Carol Queen Aims to Inspire

Queen did not pursue sexology as an academic specialty until she was in her late 20s, during the AIDS epidemic. It was the mid-1980s, and as a graduate student she started getting involved with a local HIV advocacy and education program.

"All of the sudden a sexual focus was not dilettantish," she wrote, "it was life or death, and actually dovetailed better with my interest in sociology." She soon moved to San Francisco for the sexology program at the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality.

"All of it, not just the academic work, influenced the kind of sexologist I became: what I call a 'cultural sexologist' to differentiate myself and my sociology-inflected focus. The entire city was my classroom."

The city ended up serving as a classroom for Queen both as a student and as a teacher. As the Staff Sexologist at Good Vibrations, San Francisco's largest and longest-running sex toy retailer "from a woman's perspective," Queen runs the education program and has trained other sex educators, including Violet Blue, Charlie Glickman and Staci Haines.

Queen's involvement in Good Vibrations led her to start San Francisco's Center for Sex & Culture with her partner, Dr. Robert Morgan Lawrence. Though the workshops and classes at the Center are similar to those she runs at Good Vibrations, they also offer academic lectures and couple-based "live action" workshops.

"Robert and I started the Center partly because of these limitations at Good Vibrations and most other places," she explained. "We wanted someplace where all modes of sex education would be respected and have their place."

If there is one thing her experience as an educator and writer has taught her, it's that people learn in different ways. "Some learn better via listening, and some live — and some through reading or videos, which is why we also have a sex library on the premises." The Center also archives material, supports sex research and incorporates cultural programming and the arts.

Part of Queen's objective as a sex educator and writer is to "empower and inspire others to discover their own unique sexual profile." She defines "sexual profile" as the acknowledgement that we are all unique erotic individuals.

"We're not all alike," she wrote. "Not even two people of roughly the same age, gender, gender expression, and sexual orientation. It's one of the biggest crimes in our culture that it has historically tried to make people believe we should be alike, which robs us of a crucial part of our individualism, and all too often instills and reinforces shame."

Queen believes that lesbian and bisexual women are open to this kind of discovery, but still have certain obstacles to overcome. The first is that even now, mainstream culture is uncomfortable with women's sexuality and allowing women to explore it. The second is that many lesbian and bisexual women expect their lovers to have the same needs and standards.

"Feminism's ideas about women-in-the-collective are no help when our girlfriend wants something different than what we want," she explained. And this brings Queen back to the notion of erotic individuality, which "we should be learning all along."

Nonetheless, Queen credits the sex-positive feminist movement and cultural work during the '80s and '90s for making lesbian and bisexual women today more comfortable with their sexuality.

The media, however, still has some work to do in how it presents and represents lesbian sexuality: "The media shies away from our real diversity, especially when they can't portray us in any way 'conventionally' sexually attractive. When it comes to butches that men wouldn't f---? You can pretty much forget looking for them on-screen, even when we're dying for those really authentic images."

In all of Queen's books, she draws from both her academic background and, as she puts it, her "'street' cred." She uses this multilayered background to help people to look at sexuality through a lens that goes beyond the mainstream culture.

"My writing is distinct particularly because it traces my own perspective and experience," she noted, "which is individual. In addition, my life-experience has been pretty broad so I can address many aspects of sex with some ability."

Queen also performs her erotic writing at different venues and spoken word events all over the country, including Sister Spit group readings and solo shows. One of the many reasons she appreciates sharing her work on a stage is the immediacy and intimacy of the audience's reaction.

"Performance involves investing the emotion into the story through the medium of my own person: words, body, everything. It's very moving and really a high, at least when the audience likes what they're getting."

In all of her work, Queen aims to be more thought provoking and accessible than provocative. Her goals as a sex educator are similar to her goals as a writer: "that I successfully depict and articulate diverse sexual points of view, behaviors, identities, communities."

Queen became involved with the recently published Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction, while working with editor Sabrina Chapadjiev on another project. Queen immediately saw that Chapadjiev had a good idea.

"Too many girls feel like freaks who will never be able to live well," she wrote, "when sometimes that very freakiness is exactly what will get them out of the house, out of their town, out of their rut — if they'll only embrace it."

Queen actually thought of Madonna's song "Live to Tell" while working on the collection. Secrets can be a source of power, she argued, and we need to respect our individual stories.

"If any crazy, sad, freaked-out girl doubts that, they should go read Bastard Out of Carolina and Live Through This — then go get a journal. Write it all down. I just hope this books gets into all those hands."

For more on Carol Queen, visit her official website.