more chill. It’s such a fun, happy part of life. Quinn is a daily dose of pleasure.”

Also a world away from the annoying pop-ups and explicit images you get on most porn sites is the app Dipsea, which features bodies of all sizes, colours and genders, and abstract graphics to illustrate “sexy audio stories that set the mood”. Narratives centre on consent, safety and female pleasure and feature realistic sex noises — there’s not an “oh yeah, baby” in sight (or should that be sound?)

The tone is neither sleazy, nor sex education teacher: everything is thoughtful, calm and collected (and much sexier for it). For £6.80 a month, subscribers can access more than 300 stories (from five to 20 minutes in length), from a diversity of perspectives (her + her, her + him, her + them, him + him). Stories range from “flirtatious” to “highly explicit”, and are labelled with a flame-rating as voted by listeners.

The nature of the storylines speaks volumes about the Dipsea demographic — one is Hot Vinyasa, in which Laura and her yoga instructor Mark get bendy after class. Founded by Gina Gutierrez and Faye Keegan, both 30, the app was partly inspired by a study which found that 90 per cent of women use their imagination to get turned on.

“I was listening to the meditation app Headspace and was really struck by what a powerful medium audio was for storytelling, how its super-immersiveness could really allow your imagination to run wild,” says Gutierrez.

After a late-night conversation around Keegan’s kitchen table, the pair uploaded six stories onto a website, alerted 200 acquaintances and overnight found the site had registered 1,200 unique visits. Dipsea raised £4.2 million from investors in 2018.

East London PR worker Imogen, 32, says she listens to Dipsea on the Tube home “to get in the mood”, and with her boyfriend in bed. “It helps me to tune out the work stress and it feels less seedy and sordid than watching porn — and it’s also a lot more convincing,” she says.

Laura, 26, a photographer from south London, regularly listens to Quinn and the Tumblr site Sounds of Pleasure. “As a feminist, I find mainstream porn quite problematic,” she says. “Also, the fact that it’s just audio allows me to visualise what’s happening, which I actually find more erotic than seeing everything.” But some female audio erotica isn’t just about getting turned on. Billie Quinlan, 29, from Hackney, and Anna Hushlak, 31, from Canada, founded platform Ferly in 2019 as a “digital therapeutic tool for women with sexual difficulties”.

Inspired by the pair’s own traumatic sexual experiences, it’s aimed at women aged 25 to 35 who need help overcoming fear or anxiety around sex, have trouble orgasming or just want to reconnect with their sexual pleasure.

“I think we’re in the middle of a female pleasure revolution right now,” says Quinlan. “And it’s driven by young women in their twenties and thirties who see sexuality as an important component of our health.” She and Hushlak raised £1 million from investors and the platform is now available in 63 countries.

Quinlan acknowledges that execution is everything when it comes to recording a story that will be arousing and not funny. Get it wrong and you stray into My Dad Wrote A Porno territory (grimace). “I think what sets us apart is that we’re British, a lot of the American apps can be cheesy and over the top.”

London-based sex blogger Girl on the Net added an Audio Porn channel to her website in 2017, on the suggestion of a visually-impaired reader, and her narrated stories are now the most popular area of her whole site. The most listened-to track is What Anal Sex Feels Like. “I think audio erotica is exploding for the same reasons that podcasts are doing so well,” she tells me. “It’s great to be able to do something else while you listen, which for a normal podcast might be gardening, and with an erotic one it’s probably something else.”

No doubt lockdown has also had a part to play in the popularity of audio erotica. Dating app Badoo found that 37 per cent of single people were masturbating more during lockdown and research from OnBuy found that 41 per cent of women were unhappy with their sex life while isolating with a partner. Right now, audio porn is music to our ears.

Or as Shana Feste, the 44-year-old Dirty Diana creator who was inspired by a dry spell in her own marriage, puts it: “I hope people have sex like crazy after they listen to this podcast.”