Sex With Emily: Carol Queen Opens Up

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.