She’s the 53-year-old walking through Hollywood wearing a commandeered “Ex-Masturbator” t-shirt to get a rise out of the locals. She’s the sex-ed pioneer who drove cross-country, leaving a trail of gay bookstores and women-owned/worker-operated sex shops across small town America. She’s the nighttime switchboard operator at San Francisco Sex Information. She’s the peep show booth worker at SF’s Lusty Lady.
She’s a Ph.D.
She’s also the co-founder and Executive Director of San Francisco’s Center for Sex and Culture—the only non-profit, publicly available space and library dedicated to providing judgment-free education and events addressing the full spectrum of human sexuality.
“If I really had to boil down all of my work, I would want people to get this notion of diversity [within sexual orientation],” says Dr. Carol Queen, engaging intently through her black, Waldo-esque glasses and short-cropped silver hair.
“There’s 6 billion people on the planet. There are 6 billion sexual orientations,” chimes in Dr. Robert Lawrence, fellow Ph.D. and co-founder. Queen looks over affectionately and nods in agreement.
Queen is a cultural sexologist, which she defines as the fusion of sociology and sexology, the study of sexual identities and communities.
In addition to her academic background, her unique insight into sexuality and identity comes from her own life-long, fluid and evolving sexual profile—one that’s been at odds with society’s dominant conceptions of sexual orientation at every turn.
Spawning from this experience, Queen’s work to educate—from her youth to the present—has been a resistance to these social forces by attempting to create a space for herself and others to explore and carve out their own unique sexualities.
Born in Eugene, Oregon, Queen grew up between the two “tiny little communities” of Cheshire and Triangle Lake—unincorporated and primarily loggers and ranchers. “Not even towns,” she adds.
She had a high school graduating class of 75. The entire community was insular.
“My parents were the only ones that subscribed to magazines from out in the world,” she says.
“All I knew was that there’s a world out there and I wanna know what’s going on in it,” she says. “I felt like I was from Mars. The weird kid.”
Finding it difficult to relate to her peers, Queen early on was “oriented towards adults and adulthood” where sex is “the big line between childhood and adulthood,” she says.
By 15 she was already analyzing sexuality.
“First, my parents were obviously, and understandably, having problems around sexuality,” she says.
Queen would later learn that her mother was abused as a young girl and was never comfortable communicating.
Secondly, Queen was—as she self-describes—“a little adventurous”. She was having an affair with one of her teachers.
“I was openly interested in sexuality more than a young woman is supposed to be,” she says. “I became conscious of issues of sex and culture since I needed to be conscious and cautious.”
Also at 15, while studying abroad in Germany, Queen found herself having crushes on girls for the first time.
“I knew I was probably bi[sexual], whatever that meant,” she says.
Queen graduated high school early and went on to the University of Oregon at 16. She sought LGBT support but was surprised to find it lacking.
“I was too young to get support,” she says. “The main space for living gay lives at that time was the gay bar.” 21+ year olds were wary of Queen and none of them “were comfortable at that time with the notion of bisexuality,” she says.
Consequently, Queen found herself being pushed to identify as a lesbian for more than 10 years even though she was “still sneaking around with boys,” she admits.
It wasn’t until the 80s when HIV erupted into the American social consciousness that Queen admitted her bisexuality.
“I lived my bisexuality through lots of crushes and friendships with gay men, but really I was bi,” she says. Suddenly the men closest to her were at risk.
Once she came out, many of her friends conceded that they too were bisexual.
“I thought to myself, ‘where the fuck were you people when I needed friends?’” she says with a laugh.
It felt like “my 2nd, 3rd, 4th coming out,” but “I felt like I actually had a role to play around HIV education,” she says. So she moved to San Francisco though she confesses she also “had a girlfriend [she] was chasing.”
From there she received her doctorate from the Institute of Advanced Study of Human Sexuality and did a “lot of lab work,” she says with a wink. “I had a space to explore what I was interested in.”
It’s that freedom and culture that she promotes in her writing and through her work at the Center.
Queen has edited and penned many titles, ranging from various erotica to “Everything You Know about Sex is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to the Extremes of Human Sexuality (and everything in between)”.
Now as a middle aged woman experiencing menopause, Queen experiences changing sexual energy and priorities. She affirms that she is bisexual but with a life partner that has been disabled for ten years, she doesn’t prioritize experimentation as much.
“When you reach mid-lifespan with it, you realize [sexuality’s] not a destination, it’s a journey,” she says.
Some question the validity of her work.
“I’m too busy to dwell on it,” Queen says.
But with the Center having regular workshops, a library of over 15,000 (logged) volumes and a global mailing list of over 7,000, Queen says with a smile, “it’s obvious to me that what I’m doing is valuable enough to some people to keep on doing it.”
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