Meet Carol Queen

I am a writer, speaker, educator and activist with a doctorate in sexology. First as an organizer in the lesbian/gay community, where I helped found one of the first gay youth groups in the United States, and later in the emerging international bisexual community, as a sex worker and a practitioner of alternative sexualities, I typically teach and write from my own experience and that of my communities even as I reference academic thought on these subjects.

I write explicit fiction and memoir, essays, commentary, analysis, book and film/video reviews, reportage, and interviews. My work has been published in many periodicals and has been widely anthologized, and I have several books in print. I publish a sex and relationship advice column which is available here and at the Good Vibrations Magazine. I have published opinion columns in SF Gate’s City Brights, Dig Boston, Spectator Magazine, and in 1999 had a monthly column at Playboy Online. I am available for public readings and, as available, for freelance assignments.

I am a Staff Sexologist and Good Vibrations Historian at Good Vibrations, the women-owned, worker-owned sex toy and book emporium, where I direct Continuing Education for the staff. I also curate the company’s Antique Vibrator Museum.

My own educational events are organized through Carol Queen Workshops and the Center for Sex and Culture, a non-profit sexuality education center which my partner Dr. Robert Lawrence and I founded. We also teach frequently at Good Vibrations and its sister stores around the US and Canada, as well as at sexuality conferences of various kinds.

In 1975 I helped found GAYouth (one of the first groups for underage Gays and Lesbians in the nation) in Eugene, Oregon. I served as director of the Gay and Lesbian student union at my university later in that decade and was on the steering committee of Eugene Citizens for Human Rights, founded to preserve gay rights which were under attack from right-wing forces. In 1988 I was director of education at the community-based AIDS education and support project in Eugene. My training (after graduating with a major in sociology, a Phi Beta Kappa, and a stint in graduate school) comes from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, San Francisco’s graduate school of sexology - and, of course, from the school of life.

I have addressed topics as diverse as lesbian and gay identity, gay rights, sadomasochism, group sex, bisexuality, prostitution, pornography, sex work, sex toys, alternative relationship structures, erotic writing, and safe sex. I am always willing to develop new workshops or speaking topics. 

My erotic writing has been performed in many venues, from San Francisco spoken word events like Wordfuck, Perverts Put Out, and Sister Spit group readings to solo shows in alternative theatrical venues (I did such a reading at Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in 1997). 

I also do a workshop performance of my solo spoken word piece, Peep Show – a visit behind the scenes at San Francisco’s Lusty Lady Theatre, where I worked the peep booths in 1990. I’ve done this performance at Beyond the Edge Cafe in Seattle, Playwright’s Theatre in Minneapolis, at the Coolidge Theatre in Boston, and at Buddies in Toronto; excerpts from it have been featured at the International Pornography Conference, the International Conference on Prostitution, Whore Church, Kat Sunlove’s Fabulous at Fifty, and many other venues. 

My focus, whether writing, speaking, consulting, or providing erotic entertainment, is to empower and inspire others to discover their own unique sexual profile - we have to remove the stigma from sex before we can make it fabulous. I have had to struggle to find the place and permission to express my own sexuality, and I am committed to facilitating others as they do the same. Until we honor the full spectrum of consensual erotic desire, none of us will be truly free to pursue our own.