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Audio erotica is sexually explicit audio-only content, designed to arouse the listener and bring them fulfilment. While it has existed for a long time, it has achieved significant popularity in recent years, driven by apps like Quinn, Dipsea, Emjoy and Ferly. Notably, these apps - and many like them - were founded by women and are predominantly targeted to female audiences, making audio erotica a fascinating form of "porn for women".
Audio Erotica focuses on these four apps as the contemporary "face" of audio erotica. Through textual and paratextual analysis, it offers an overview of the types and genres of erotic content available on the apps. It situates audio erotica in histories and lineages of both pornography and erotica (and feminist thought about them) and audio media. Moreover, it situates audio erotica in the context of several key discourses, such as wellness, authenticity and intimacy, as it analyses the ways in which the apps imagine their female listener and what she wants from sexually explicit media - which is, importantly, different from what men are imagined as wanting from pornography.
This is the first book-length study of audio erotica, making it a foundational resource for anyone doing research in the area. It offers a multifaceted understanding of the form, and makes several key contributions to studies of sexually explicit media directed towards women and discourses around female sexual desire.
List of contents
1. "Good Girl": An Introduction to Audio Erotica 2. "I'll Talk You Through It": Defining Audio Erotica 3. "After All, Consent is Sexy": Pornography, Erotica and Romance 4. "You Are Perfect, Baby": Affordances of the Audio Medium 5. [Kissing] [Consent] [Body Worship] [Cunnilingus] [Fingering] [Praise]: Genre in Audio Erotica 6. "Sit Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back": Wellness and Audio Erotica 7. "Do You Want Me to Praise You Like I Do In My Audios?": Parasociality and Audio Erotica 8. "So In Tune With Each Other": Conclusion
About the author
Athena Bellas is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne in the Faculty of Arts, working in the field of feminist media and film studies.
Jodi McAlister is a Senior Lecturer in Writing, Literature and Culture at Deakin University in Melbourne. She is the President of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance. She is also a romance novelist, and her most recent release is
An Academic Affair (Atria, 2025).
