CAROL QUEEN, PhD, is an author and activist whose work as a sex-positive feminist began in the 1970s and continues to this day. She was an early organizer for LGBT equality, an AIDS activist in the ’80s, and a sexologist who has lectured and written on all aspects of human sexuality. She has served as staff sexologist for Good Vibrations, a sex shop in San Francisco, since 1990; is the founding director of the Center for Sex & Culture; and has helped create adult movies, events, and workshops.
Queen’s books range from sex tutorials (such as Exhibitionism for the Shy: Show Off, Dress Up and Talk Hot) to the erotic novel The Leather Daddy and the Femme. She is perhaps best known for her personal essays (many collected in Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture). A contributor to over seventy anthologies, Queen popularized the term “pomosexual” to refer to postmodern sexualities that avoid a fixed sexual or gender “identity.” She’s also credited with coining the term “absexual” to refer to moralistic types who oppose sexual freedom but find an erotic charge in the “immoral” behaviors or depictions that they abjure.
I spoke with Queen by telephone in early July. — DEH
Diane Hamer is a writer and activist based in the Boston area.
