Girl on the Net

I get asked a lot by journalists what makes audio porn more ethical than video, and every time I’m asked, my answer is the same: it’s not. Is an Mp3 more ethical than an Mp4? It’s a nonsense idea – like arguing that podcasts are more ethical than TV. Audio is merely a different medium by which you convey and enjoy porn, and although it may require a different focus when you’re considering how to do it ethically, the medium itself doesn’t negate the need for an ethical framework. Believing that audio is just naturally ‘ethical’ and good while video porn is ‘unethical’ and bad (and harmful to women!) is likely to lead to complacency on the part of those who produce it, not to mention a harmful and regressive increase in sex work stigma directed at our colleagues in video. Let’s break this down.

When I am interviewed by journalists about audio porn, they are usually fishing for me to tell them one – or both – of the following things:

1. Audio porn is more ethical than video and

2. Audio porn appeals more to women than men.

I always try to challenge those assumptions, which is annoying of me because I really could do with the publicity. But I think both those assumptions are untrue.

1. Audio porn isn’t inherently more ethical than video – I have colleagues in the video porn industry who set extremely high ethical standards, and I have also known audio porn platforms to make egregiously basic ethical errors (like not paying their creators). The medium doesn’t dictate how ethical the porn is, for that we need to look at the business model.

2. Audio porn doesn’t appeal more to women than men. Last time I checked, roughly 69% (nice) of audio porn listeners on my site were men. What determines the demographic of users who enjoy your content isn’t the format of the content (do women like mp3s more than men do?), but a combination of factors including:

• the actual content (i.e. what is the porn about, who features in it and what do they do, as well as the ‘gaze’ of the porn – where the camera or descriptions linger and which participant they’re highlighting)
• the way the content is presented (i.e. if you stick it on your website behind a category called ‘FOR WOMEN’ then women are more likely to click on it, for obvious reasons)
• the way that content is marketed (including in the press, where an editor has often commissioned towards a narrative that audio is ‘for women’ regardless of whether that’s actually the case)

“Audio porn appeals to women because it’s gentler and more ethical”

A dominant narrative is starting to emerge around audio porn, and it isn’t one that I – a woman and producer of audio porn – am particularly comfortable with. The narrative goes a little like this:

“Video porn is demeaning to women and unethical, which is why women are flocking to audio. Audio is better for women because they don’t have to look at porn women’s bodies (which are all unrealistic and fake and make ‘real women’ feel bad) or worry that the women in the porn they enjoy are being exploited. Audio is more ethical than video porn because it isn’t misogynistic, it emphasises consent, and what’s more when you’re listening to a sexy story rather than watching actual physical sex, no dicks go inside anyone and that is OBVIOUSLY way more ethical than when a dick goes in.”

I paraphrase, but you get the idea.

I saw another article about audio porn this week that is a great example of how these assumptions take hold. The standfirst says ‘audio porn is almost certainly less exploitative’ without any real evidence for that assertion, then goes on to say…

“It certainly makes me feel better that my £4.99 a month is going into Spiegel’s pocket [Caroline Spiegel is the founder of Quinn – a large audio porn startup] rather than that of some exploitative, moustachioed porn baron in Las Vegas.”

No offence to Las Vegas, which I’m sure does have its share of moustachioed porn barons, but this is such a tired old trope and it’s broadly not true. If you don’t want to give your money to a ‘moustachioed porn baron’, there are plenty of women (and men, and non binary people) who are producing incredible ethical visual porn, and they’d certainly love to have your monthly sub money. You can pay for ethical videos just as you can pay for audio erotica, with the only slight downside being that video has more inflated payment costs because credit card companies heavily stigmatise video producers (stigma that articles such as the one above often help to perpetuate).

Why isn’t audio more ethical?

Firstly, something is not inherently more ethical just because there’s no penetrative sex in it. This attitude both stigmatises sex work and devalues the significance of remote sexual interactions (sexting or video sex, for example). I have seen a few audio porn spokespeople trying to claim that their content is more ethical than video because it doesn’t involve any ‘real’ sex. So… is the argument then that ‘real’ sex (what do we mean by ‘real’? Is sex more real if there’s penetration, or is phone sex also valid? Is masturbation valid? Who gets to decide what ‘counts’ as sex?) is naturally more unethical than, say, someone telling a story?

This is crying out for examples, so here you go:

Robin films two people having sex on camera. They send them the scene brief ahead of time, check in regarding what each performer is happy to do on camera, pay the performers well, treat them with care and consent on set, and make it extremely clear how performers can stop the action as and when they need to. When the scene is over, the filmed material is used in exactly the way the performers expected it to be, according to the agreements they made prior to shooting. Performers are listed on the site by their chosen names, written about respectfully in all on-site copy, and their invoices are paid promptly and in full.

Charlie is an audio porn producer. They tell their readers that the company is just getting off the ground, so they can’t pay them yet but their work will get in front of a huge audience. Readers can’t link to their own websites from their profile, and all work goes up under a generic byline, but readers may include their credits at the end of each piece if they wish. Charlie sends performers scripts which consist of aggressively brutal fantasies without any content warnings, and when one reader asks not to be given stories which feature a kink that is a trigger for them, or asks to include a note at the start so listeners know what they’re in for, they’re told that they either have to read it or not, but that no changes or edits will be accepted. Readers are pretty desperate to work with Charlie, who has a lot of power in the industry, and they don’t want to piss them off so they do whatever Charlie requests.

Who is the more ethical producer, Robin or Charlie?

Do you see what I mean? It’s nonsense to say that one medium is more ethical than another. The ethics of your business are not determined by whether your product gets sent by DVD or cassette tape, but by how you conduct that business and treat the people involved (your workers and your users).

What’s wrong with saying audio porn is ethical?

The problem with labelling a format ‘ethical’ in this way is that you give audio porn producers false confidence that they can do no wrong, and give consumers false security that as long as their eyes are closed, the porn they’re enjoying will definitely be consistent with their ethical principles.

One of the things I am loving about porn discourse over the last 5-10 years is that people are becoming more ethical consumers of erotic content. When I first started sex blogging, people would think nothing of using mainstream tube sites for all their wank-based needs. Nowadays, consumers are far more aware of the ethical issues that are baked into the business models of ‘free’ tube sites, and are actively looking to pay for their porn, hunting down creators who are making what they love in ways they can be confident are ethical. Whether that’s supporting individual performers on sites like OnlyFans/Chaturbate, buying scenes via a site like MakeLoveNotPorn (which has a revenue share model) or heading to a site whose ethical practices they trust (like my lovely site sponsors FrolicMe, or incredible audio site Bloom) so they can get off without guilt.

Consumers are starting to make more ethical choices, so it’s more important than ever that we don’t muddy the waters around ethics by making obviously nonsense statements like ‘audio porn is more ethical than video.’ As an audio porn producer, I obviously have a vested interest in this, so my perspective will be skewed by what I think is important. But with that caveat, here are some of the things I think it’s important to consider before declaring yourself an ‘ethical’ audio porn producer:

• Payment. Do you pay people fairly and on time? Are you transparent about rates? Do you have a gender pay gap (or racial pay gap, or other kind of pay gap) in your business?
• Credit. Do you credit people in the way they’d like to be credited? Do you ‘sell’ their story in ways that are respectful and do not dehumanise/fetishise your performers (or users)?
• Consent. Do you check in with performers about what they’re comfortable doing, and respect their boundaries? (in audio this might mean asking readers ‘are there any kinks you would prefer not to read stories about?’, or it might mean making sure your contracts are written in language that is easy to understand, with no aggressive rights-grabs for someone’s work or clauses that give them a shock later down the line). Do you ensure the consent of listeners by labelling each story well and including content notes where appropriate?
• Representation. Who is this porn for, and who is represented? I don’t think every porn company has to represent every single person on the planet, but I do think if you’re claiming that your porn is ‘for women’ then you need to examine which women you’re including and which you’re leaving out. Are you hiring trans women? Women of colour? Disabled women? If not, why not? And what can you do about it?
• Accessibility. How accessible is your porn? I don’t just mean ‘does your website/app meet accessibility standards?’ (though that’s important!), but is your porn easy for users to navigate, even if they may have problems such as arthritis or visual impairments that make it tricky for them to scroll around your site/app? If your aim is to cater to a wide range of people who have been let down by ‘mainstream’ or traditional porn then… is it financially accessible?

There are loads more things to consider: doing your best to make sure performers are comfortable when they come into the studio to record, for instance, but you get the idea. And to be crystal clear, there are definitely areas listed above on which I (an individual who is working on a really small budget) definitely fall down. I almost didn’t include the list because I cringe as I type the things on which I know I’m failing (representation and accessibility primarily, though I think there are areas in each section where I could improve). But that’s OK. Knowing where I’m failing will help me do better in future.

Being an ‘ethical’ producer is not a medal you award yourself based purely on the format in which you deliver your content, it’s an ongoing challenge that you have to keep chasing every day. Ethical porn production (in fact, ethical production of anything) is a task that you have to keep revisiting as you learn more. Am I doing this in a way that’s respectful and caring? What could I be doing better?

Are there ways in which audio porn is more ethical?

Having said all that, there are certain things which I believe are easier to do ethically in audio than in video. Not ‘easy’ but ‘easier’. It’s a really limited list, though: right now I can only think of two.

Consent

If I’m reading you a story about me getting beaten and face-fucked (yummy!) I don’t always need to consider how best to frame that story with lots of behind-the-scenes content showing my face glowing with delight even as my bum cheeks glow red, like many excellent video porn sites (eg DreamsOfSpanking) do. With erotic text and audio, especially when it’s written in first person, I can include all the relevant consent as part and parcel of my narrative. I can let you read/hear the thoughts I had as I was getting beaten (yummy!) so that there can be no doubt in your mind that I’m a big horny slag for it.

Avoiding pressure to conform to societal beauty standards

Please file this one under ‘maybe’. I am often asked if audio porn appeals more to women (IT DOESN’T, SEE ABOVE) because you can listen to an entire audio story without ever having the bodies of the people in it described to you. Thus it sidesteps the problem of women being constantly shown ‘unrealistic’ bodies and compelled to compare ourselves to them. My response to this is ‘kind of, sort of, hmmm’. Firstly, I don’t like calling video porn performers’ bodies ‘unrealistic.’ They’re real people! Their bodies are real! Bodies come in all different shapes and sizes! But sure, I take your point that mainstream porn has a ‘type’, and broadly it’s not healthy for anyone to be confronted with just one type of body, told ‘that one’s sexy and by extension yours is not’, and I can see why audio porn often neatly avoids that issue. However, again this isn’t a quality that is inherent to audio: there are numerous audio porn stories which do emphasise bodily traits (huge cock, perky tits, slim bodies, athletic/muscular builds etc) that, if presented as the ‘only’ way to be sexy, would be deeply harmful. What’s more it’s not a quality that is impossible to achieve in video: there are many video porn producers who show a gorgeous range of body types, showing off the sexiness of myriad different shapes and sizes: PinkLabel immediately springs to mind.

I’ll concede a bit on this though. It is easier to sidestep the problem of body standards in audio than in video. I’d argue this isn’t specifically a draw to women, though: men also benefit from not being constantly bullied into conforming to societal expectations of beauty! Likewise non binary people! Diverse representation and breaking out of the idea that only one type of body is ‘sexy’ helps every single one of us, regardless of our gender, body type, sexuality or preference in porn.

Money in audio porn

There’s one important thing which rarely gets discussed in these articles which talk about ethics in audio porn: money! They always mention the subscription price for the sites they’re showcasing, but rarely do they talk about funding and money overall. Forgive me for making this already-quite-complicated topic even more complicated and less easily quotable, but I’m gonna do it anyway. Let’s begin with an example.

Charlie goes to a venture capitalist and asks them for investment in a kickass new porn project. The porn is going to be ethical, and have a strong mission to challenge the problematic tropes that are apparent on mainstream tube sites. The site is going to feature videos, photos, performer interviews and other fun things, and be run on a subscription model. The target audience is men.

Sam goes to a venture capitalist and asks them for investment in a kickass new porn project. The porn is going to be ethical, and have a strong mission to challenge the problematic tropes that are apparent on the mainstream tube sites. The site is going to feature audio erotica, guided masturbation audio and other fun things, and be run on a subscription model. The target audience is women.

Which of these projects gets the money? OF COURSE IT IS THE LATTER.

The world is still deeply suspicious of porn as a genre. Although things are getting better in many ways (ethical consumers are helping to change not just the porn landscape but attitudes towards porn in general), you’re still always going to struggle with a number of different factors when you’re producing adult content. And the more your adult content looks like videos of people fucking, the harder your struggle will be.

If you can package your porn as ‘wellness’, instead of ‘adult’, or label it ‘for women’ instead of ‘for men’, it instantly becomes more marketable. More palatable. Your porn can’t possibly be misogynist or degrading if it’s by and for women, right? And it’s certainly not going to be unethical if real-life dicks never go inside fannies (or – God forbid – arseholes). Even better if you can call it ‘erotica’ or ‘erotic audio’ rather than specifically ‘porn.’

Sidenote: this general ‘ick’ for the word ‘porn’, as if somehow we’re all more moral and good if we’re just stroking our chins while we appreciate the smut rather than stroking our genitals… that’s what led to my fierce insistence that I will always call what I make ‘audio porn.’ Not ‘audio erotica’: ‘audio porn.’ It’s OK to wank to it! That’s what it’s for! Be my guest! Enjoy! Don’t be ashamed! 

If you want to make money, you have to play the game. No shade on those who do this – I understand it and I get why it works to help nudge audio porn into the mainstream. But I do think that we need to be really careful, when promoting our own work, not to do so while stamping on those who are already working in extremely difficult conditions. Video porn is more stigmatised than audio and therefore making money from it is extremely difficult – even Patreon (which is my main source of funding for the audio porn project) is out of bounds for video porn, with rules which ban “real people engaging in sexual acts such as masturbation or sexual intercourse on camera.” I’m really grateful to those large audio porn companies who have done astonishingly well at getting audio porn into the mainstream, so I don’t want to sound like I’m carping – I’ve been delighted to reap some reflected benefits of their hard work, as more people learn about audio porn, search for it, and then find my own free filth. But I wince when I see articles in which they claim audio is inherently more ethical because there’s no actual fucking. That shows an ignorance of the conditions faced by our colleagues in video, and can only serve to make their jobs harder in future. Ironically meaning that the indie creators who are usually working hardest to uphold ethical standards end up marginalised, sidelined and eventually forced to shut up shop.

Why does this matter?

All this is why I’m sometimes a bit annoying (always friendly though! Please do get in touch, journalists!) when journalists interview me to ask me what makes audio porn more ethical than video, or why it appeals more to women than men. Usually when I tell them my answers (it isn’t more ethical, and most of my listeners are men), those get left out of the final piece because they don’t fit with the narrative. No hard feelings, I understand that editors often commission for a specific angle, and the chances are you’re never going to be able to get as much nuance in a short article as I can get here where I’m allowed to waffle on in extraordinary detail.

It matters to me, though. And I imagine it matters to our colleagues who are making amazing ethical video. Audio porn absolutely can and should be made ethically, but the ethical credentials of a particular porn site/app/studio have far less to do with the medium than with the business model itself. Audio is just the delivery mechanism, like MP3 or cassette or CD or vinyl. None of those are more ‘ethical’ than the others, or more likely to appeal to one gender over another. Falsely linking ethics to the delivery mechanism pulls focus from the things that actually shape a company’s ethics: the business model; the practices; transparency and accountability and all that more boring (but far more important) stuff.

So the next time you see a headline telling you that audio porn is more ethical than video, I urge you to remember that it’s not: if we assume it is, then there’s no incentive for companies to actually think carefully about their model and make sure they’re producing audio that you can be proud to pay for. Likewise when you see an article telling you that audio porn (or audio erotica) is more popular with women than men. It isn’t.

‘Ethics’ in porn isn’t just a shorthand for ‘no one’s getting dicked’ – it’s about the approach you take to the work as a whole, and whether you’ve factored in the things mentioned above (paying creators, treating them fairly, crediting/promoting their work respectfully, etc). But that’s a shit answer to give journalists who want snappy quotes to fit a specific narrative. It’s annoying to me, but also fascinating, to see in real time how incorrect cultural scripts surrounding porn are written and then reinforced. This narrative is taking hold at least in part because it’s simpler and more soundbite-y than the boring, complicated truth: being ‘ethical’ isn’t a medal you award yourself, it’s an ongoing challenge for your business.

Obligatory sales pitch! Support me on Patreon if you like audio porn. An annual subscription comes in at just over £20/$20 per year at the lowest tier (and the lowest tier is all you need to get ad-free audio, and early access to new audio in your podcast feed). All my work eventually goes up here on the site for free (because the primary aim of it is to help make existing erotica/sex blogs more accessible to people using screenreaders). I pay my creators, site costs and myself with the money that you chip in via Patreon (plus extra money that I make through ads, affiliate sales and commissioned work), and when I make more money I raise my rates/commission more awesome smut.

No pressure to join though: financial accessibility genuinely does matter to me, and I believe that this ad-combined-with-Patreon model can work even if not everyone pays. If those who can afford to chuck in £20/$20 per year do so then I (and the awesome team of writers/readers who contribute to the project) can keep churning out plenty of smut which will bring joy to everyone, including those who can’t spare the cash. If you just want to listen without contributing, that is very welcome too: click through to listen to some of the free audio erotica, and share your favourites if you want to help us out.