In their new book, Sex Sounds: Vectors of Difference in Electronic Music (MIT, 2022), music theorist, media scholar, and performer Daniele Shlomit Sofer asks what makes sound sexual? What does sex sound like? Is it a moan and a cracking whip? Heels clicking on a floor? Are sex sounds arousing? Are sounds enough to get off? Their book covers a wide range of electronic music, from the musique concrète of Pierre Schaeffer to the tension between sexual aesthetics and personal ethics in samples of Donna Summer’s “Love to love you baby” to Annie Sprinkle’s instructional video Sluts & Goddesses--all in an effort figure out where these musical obsessions about sex sounds come from.

Check out Daniele Schlomit Sofer's Sex Sounds from MIT Press. 

Episode produced by Lane Timothy Speidel: ihopeilikethis.com

Original music by David Chavannes: www.dchavannes.com

For more information about the Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies visit www.gsws.sas.upenn.edu

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