Sex With Emily: Carol Queen Opens Up

By Emily Morse, AlterNet. Posted March 18, 2006.

I'm the host of Sex With Emily, a San Francisco-based weekly podcast and radio show. We focus on sex, relationships and everything in between. Our mission is changing the world, one orgasm at a time.

In Episode 12 of Sex With Emily, I talked to Dr. Carol Queen about bisexuality, threesomes, vibrators and masturbation -- basically knowing how to float your own boat.

Carol Queen is a self-described "sexological overachiever," and has a hand in everything (pun intended) from making educational sex-ed videos to co-owning the beloved Bay Area sex shop Good Vibrations to her latest effort as co-founder of the Center for Sex and Culture.

When I was a teenager, my mother always told me to feel comfortable talking to her about sex, but I never actually took her up on that. Her interest in my burgeoning sex life translated as "Have you had intercourse?" "Are you using protection?" and, of course, "Is he Jewish?"

At the time, I remember thinking there wasn't much to discuss. Finding a partner wasn't difficult; everyone my age was doing, talking and thinking sex. I suppose I was fairly typical of my friends: I lost my virginity at 17 and was in as much love (or, more likely, lust) as humanly possible after 11 frustrating months of groping in the back seat of my boyfriend's car. He was a nice guy, but our sex wasn't anything more than you'd expect at that age, from that kind of relationship. And nope, he wasn't Jewish (sorry, Mom).

I'm sure my well-intentioned mother just wanted to know that I was safe, but I doubt she'd really want to know if I was satisfied. Truth be told, I didn't even know what that meant -- and we certainly weren't discussing vibrators and g-spots over our carpools to Hebrew school.

It wasn't until years of trial, and several errors, that I realized what a truly sexually satisfying relationship meant to me.

In my interview with Dr. Queen (which you can hear by clicking on the "Listen Now" icon next to this column), she talks about how there are no "shoulds," no "normal" and how every sexual relationship can benefit from a healthy dose of exploration.

When is it acceptable to tell our partners what feels right? If we're people pleasers in our public lives, it makes sense that many of us transfer that to the bedroom. This seems to hold especially true for women, who tend to internalize this cultural "people-pleasing" norm. (Like me -- for a long time, I wished my partners would just automatically "get it" and be able to get us both off.)

I covered lots of ground in part one of my two interviews with Dr. Queen. I first asked Carol to discuss what bisexuality meant to her.

Carol Queen: Bisexuality, although it's very much been my core identity for a long time, implies that there are two genders -- this notion of "bi"-ness. If there are only two genders, then I'm into both of them, but living in San Francisco tells me that there are probably more than two, and I'm pretty sure I'm into all of them … So whatever that word is -- pansexual, omnisexual -- I just say "bisexual and then some." Plus, [identifying only as] bisexual doesn't leave any space for me identifying very strongly with my feelings about my vibrator.

My book, Pomosexuals, is about the notion that there are multiple subjectivities and points of view around sex and sexual orientation … It isn't just one or the other, or either/or.

Emily Morse: I have friends in their 20s, 30s and 40s who are married or in long-term [heterosexual] relationships, but they're now experimenting with women, and it's more open now and there's more opportunities. They're thinking, "I'm not really sure what this means …" This comes up all the time.

CQ: This is the nexus of sexual orientation and/or experimentation and fluidity, because orientation implies that you get there and then you're there.

But for many people, there is a sense [that] "I could be with a woman, or I could be with a man …" If we don't freak ourselves out with concern about what it means, many kinds of concepts can stimulate these nerve endings.

EM: I have a young relative who's about 15, and [her girl friends] are all making out in school now … There are a lot of women who are experimenting more with other women. There's this question about [whether] it's about [their desire for] other women, or whether it's because their husbands or boyfriends want to watch them. What is it with this [cultural] trend?

CQ: I feel like trends are sort of double-edged. On the one hand, trends allow people to have ideas that might be appealing and give them a feeling of more permission to explore. As a sex-positive activist, I think that's dandy. But trends also bring with them a sense of pressure: "Everyone else is doing it -- why aren't you doing it?"

EM: Everyone I know is having threesomes. I think a lot of people signed up for the traditional monogamous relationship, and now they're starting to question and think about it after the fact. It's not that there's a right time to be experimenting or not, but I guess what we're both saying is that you have to have that conversation.

CQ: Many men, studies and anecdotal evidence [have shown] that men fantasize about threesomes, and if they just angle that fantasy toward a threesome with their partner and a vibrator, they would probably have a lot of luck because that's a good kind of threesome to start with … Do you actually want to bring another human being in the bed if the piece of plastic that's already there is problematic? Probably not.

EM: On the show, we've talked about how there's this notion that some men are intimidated by the vibrator.

CQ: The thing to say [to] men about "vibrator jealousy" is that you've got to think of it as your ally. Many vibrators are bigger than you, but most guys don't understand that a lot of times women use vibrators for clitoral stimulation. Size is not the point.

EM: I grew up in Michigan, and there were no sex shops in Michigan. We had to drive three hours, and there was this place called Velvet Touch … we had to go on a field trip to go there. When I moved here, and Good Vibrations was on every corner, that was very impressive.

CQ: An older, wiser sex therapist once said that one of the things that hangs women up in this culture so much -- and I totally agree -- is [their idea that] "Some day my prince will come, and so will I."

This implies that it's a partner that comes in and gives you the stimulation and the knowledge; that it's in the partner's hands, and not your own. Women need to be able to say, "I am a sexual being" and take responsibility for that, whether it's through masturbation or exploration …

EM: I was raised open and liberal, but I still felt that in some weird way it wasn't okay … [In college] I wanted to explore, but I'd think, 'Oh, tomorrow I'll masturbate," and there were still those expectations and judgments.

CQ: And I think this culture is still full of those. Even if you were raised in a liberal context (and many people were not), there are still ideas about what sex "is" and "should be." And the fact is that each individual is an individual. If we could just get to that with sexuality, that would free us up a lot to say "I like it this way."

To hear more of my interview with Carol Queen, you can download our podcast by clicking on the button next to this column. More on Dr. Queen can be found here, and you can listen to more episodes of Sex With Emily at our website.

Emily Morse is a San Francisco-based filmmaker, actress, model and host of Sex With Emily.

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