Exploring the Sex-Positive Spectrum With Dr. Carol Queen

LAS VEGAS, Nev.—While thousands of adult fans were whooping it up on Thursday night, January 23, at the Adult Entertainment Expo, a small group headed over to the Erotic Heritage Museum that evening to hear a talk by sexologist and former sex worker Dr. Carol Queen, who despite losing the space which housed the Center for Sex and Culture, which she ran in San Francisco, is as active in the sex-positive movement as ever. Indeed, Dr. Queen was bubbling with enthusiasm as she took the floor in the museum's Paris Theater, facing an audience of about 40 for a talk tentatively titled "Asking and Answering on the Sex-Positive Spectrum," which she described briefly as "communicating about sex." Dr. Queen began by ticking off her various roles and duties: author and lecturer; staff sexologist at San Francisco Good Vibrations store (which she described as the "second woman-founded sex store in the United States"); curator of the store's antique vibrator museum (more on that later); and co-founder and executive director of the Center for Sex and Culture, whose main presence is now on the internet. Referring to her announced topic, Dr. Queen stated, "I developed this set of remarks for a wonderful little sex-con," which she described as the type of smaller convention "that sort of develop out of community," and featuring "activists, academics, [and] sex-positive folks in general" and noted that the evening's talk was first given at a Canadian sex-con called Converge. Dr. Queen talked about getting her start in sex education through one of the Bay Area's sex info hotlines, "where you would call them up on the phone and ask your question of a stranger. We would get calls from all over the country because there was no other place to ask your damn questions," though she noted that with the internet, there are now innumerable places to find answers to sexual questions. She also noted that her "greatest honor ever-ever" was being invited to debate promiscuity at the UK's Oxford Union, "the fancy-ass school there ... where I was arguing on behalf of promiscuity. We didn't win the debate because the religious organization on campus stacked the deck." She then went into what she described as her "working beliefs," which include "each of us has a right to our desires, and these may differ between us or ourselves over time; each of us has a right to our boundaries; each of us has a right and a responsibility to determine who we are as sexual individuals; each of us has a responsibility to think about how and with whom we are likely to get our needs met; none of us has a right to act non-consensually; and each of us has a responsibility to get consent; each of us has a responsibility to be clear about what we do and do not want to do; if we don't know, it's our right and responsibility to learn more about our sexual options or other kinds of knowledge gathering; we have a right to any sexual information that helps us do this." Dr. Queen then gave a short history of sexual repression during her lifetime, which could easily have been news to some of the younger attendees. She talked about X-rated theaters, arcades and bookstores being busted, and how information on homosexuality, BDSM and other types of sexual acts was suppressed "in my lifetime." She lauded the #MeToo movement because it "helped us look in a different way," and the Unitarian religion as providing "the best systematized program of sex education in the United States." "I think we're trying to turn a corner as a culture to have a chance for everyone to be able to have both boundaries and desires," she stated, "and figure out how we're going to communicate about that so that we can find the people who want to have fun in the same ways we want to have fun, and get with it—or prevent ourselves from having problematic experiences around sexuality that makes it harder to embrace sexuality." She described her audience as explorers: “You've got some degree, possibly a substantial degree, of comfort about being curious about sexuality. You're here, so you're on some kind of quest." "I've been saying for years that one of the things that might be able to unite us is that, I don't think anybody wants to have a bad sex life," she continued. "I think everybody would ideally like to have a comfortable, pleasurable, pleasant (at least) sex life. ... That being the case, I hope that it's worth thinking together with other people who didn't make it into this room. The holidays are over for a while, but work up to next Thanksgiving, what you're going to talk about that's sex-positive at the Thanksgiving dinner table." (Gotta be better than politics, eh?) Dr. Queen lamented the fact that the further back in history one goes, the less information there is about that era on the internet, though big events and personalities obviously get more coverage than smaller ones—and one of those lacks is information about sexually liberated communities throughout history. "The most common question I get is some variant on, 'Am I normal?'" she added, "and you would think we could go on the internet and see all the porn and all of the sites and all of the everything and people could figure that out, but we have the opposite problem today than we had when I was growing up, which was, in those days, I didn't know who else was out there who was interested in all the things that I was interested in. I stumbled along, trying everything, which is educational ... and now, there is so much information, it's a little hard to put it into context." The (possible) solution? More human-to-human contact—but she cautioned that "sex positivity" doesn't mean, "If you don't want to do what I want sexually, you're not sex-positive." She then went on to discuss the possible problems two (or more) people can have when attempting to hook up: "Power differential, pressure, quid pro quo"—that last, she noted, being an international problem, not just a sexual one—"deciding who'll make the first move; class; income"—the list, while not endless, is fairly long. She also noted that it's a bad idea to get "sex ed" from porn (except for the few that are made with that specific aim). "Porn as sex ed, I like to say, is like car chase movies as driver ed," she noted. "They're there to excite you and get you going, but if you try to drive like that, you might screw up your car or hurt yourself, so please don't hurt yourself." She later warned against any sex that includes hanging from a chandelier. Dr. Queen then discussed the various spectra of sexuality, including the idea that as one gets older, one's sexual tastes may change, and that it's important to discuss such changes with one's partner. She also noted that just because two people are attracted to each other, and have established that they both like kink, "there are zillions of things you could be into in kink and not everyone is into the same things." She suggested making a list with "yes," "no" and "maybe" at the top, and then list the sex acts one likes, doesn't like, or might be interested in trying. She spent most of the rest of the talk elaborating on the intricacies of working out a sexual relationship. "Just start figuring out what works with the person that you're with, and figure out what you want to do," she advised. "I think the question of 'normal' is not the right question to ask. I think the question is, can I figure out how to do it safely? Can I find somebody who wants to do that thing with me too? Can I figure out a way to determine what the things are that I really like and that make me happy? Those are the things I would like to hear people ask instead of, 'Am I normal?'" Those aren't easy questions, and Dr. Queen discussed how to approach them so as to hopefully create a satisfying relationship. "When you can speak your sexual truth, it means that you're in touch with yourself, your mind, your body—at least you're getting there; at least you're thinking that it's something you're entitled to be and do, and that's another step toward enthusiastic consent as opposed to 'Meh, eh, I guess.'" It's a message that at least some in the audience needed to hear, and who better to hear it from than someone who's spent more than 20 years counseling people with just those sorts of problems? "Remember, I said I was a sex worker, and one of the things a sex worker gets to do is hear from people who aren't really sure they can ask anybody except a pro, and  nobody starts out a pro, but that's what makes you one, I think. And I want to honor that there are people who make space for other people who don't think they can find consenting partners ... and that's one of the things sex workers do in this culture. "But if you can believe that you deserve positive and pleasurable sexuality, and if you develop a comfort level around communicating, you are so much more likely to get what you want." Well said! But that's hardly all the good doctor has been involved with. The website Atlas Obscura, which searches out interesting and unusual people, places and things it feels might pique its readers' attention, posted a YouTube video of Dr. Queen giving a tour of the Antique Vibrator Museum, which is housed at San Francisco's Good Vibrations store. In the video, she discusses how vibrators were first used in the late 19th century to "cure hysteria," and how after enough people had gotten better through this sort of treatment, "the healing power of vibration" became more accepted in "polite society," leading to the sexual revolution of the 1960s that placed vibrators in many, many homes around the world. But what's most beautiful about this video is just the incredible variety of vibrators, both hand-cranked and electric, that are on display—even one that attaches to a vacuum cleaner—and Dr. Queen talks in depth about how many of them work(ed). That video can be viewed here.