Carol Queen
Encyclopedia
Carol Queen is an American author, editor, sociologist and sexologist active in the sex-positive feminism
movement. Queen has written on human sexuality
in books such as Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture. She has written a sex tutorial, Exhibitionism for the Shy: Show Off, Dress Up and Talk Hot, as well as erotica
, such as the novel The Leather Daddy and the Femme. Queen has produced adult movies, events, workshops and lectures. Queen was featured as an instructor and star in both installments of the Bend Over Boyfriend
series about female-to-male anal sex
, or pegging
. She has also served as editor for compilations and anthologies. She is a sex-positive sex educator in the United States.
, where she was studying Sociology. When University leadership demanded the names of all GAYouth members, the organization was soon dismantled so as to not compromise the privacy of its members.
Queen moved to San Francisco in the late 1980s to obtain a PhD in sexology degree at the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality
. Queen claims she kept dropping out (of school) to go learn on the street. Part of her immersion in the local San Francisco sex culture involved getting a job as a stripper at the strip-club The Lusty Lady, working as a prostitute, attending local sex parties such as the Jack and Jill Parties (which Queen later went on to host herself), initiating her own "Queen of Heaven" Paganism-inspired string of safer-sex parties, writing essays and poetry about sex for magazines, and became a safer sex advocate in 1986 in Eugene Oregon at the Willamette AIDs Council in response to the AIDS crisis.
Queen, together with her partner Robert Morgan Lawrence are the co-founders of the 501(c)3 education San Francisco based non-profit Center for Sex and Culture. The mission of the CSC is to "provide non-judgmental, sex-positive sexuality education and support to diverse populations by means of classes, workshops, social gatherings, and hands-on, practical skills-building events". The CSC was formed as a nascent non-profit in 1994 on the suggestion of Dr. Betty Dodson. It was formed in order to establish a name as a large non-profit research library and archive the collection of sexually-related materials Queen had assembled up to that time, and in order to provide a place for sex educators to work. To this day, the CSC still receives and accepts donations of archival material.
Queen identifies as a bisexual.
(Phi Beta Kappa) in 1985. She has a PhD from a school which was at the time of her graduation was accredited by the State of Clalifornia called Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality
in 1998.
, the San Francisco sex toy
retailer. In this function, she designed an education program which has trained many other current and past Good Vibrations-based sex educators, including Violet Blue
, Charlie Glickman and Staci Haines. She is currently still working for GV as The Staff Sexologist and Chief Cultural Officer.
labels.
Based on its prefix ab- (as in "abhor" or in "abreaction
"), it represents a form of sexuality
where someone is stimulated by moving away from sexuality or is moralistically opposed to sex.
Betty Dodson
defined the term as describing "folks who get off complaining about sex and trying to censor porn."
absexuality is not an "official" psychiatric
term; though note the mention of absexuality in a psychiatric manual in 1988, a decade before Carol Queen popularized the concept in feminist circles.
Queen has proposed inclusion of the concept in the American Psychiatric Association
's forthcoming DSM-5
(scheduled for publication in 2013).
Darrell Hamamoto
sees Queen's view of absexuality as playfully broad: "the current 'absexuality' embraced by many progressive and conservative critics of pornographic literature is itself a kind of 'kink' stemming from a compulsive need to impose their own sexual mores upon those whom they self-righteously condemn as benighted reprobates."
training, which they termed Sexual Health Attitude Restructuring Process or SHARP. Originally a program started by the IASHS, SHARP is described as a combination of "lectures, films, videos, slides, and personal sharing", as well as "massage techniques, condom relay races, a blindfolded ritual known as the Sensorium which emphasized transformation and sensate focus, and much more." In 2007, Queen expressed the intention to revive the SHARP training, now referred to as SARP or Sexual Attitude Reassessment Process.'
Sex-positive feminism
Sex-positive feminism, also known as pro-sex feminism, sex-radical feminism, or sexually liberal feminism is a movement that began in the early 1980s...
movement. Queen has written on human sexuality
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
in books such as Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture. She has written a sex tutorial, Exhibitionism for the Shy: Show Off, Dress Up and Talk Hot, as well as erotica
Erotica
Erotica are works of art, including literature, photography, film, sculpture and painting, that deal substantively with erotically stimulating or sexually arousing descriptions...
, such as the novel The Leather Daddy and the Femme. Queen has produced adult movies, events, workshops and lectures. Queen was featured as an instructor and star in both installments of the Bend Over Boyfriend
Bend Over Boyfriend
B-O-B is a "wildly successful" series of sex education videos covering the practice of a woman penetrating a man's anus with a strap-on dildo . The first of the two videos, which was released in 1998, became the best selling video to date for Good Vibrations, a sex-toy business. The video was also...
series about female-to-male anal sex
Anal sex
Anal sex is the sex act in which the penis is inserted into the anus of a sexual partner. The term can also include other sexual acts involving the anus, including pegging, anilingus , fingering, and object insertion.Common misconception describes anal sex as practiced almost exclusively by gay men...
, or pegging
Pegging (sexual practice)
Pegging is a sexual practice in which a woman penetrates a man's anus with a strap-on dildo. The neologism "pegging" was popularized when it became the winning entry in a contest in Dan Savage's Savage Love sex advice column, held after an observation was made that there was no common name for the...
. She has also served as editor for compilations and anthologies. She is a sex-positive sex educator in the United States.
Biography
In 1975, Queen helped to found GAYouth, one of the first United States youth organizations for gays and lesbians, in Eugene, OregonEugene, Oregon
Eugene is the second largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon and the seat of Lane County. It is located at the south end of the Willamette Valley, at the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast.As of the 2010 U.S...
, where she was studying Sociology. When University leadership demanded the names of all GAYouth members, the organization was soon dismantled so as to not compromise the privacy of its members.
Queen moved to San Francisco in the late 1980s to obtain a PhD in sexology degree at the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality
Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality
The Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality is a non-accredited degree-granting institution and resource center in the field of sexology located in San Francisco, California. Degree and certificate programs focus on public health, sex therapy, and sexological research...
. Queen claims she kept dropping out (of school) to go learn on the street. Part of her immersion in the local San Francisco sex culture involved getting a job as a stripper at the strip-club The Lusty Lady, working as a prostitute, attending local sex parties such as the Jack and Jill Parties (which Queen later went on to host herself), initiating her own "Queen of Heaven" Paganism-inspired string of safer-sex parties, writing essays and poetry about sex for magazines, and became a safer sex advocate in 1986 in Eugene Oregon at the Willamette AIDs Council in response to the AIDS crisis.
Queen, together with her partner Robert Morgan Lawrence are the co-founders of the 501(c)3 education San Francisco based non-profit Center for Sex and Culture. The mission of the CSC is to "provide non-judgmental, sex-positive sexuality education and support to diverse populations by means of classes, workshops, social gatherings, and hands-on, practical skills-building events". The CSC was formed as a nascent non-profit in 1994 on the suggestion of Dr. Betty Dodson. It was formed in order to establish a name as a large non-profit research library and archive the collection of sexually-related materials Queen had assembled up to that time, and in order to provide a place for sex educators to work. To this day, the CSC still receives and accepts donations of archival material.
Queen identifies as a bisexual.
Education
Queen began her higher education in 1974 at the age of 16 at the University of Oregon Honors College. She graduated Cum Laude from the Sociology department of University of OregonUniversity of Oregon
-Colleges and schools:The University of Oregon is organized into eight schools and colleges—six professional schools and colleges, an Arts and Sciences College and an Honors College.- School of Architecture and Allied Arts :...
(Phi Beta Kappa) in 1985. She has a PhD from a school which was at the time of her graduation was accredited by the State of Clalifornia called Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality
Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality
The Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality is a non-accredited degree-granting institution and resource center in the field of sexology located in San Francisco, California. Degree and certificate programs focus on public health, sex therapy, and sexological research...
in 1998.
Work at Good Vibrations
Queen serves as staff sexologist to Good VibrationsGood Vibrations (business)
Good Vibrations is a sex toy business based in San Francisco. It operates five retail stores ; a mail-order business; an e-commerce website; a wholesale arm; and an erotic-video production company, . Formerly, it also operated three publishing companies: Down There Press, Passion Press and...
, the San Francisco sex toy
Sex toy
A sex toy is an object or device that is primarily used to facilitate human sexual pleasure. The most popular sex toys are designed to resemble human genitals and may be vibrating or non-vibrating...
retailer. In this function, she designed an education program which has trained many other current and past Good Vibrations-based sex educators, including Violet Blue
Violet Blue (author)
Violet Blue is an American writer and sex educator.Blue wrote a weekly sex column for the San Francisco Chronicle. In her podcast, Open Source Sex, she reads erotica and discusses topics such as fetishes and oral sex. She also has a video blog. Blue wrote a feature about porn for women which was...
, Charlie Glickman and Staci Haines. She is currently still working for GV as The Staff Sexologist and Chief Cultural Officer.
Writing
Queen is known as a professional editor, writer and commentator of works such as Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture, Pomosexuals, and Exhibitionism for the Shy. She has written for juried journals and compendiums such as The Journal of Bisexuality and The International Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality. She is currently in over 70 anthologies. (See discussion for list of removed titles.)Pomosexual
Queen has popularized the term "pomosexual" to refer to the post-modern sexual to describe a person who avoids sexual orientationSexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
labels.
Absexual
The neologism absexual has also been introduced by Queen, although it was coined by her partner.Based on its prefix ab- (as in "abhor" or in "abreaction
Abreaction
Abreaction is a psychoanalytical term for reliving an experience in order to purge it of its emotional excesses; a type of catharsis. Sometimes it is a method of becoming conscious of repressed traumatic events....
"), it represents a form of sexuality
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
where someone is stimulated by moving away from sexuality or is moralistically opposed to sex.
Betty Dodson
Betty Dodson
Betty Dodson is an American sex educator, author, and artist. Dodson held the first one-woman show of erotic art at the Wickersham Gallery in New York City in 1968. She left the art world to teach sex to women...
defined the term as describing "folks who get off complaining about sex and trying to censor porn."
absexuality is not an "official" psychiatric
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
term; though note the mention of absexuality in a psychiatric manual in 1988, a decade before Carol Queen popularized the concept in feminist circles.
Queen has proposed inclusion of the concept in the American Psychiatric Association
American Psychiatric Association
The American Psychiatric Association is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the most influential worldwide. Its some 38,000 members are mainly American but some are international...
's forthcoming DSM-5
DSM-5
The next edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , commonly called DSM-5 , is currently in consultation, planning and preparation...
(scheduled for publication in 2013).
Darrell Hamamoto
Darrell Hamamoto
Darrell Hamamoto is a Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis who is best known for his views on the desexualization of Asian American males in the media.- Education :Dr...
sees Queen's view of absexuality as playfully broad: "the current 'absexuality' embraced by many progressive and conservative critics of pornographic literature is itself a kind of 'kink' stemming from a compulsive need to impose their own sexual mores upon those whom they self-righteously condemn as benighted reprobates."
Development of Sexual Health Attitude Restructuring Process (SHARP)
In 2000, Queen together with her partner Robert Morgan Lawrence published a jointly written essay in the Journal of Bisexuality detailing the role of San Francisco bisexuals in the development of safe sex strategies in response to the emerging AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Queen detailed her and Lawrence's development of a safe sex version of the SAR or Sexual Attitude ReassessmentSexual Attitude Reassessment
A Sexual Attitude Reassessment, sometimes Sexual Attitude Restructuring, seminar is a process-oriented, structured group experience to promote participants' awareness of their attitudes and values related to sexuality, and to assist them in understanding how these attitudes and values affect them...
training, which they termed Sexual Health Attitude Restructuring Process or SHARP. Originally a program started by the IASHS, SHARP is described as a combination of "lectures, films, videos, slides, and personal sharing", as well as "massage techniques, condom relay races, a blindfolded ritual known as the Sensorium which emphasized transformation and sensate focus, and much more." In 2007, Queen expressed the intention to revive the SHARP training, now referred to as SARP or Sexual Attitude Reassessment Process.'
External links
- Official website
- Chronicles Of Sex-Positive Culture blog
- The Center for Sex and Culture
- Fatale Media producer of the Bend Over Boyfriend video series.
- Woodhull Foundation