From Taboo to Understanding: Carol Queen's Advocacy for Sex-Positive Mindset

0:00 Welcome to this Anthrough Life, the podcast that brings social sciences into your world. I'm your host, Adam Gamwell, and I'm here to take you on a journey through the fascinating landscapes of humanity, culture, and beyond. Now in the show, we don't just observe society from afar, but we plunge right in tackling and turning complex theories into accessible stories. So today we delve into an intriguing conversation in world with esteemed sociologist Carol Queen. From her unique insights into the sociological fabric of sexuality to her groundbreaking work throwing light onto the undiscussed areas of society that we need to talk more about, Carol unveils a revolutionary perspective on how we can perceive and talk about sex. Now, in this episode, we're going to be exploring Carol's fascinating journey into the world of sexology and advocacy, how the language that we use affects our perception of sex and sexuality, and what sex positivity truly means in the scope of personal and social change. So why stick around? Well, if that doesn't intrigue you already, if you ever wondered about the untold narratives, things that we don't talk about around gender and sexuality and societal constructs. And if you're open to having your perspectives challenged a little bit, this anthwer life is your gateway into an uncharted territory of thought, brooking discussions into what it means to be human in this world today. So welcome or welcome back to the CEO community and let's dive into the heart of the human experience today. Go ahead and subscribe.

1:17 If you have an already, you can leave us a review. You can leave a comment down below if you're watching on YouTube, and share our podcast because knowledge like humanity is best shared. So stay tuned. Let's uncover the anthropologist in you. So, you know, I think a question that's probably on a lot of people's minds is is, of course, how does one get to become a person that talks about sex for work? You know, this is always something that sex is probably on many of our minds, but we may not talk about it as much. And so I'd love to hear a little bit about you know, we called your superhero origin story, you know, how you found your way into the world of sexology. But also, you know in sex positivity, advocacy and all that good stuff, Well this is true that in the you know, high school class where they start to lay out careers and have you say ahead and think about what sort of things you might want to major in college, this was never an option given to me, although fortunately I was already embarked on a lifelong learning process by that time. And so I think, you know, our interests in sex and our relation to sex in general comes from all kinds of places, but it's often really close to home. I didn't know until I was in my late twenties that my mother was someone who had been sexually abused when she was a young woman. But it affected her life profoundly, as we know a lot about lately, with people telling their stories post me too, and the people who were able to be heard before that too, of course, and that a lot fell into place for me when I heard that, because

2:49 there was something in my house and it had something to do with sex, and it was hard or impossible to talk about the stuff. Both my parents were impacted, and so I was like this, this dowdy little adventurer who was like, well, what is all this about? Then? So I mean, I realized that people used to go to juvenile hall for things like this, but I decided to try to read what I could. One of my one of my early sex memories is trying to look up sex words in the dictionary and be like, what are all these these definitions don't make any sense? And so that led me to some exploration, which led me to sexual orientation, which led me to identifying as buy when I was pretty young, which led me to the very first gay studies class at my college, back before anybody got credit for a gay studies class unless your college had one of those programs where you know, wild eye radicals could teach a class and some you know, geology professor somewhere signed off on it. And that led me into community and I was under age, so that led me to co founded a gay youth group in the early mid nineteen seventies, which was extraordinary, and we tried to sue the school district in Eugene, Oregon, but the vagaries of the legal system gotten away. And I was in Eugene when Eugene was one of the cities that the Yenita Bryant Ordinances of the late nineteen

4:21 seventies, went after a gay rights ordinance that we had just passed and was able to overturn it. But I was the youngest person on the steering committee, and I was running the LGBT. I was doing all that stuff, and then AIDS and then AIDS, so I already was I was rooted in this community. I love my boy pals deeply. They were it seemed all at risk. It was a little hard to parse at first what was going on. But I got involved in that too, and that made me know that this stuff wasn't sideline activism. It needed to be the path that I took. So I found out there was such a thing as sexology and such a place as the Institute for advent Study of Human Sexuality rest in Peace Quirky School in San Francisco, and I came to San Francisco, and then I fell into all the communities fell I thought them out mostly, but San Francisco in the late seventies, early eighties, late eighties was such a rich time for community formation, really interesting stuff, honestly, And as I get ready to write my memoir, I'm like, how do I link all of the things you know that I walked through that I was influenced by, that I understood differently once I had met some people of this sort or that sort, and my of course, sexual orientation got bigger and bigger as I went because

5:53 I found out more things that were important to me and that that was so I'm a street sexologist and a trained sexologist, and so I've talked about sex ever since. I think that that's that's a wonderful trajectory. And I'm actually I'm, you know, super excited. I know where we're a little way away from when the memoir comes out, but I'm super excited to get to know it when it when it does, because I think there there is such an important trajectory that you're tracing there. And one of the questions that can came to mind. I was recently talking with someone that is a kind of human connection expert, and there's always this interesting tension that we, I think everyone faces where it's like there's there's a bit about who I think that I am and who I want to express myself and present in the world, and then the kind of social pressures and you know, moras, norms and things that like kind of influence us to express certain parts of ourselves and not, And so I'm curious how you you know, you talked a little bit about this as you're going through your timeline too. It's like, how how you know, especially if folks are kind of thinking about this for themselves too, It's like, how can we give ourselves the space to kind of think about who am I in relationship to the kind of notions of belonging that we all also seek as being kind of social members of society. Well, that's such a good and deep question, and one of the things that is, you know, obviously, I'm living in twenty twenty three with you and everybody else more or less machine, and I am please because there are days when I really feel like I would like to have access to one, and there are days when I feel like I'm living in one. Because the times that we're

7:23 living in right now. This isn't part of an answer to your question, I promise you, I'm just looping a little bit to it remind me so much of the times when I started out with the kids in gay youth. Who were you know, fifteen to twenty mainly you know, adolescents, young adults not old enough to go to the gay bar yet but who were having to deal with things like getting thrown out of the house by their parents going in, you know, having no real choice out of being unhoused, but to go find an older partner or who maybe wasn't the best person for them, you know, I self harm, all kinds of things, all kinds of things that were not inherent in those young people that were inherent in the air we breathed of the culture. And so one of the things that was the most important then, and it's the most important thing when I think about this whole trajectory, is we needed to find each other and connect. And when I think about all the different sort of movements and identity support groups and this and that and the other that I've walked through in my decades since then, that's why we were all together the whole time. The whole notion this comes from sociology. I'm sure it'll resonate with you from what you know from anthropology. The whole notion that our identities in the last part of the twentieth century especially started to really get affected by things other than what country of orge

9:00 and our grandparents who were and things like that, things like sexual orientation, things like gender identity. Things like the ally ship of LGBTQIA, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, made what it means to connect with other people and to be able to think of yourself in relation to the norms and ways of your family, your community of origin, and so forth super important and is probably one of the things that has made us be all out of sync and understanding with one another as a culture. But it had to happen because fifty years ago kids were killing themselves. Sixty seventy years ago, people were getting put in asylums and not getting let out. You know, this is there's a narrative that this is about. You know, the sexual revolution just tweaked everyone out and made everyone step off the path and they can't find their way back. I want people to understand how cruel the path was.

10:05 People need to understand it in our history and our lifetime history, and certainly in my parents' generations lifetime history. So virtually everybody who's talking about these issues in any way today, there were people whose lives were permanently and negatively impacted by issues of sexual orientation, gender identity, and relationship choices. Things were illegal that we can barely imagine being illegal now, except people are trying to make them illegal again. So high time machine. I feel like I'm stuck right between in two places, and they're looking a little too similar to each other to me for my own comfort. So I hope that that answered some of what you said asked me, because it seems to me that this reaching out to other people for support is crucial for community, for the appropriate partners, for Heaven's sake. You know, you run around and you're like, you are my person, and then turre three years into being married or shocked up or whatever you could legally do and want to do, you start figuring out what the person is all about sexually because it was too personal for them to disclose it before you got too close. And we need to be able to talk about this stuff so much more openly, so much sooner. I answered some questions the other day about should we be putting our sexual fetishis on our profiles, and I'm like, well, if you don't want to have super weird days, it would might maybe it might help give people some info,

11:39 for Heaven's sake. And also when you disclose, and who knows this better than me, because I've been disclosing for quite a long time now. When you just close, you chip away at the shame that people who can't disclose and don't want to hear the disclosure want us to feel. And shame is repressive, right, like them to feel a shame because I'm sure that it's some of them too. I think that's that's a brilliant point too, is that it's one of those the challenges I was kind of thinking about, and uh, I was wanting to ask you about and nerare which is great. So it's like, is this idea that obviously you know so much, you know, I think you're right too, like to point out one that like the typical kind of straight and narrow path, as it were, it has been quite cruel, right, and like in limiting in the sense of what are the acceptable and normative gender and sexual orientation expressions, you know, in quote unquote good society. And then the interesting thing about that I can also you know, I guess I'll put my sociologist had on for a second too. It's right, is that like anything outside of that norm then is labeled deviant, right is as it somehow is a no no. And like even the definition of that right sociologically tells us something important. It's the name of a class. For God's sake, you could take a class called deviance, right, yes, right, which is who doesn't want to take that class? You know? But I think I think this idea too that, like you know, the especially in the United States, I make likes very steep in this like still kind of puritan. We may not talk about it as puritan, you know, charms like of course there's still like the question of the Pilgrims and you know, original old school Thanksgiving, which also whitewashes its own story. But just like these broader ideas of like what are the

13:09 ideals that like quote unquote tell the story of growing up in the US. And obviously to your point, this is like changed radically and positively over the past fifty sixty years. But then you're right, we're seeing also this interesting backlash there too. So I think I really like what you're saying there too, in terms of like being aware of both what it is that I want to share and how to disclose that. So I guess you know, there's two things you said there. One is like knowing how it went to is closed, and that's on the other hand, about chipping away at shame. Right, So to me again that this the kind of puritan normative angle comes in and like is a voice of shame in many ways, right, kind of saying this is a no, no, you shouldn't feel this way or shouln't think about that or shouldn't express it, you know, which you're all damaging in their own ways. Right. I guess think about this too, like how can we both reckon with our history and then also chip away at that shame right, like choosing I guess this is disclosure and learning how to disclose in ways that feel good to me or to each individual, a way of helping us also rethink our history as well as chipping away at that shame or how do you see that relationship? Well, I think that the history piece is relatively little understood around sexuality and gender issues compared to you know, our history with race, our history with you know, hey, this is an empty country, we'll take it, nonsense with slavery, with you know, the way immigrants are treated and are treated, and all of you know the mess of the American project. Right, there's plenty of stuff to dig

14:43 into and to help people understand today who haven't learned that history much why people might be feeling especially exercised about particular things. And it's more common to be able to hear about queer history now and gendered history now than it was when I was a pup. But history was an extremely important piece of the gay rights movement, which is what we called it then, because we didn't have all the letters to put together yet and think that the queer rights movement, which we weren't calling it yet but we would later because it was easier to say than all the letters. Plus who knows what the next letter is going to be. I'm like by a vowel, But we'll see how it goes.

15:30 Because we know that there is so much diversity in the world. I mean, we know that now some people knew it then, that there will be so there will be a new rights movement, there will be a new visibility movement that will come along. It's brewing right now somewhere. I just haven't heard of it yet, right, So welcome. We'll see you when you get here. But that history was an exit, I said. I was in the first gay studies class. What do we do? We studied a bunch of history of you could clearly say that it was gay history, the homo file movement in the fifties, stone Wall, et cetera, et cetera, and the is it okay to call Virgina Wolf bisexual or lesbian?

16:10 Yeah, and you know those kinds of Look, we're sitting here in our chairs today and we're looking backwards at a history that has not been well preserved. How many backyard bonfires lost us? You know, papers that should be in the libraries and archives right now, if not published in books, many, many, and you know, even the even people's porno movies from thirty years ago wound up getting burned in the backyard. There's all kinds of missing pieces. But the pieces that we know let us know that we're not the first here, that we're not alone here, that we need to think backwards and then we can start to tell the stories. And that's yeah. Of course, what's been happening for the last fifty sixty seventy years extremely important part of these movements. And we've gotten to the point where mainstream media now, if it's progressive enough, we'll throw us out history pretty regularly. If somebody significant to us but not to the outside mainstream world. Dies they'll get a New York Times a bit now and they never would have before. You know, the rest and biopic. We knew about Resting in the seventies, but folks weren't talking about them in the mainstream. So to your question about the people understanding, I mean, I think there's a there's a person. There's a kind of person in America that doesn't want there to be a messy history

17:45 that wants what we're seeing today in the way of diversity and activism and progressive stuff. They like to call it woke, and they're not even using the word correctly. Come on, people, articulate what you're worried about. For God's sake, don't just ah anyway. I'll try not to rant too much at you, Adam. It's not your problem, honestly. But if people believe that there has been no mess, they won't think it's important to clean up the mess, and they'll think that the people who are talking about the mess are hysterical troublemakers. I mean, it's almost like you know, nine year olds cleaning their room, right, It's like, are you in an authoritarian household? Or aren't you right? And I think it's you know, I started with my mother and her experiences as a young teenager, and it is like that. And it's also sociological, anthropologic, anthropological, it's political science, it's psychology, it's all of the so called soft sciences that help us try to work our way out of where we're stuck because of all of these pieces of art history and the shame piece. You know, we know, we know, it's just not just sexual orientation and gender identity. It's it's race and class too, right, So we're a complicated batch of people

19:15 on this continent, and we're not the only ones here, and we weren't the first ones here. It's complicated. It's layers, right, It's layers and layers and layers. And every time you turn, you know, somebody, somebody asked me a question about you know, you you really talk about all these different kinds of things. I mean, I asked you a question about sex, and pretty soon you're talking about this kind of stuff. I'm like, to me, it's like a faceted jewel. You can turn it and turn it and turn it and turn it, and every time you move it, another facet gleams at you or you know, it's some of this is not gleaming stuff when we're trying to deal with it today, But there's always somebody else's story. Yeah, reflected for sugar, you know when and you know, postmodernism was my college generations foreign language of choice, right, and learning the special terms and sort of letting myself deep into what they meant, the idea of postmoderny. I co edited a book called Promosexuals, and it was one of the reasons was because I was forced to take this class and it turned out being so much more meaningful to me than I expected it would. Because I didn't have the right sexual orientation among my lesbian gay friends.

20:34 Right. I was by I was pan sexual. I started adding words to my sexual orientation. I was too much, I was extra. And that's what I heard from some of my straight friends back then, and I think that there are still some heterosexual people who feel this way today. It's like, well, well, you've got a community, you've got a sex positive movement. What do we have, you know, either let us in, let us let us learn what you're learning, let us drop the shame, Like how do you talk to your parents at Thanksgiving? For Heaven's sake? And I just think that we all do need this. That's part of what being in a queer community for so long and then sort of coming out into trying to speak to everyone to the degree that I potentially could taught me is that the kind of way I talk about shame and identity and things to people of any sexual orientation comes from originally a growing queer movement, a growing sort of queer studies mindset that tried to look at these issues and deep ways that once I started to go there, turned out to be extraordinarily meaningful for me being okay with being me as I was in the world. And I'm just one sex positive writer. Everybody has got some contact point to these issues.

22:07 They may not understand that that's what they've got, but you know, there's there's an important Republican in Flora. It's today sitting in the corner fuming because he lost his freaking job because he was a little adventurous and a little hypocritical and probably could have been in a world where he could live and his wife could live, provided she really wanted to be doing all this stuff in the first place, a lovely, pleasure filled life with no shame, no hiding and no taking on the other sides rhetoric in order to put a lid on the stuff that they were doing on the weekends, you know, And we don't we don't need that nonsense. We just don't need it. But we've got plenty of it right now. And I yeah, you know, I'm I'm hoping that a little anthropology and sociology and sexology will balm some wounds.

23:07 I don't know if we could do that, but this is this is a time for Yeah. No, I agree, I agree, I mean, and I'm hopeful to her. I mean, like it's it's one of those I have yet to make this T shirt, but I still want to make the uh uh you know, soft skills for a hard world, you know that comes you know, yeah, because we need it right. Yeah, I'll send you on so we we can get we can get this moving here too. But I agree too, Like, I think that that's such an important, uh, I mean, series series of points that that you walked us through there that like we we we have a need for these conversations and like we oftentimes you know, the idea of talking about sex or sexual orientation, sexual pleasure. You know what what moves me? What what's my kink? You know? And my queer is like again that that there's a shame aspect of like what does it feel okay to talk about? But I think you're right that everybody has a connecting point somewhere in here, even if it is I mean, if it's it's heteronormative, you still have a connecting point there. You still have a body. And part of this, too, of them is like, how do I think about pleasure? How do I think about you know, pain, consent in all these different spaces?

24:08 And I think that that's extra a brilliant point too to kind of help just to underscore too, is that we all have a connecting point to this arena, to this world, right, we all participate in it, whether we think we do or not, And that should on the one level, make a say do I feel ashamed about how I think about X, Y Z or feel about this or that or this person or that person? And if I do or don't, they should also then say okay, well hopefully I do not, But then if I did, then let's think about that, or like, do other people feel shame if they feel different than I do? You know, again from a very human angle, right, Why can't the congress congress person and their their partner have a different weekend adventure than than others, you know? And why is that worth losing a job for? It's not if you know, we say at the end of the day, that sounds very weird to say someone loses their job over that, you know, but then so is the but also underscoring like why there's such this you know again these layers, this multifaceted jewel too, that there's so many angles in which like there's so many stories in there that like every time even if you uncover someone's and say, hey, we're trying to be more positive about this, like you can see someone else being concerned or negative again it and it's and it's I think you noted too. It's like some people may not want this kind of conversations to move forward, but at the same time, it's more like more to do I suspect with their own shame and their perspection of like what the world needs to be an Xbox nothing, nothing, Nintendo but this box yeah versus another. And if it's not shame per se, it's a kind of social control, right, It's it's a kind of it's like, what's the what's the overarching story that you tell yourself? What is

25:41 sex for? You know? What are what is partnership for? What are what are women for? You know? There those It's kind of going to the Supreme Court again pretty soon, that last question, because the whole post Row reproductive rights nightmare going on at the moment and really illustrating that there there isn't any one way that this stuff is going to get solved, at least not in the short term, because there are sociologically different spaces where people learn everything, learn the story, have to escape if that's not where they're at personally, or have to find the kind of support that they need. Still probably not safe there in many cases, and you know, what, what are we all doing here? You know, if it's if it's a set of religious notions, okay, but not everybody is religious that way as those where where do we see the options for identity? You know, really budding into firmly political issues, control issues, is legal stuff. It's it's an extraordinary time because all this stuff is being said out loud right now. You know. It made me realize the last couple of few years, Oh, the changes that I thought we had seen in society were were real, are

27:15 real, but they're partial. And the things that I saw hurting my friends when we were teenagers, and who I knew hurt my predecessor queers before I was born, none of that went away, none of it. And it's global. It's all over the place. So if anybody was thinking, well this is rough these days, but I'll go somewhere else, it'll be there. So it's kind of existential. No, it's EN's a good point. I mean it's both is yeah, global, and also then again like still comes back to each each one of us too, and then it's like you kind of can't escape it, right because super individual is part it's part of being human. Right. Yeah. I think that's that's such an interesting challenge too, because it's like, and I appreciate that the questions you're asking there in terms of like we also it involves us asking about the uncomfortable but also theoretically should be very comfortable, questions of like what are bodies for? And like why do we why do we pair bond? And you know what it's sex for? And and it's funny because I mean all those things too.

28:15 It's like then my brain of course is saying, well, there's a lot of different answers to those questions, but that's that's that's the point too, right, And like are we you know, are we providing space to have more than one answer be like socially acceptable, right? And I think it's like interesting too because you know you're right to it, and it is challenging to kind of both see the power of protest and movements over time and to see more rights and more conversations enter into the public parlance and then see some of those get fought against it and kind and push back against different ones. So it does feel like we're kind of going back and forth literally, like you know, a wave in an ocean, and then at the same time too that the same questions get asked, but then we're still kind of we're in a new place and we do have new allies and new sets of conversations happening too. So it is this interesting like they're there will be an evan flow, but at the same time, like the river is not the same exact river, and it's it's interesting to think about that too, because it's like even obviously with with your work, and I think What's what's really exciting too is like you you know, have published a lot of really interesting work that's like literally you know, writing the book on thinking about sex and pleasure and how can we ask these kinds of questions you know, doing it I think through a very fun way too. I mean, like, you know, I definitely want to get into like both the like the uh work with the museum of the historic Museum of of is historic vibrators, I should say, the anti vibrated museum, right, the antique vibrated Museum, yes, and and that idea even like of course why we call sex toys toys?

29:42 And the idea of playing as part of this this question, I think it's worth exploring. And it's like, actually I'm wondering about the show. This is like this is like a sort of left turn, but it's still you know, they get still tracks with what we're saying here too. It is that like even these ideas right, like are we are we okay talking about play and toys or should this be a serious endeavor? This is you know, you know, what's the spaces even vocabulary is how we talk about the both devices and actions around sex. You know, I think is really interesting too, So I'm curious your take on this idea too, of like, how did these pieces and language kind of play into this, you know play. To my knowledge, the notion of a sex toy came to us in the nineteen seventies, and that's not too surprising because there's lots of kinds of play that were going on there, a lot of serious nonsense as well nonsense.

30:32 There's a lot of serious great activism, a lot of need to stand up and be activists, as is true today, but in like some of the exact same reasons, except just a slight shift othery, like there they rhyme, but there there's one syllable and sort of different from then to now. But what I think, when I think, really moved the people who started using the term sex toy. And I'm sure Jony Blank, who found a Good Vibrations one of those people, but I don't know that she invented it herself. I think it was one of those things that kind of bubbled up. But you know what they were called before that was marital aids right or in the in the in the trade sometimes we just said rubber goods, and which could mean a lot of different things, But marital aids, of course, implied that you were married and could get married, That you were married, that you wanted to get married, that the that the sex life that you were having was insufficient in various kinds of ways, and you could fix that with a thing. You know, there's a tool for that.

31:40 They were tools in a certain kind of way, but it was in a very gender kind of specific way. If you if you scratch the surface of that, it's generally, you know, wives weren't having orgasms. Why weren't they? Well, there was they needed a little something extra clitoral stimulation. Generally, people did not really know what discussed a lot that the glitterism add of the penis develops from the vacame tissue. Therefore, we all know a little bit more about each other's bodies than we might think we do. You know, those men and women are opposite stuff. If you if you look through the Sex and Pleasure Book, you'll notice that early on I had a big rant about that. It's like, we are not opposites. We can have our hearts transplanted from one to the other. There it's you've got to use more complicated language than we're opposite also we know now they're more than two genders, so that just screws up the notion of opposite altogether. It turns it into an awesome geometric situation of some kind that we don't really have proper language for yet, so we have to look first at the You know, it was not serving every buddy to think that what we need is we need a penis extender to help the missus have a happy sex life with the mister.

33:08 It's so much more than that. And I don't think it's very surprising at all that this was the era that the queer rights movement really came out from under and became quite joyful, at least in the places that it felt safe to do so and could do so. And everybody was having fun with everything if they were in this sexual space. Not everyone was, of course, but that's one of the things that Joni Blake, who started Goodvies, wanted to do. She wanted to make available information which was missing so missing from people's lives. You know, if you had sex education, it wasn't about education about having sex. It's not about that today either. It's about oh, don't do all these things. Your life will invariably change for the worse. So those things needed to happen. This pleasure, this is why sex positivity rose up out of that time. Really, the notion of sex positivity. We needed it to help be a baseline for the changes that sex as problem left people stuck it. We needed to have sexist opportunity, sexes, fun and play. Sex is pleasure, grapple with are you worthy of pleasure? Yeah? Yeah you are. And I don't think it's actually any surprise that our cuisine got more varied, diverse, and delectable during that same timeframe. I'm like, hey, Alice Waters in Chapanice, we don't acknowledge

34:42 you in the sex world really particularly, but you know what pleasure was on the map by the nineteen seventies and a way that it really hadn't before, at least except for super richrojet city people who got to have the pleasure and when nobody else even got to acknowledge it. So that but then also what it meant? What does it mean to play? You know, it's not the same as child's play, No it isn't, But it also pulls from some of the what's possible? How can we how can we connect? How can we act. What roles do we assume? Do we want to switch that up? What gendered roles make a difference? Do we want to switch those up? There are a lot of fun questions to ask when you step into that realm that are practically inconceivable if you're not in that room. If it's a problem that isn't working, you know, the hydraulics are not working properly. That's not a fun floor to start climbing from. It's you could get to fun from there, but it doesn't start out feeling fun. Right, You've got You've got a more complicated exploration to do if that's how you start. Whereas I want to I want to try more things to feel more fun. I want to know what it feels like to do this, that and the other thing. What doesn't work, asn't even feel like? How well I know and I have one? Well, there's a way to find out. So those things flowed into the way we think about partnering, the

36:14 way we think about play, the way the way we understand masturbation and its role as toys. Of course, and then the Vibrator Museum is all And this didn't just happen in the nineteen seventies. It wasn't just a radical idea that summer A few people had and then pretty soon there were vibrators all over the place. No, your great great grandma had a vibrator. Now did she know to put it on her clutters? We will never know the answer to that, because those were some of the letters that got burned in the back and the big iron bucket in the backyard. We don't know how most people experienced and understood those items, but we know they were plenty in.

36:55 My favorite statistic of possibly all time, and I'm a sociologist, so I've heard a lot of statistics. In twenty seventeen, there were more vibrators and US homes than there were electric toasters. Fantastic. That is not statistic, and most people expect that's true. That is true, you know, and they were they were sold as they were sold as health implements. But also my favorite ad from that time for vibrators, it says, almost like a miracle, is the healing power of vibration when rightly applied. Hell yeah, I need like little logo jingle I agree with, so true, so true.

37:42 No, I love that. That's like a it's a wonderful advertisement and its two points, so such a telling notion. This reminds me of it sounds like my uh my yoga studio too. It's always about like, you know, you got to get the right vibration. You know, that's that's that's how you actually release and you know, let healing. And it's like there you go, see you got a gizm for a vibrator right there too. I don't even know that. We don't talk much about Wilhelm Reich anymore, but he was a radical thinker, just pre Nazi, and then he had a split courses that happened a lot back then, and he came to the United States and thought even more radically. And you know, people thought he was so radical, he was a nutball. But you start thinking about the way he talked about people experiencing life in their bodies, sexuality in their bodies, sexual blocks. You can find therapists who work with that stuff today and helpfully so. And you know, since we're social science people, I'll just also mention that he wrote the mass psychology Fascism, which suggests that a state or culture that controls our sexuality can control its populous completely. Now, I don't know if that's true, because we haven't gotten all the way there.

38:57 But I feel like other people that we see here and there, other people are checking that book out from the library too, I think, or are are they? I think more of us? Maybe? Should? I think? That's that's a fascinating point, yes, right, I mean also meaningly that has that has a very uh that has very a title that says we need to check this book out right now. But also if they're linking that also to sexuality, like that's a really interesting and important point too to recognize, right that, like to bring our sociocultural lens also into body right, because of course this is like how how one can express And I really you know, I appreciate the walking us through so this this kind of history here of both like the the story of the vibrator, but then in relationship to these other questions, right, the part of the history we went through, you know, but like but just like the other questions of again, like how do we think about sex's opportunity as play? And I think like even as you noted that where we saw sex positivity as a movement in mentality and framework emerge also as this from this time. And this is something that you know, I've I've always drawn inspiration from Dan Savage from uh, you know, the love columnist Savage Love. You know, that's been like, you know, a very good and accessible author to people of all of all you know, sexual orientations and gender walks. You know, people may think it's it's like, oh, it's a quer news letter, but it's actually like it can speak to so many, to everybody really, and that's like the power of like good good love columns or you know, sexology too, or I can do this kind of you know, our work here too.

40:22 Is that like again, thinking and talking about sex is not like it's not just for one group of people, right is That's something that we all have to think with And something that that stuck with me that you know that Dan Savwich is in abound talked about too, is that this idea that when trying to figure out, you know, the kind of sexual positivity and like working in opening these spaces up, especially in the in the seventies and eighties, was around this idea of like figuring out what works right and how do how do I ask those questions? You know, and so oftentimes he was saying, you know, it's like, well, if you are told that sex works way X, which is being as plus vagina and that's it, then even that is not clear of totally how that might work if you've never done that before. But then obviously if you're bringing in different kinds of partners, different kinds of materials, objects, and different things, like what goes where and how is a different question. It's not just a question of like X goes into why, and that's a it can be a profoundly empowering question right to kind of say what do I want to do with these? How does this? How should this work? How can that work? And so to your point, like I think that that's a really interesting thing to think about, and so I'm curious as we kind of like move ourselves into today.

41:23 Also, it's like your your work with sex positivity too, and like how do we help bring those conversations out, Like were some of the education kind of work that you do. Obviously the books which I'm definitely gonna link up in our show notes for folks to check out as well Good Vibes also as a store and educational resource. But I'm kind of curious to think about this, like how these pieces play together as it work with you in terms of like bringing sex positivity as a framework to help, you know, teach empower share with folks today. Well, one piece of it, of course is you. You went right to It's like when we when we define sex in a really limited way that is not only limiting in terms of the different kinds of things that we can imagine to try or feel that we have permission to try the things that might need to be negotiated in ways that feel painful and frightening to us, So we don't even try to start with partners and things like that. Those those sex positivity touches all of that with its ideas, of course, but also just it just cuts diversity off it then I'm not even going to I'm not even going to say at the knees, because it cuts it off. It cuts it off everywhere. It cuts it off everywhere, because the way we can imagine, you know, experiencing the fatality of our bodies that we talk about as sexual or erotic, there's essentially no end to the different ways that our experience can be infused by that, at least

42:55 in part. I mean, I think I think back to the nineties and the famous phrase I did not have sex with that woman. And I've been talking about this for, you know, twenty five years now, and what I say is, I bet she thought she had sex with you. And shout out to one of our heroes of the revolution, Monica Lewinsky, because she took that nonsense and had to make a life that worked for her. And you know, I hope every single day that she's having a wonderful, wonderful life because geez. And then a friend of mine got a Christina wonderful writer wrote an essay of that satter are we having sex now or what?

43:44 People didn't even People either didn't even know if the fun stuff extended to that doubt. People are like, do we have a fetish? I'm not sure if I have a fetish, And it's like, you know, if it makes you feel sexier to feel like you have a fetish, I think you should embrace that fetish. But I don't know that that's the most important question. The most important question is does your sex life touch what it needs to in you as a human and as a soul and feed you You get pleasure, et cetera. So sex positivity, you know, there's there's a couple of kinds. There's a couple of ways to talk about sex positivity. And I've been talking about it for years and years. It was a hugely influential idea for me when I was at the Institute for event Study of Human Sexuality, and I've been writing about it for all that time, over thirty years.

44:31 But the thing is that what it means to many people now is who I love sex. I just love it. I love it. I'm sex positive. I have a lot of sex. I have all the sex, I have all the kinds of sex. You're not sex positive if you won't do this with me, Like, wait a minute, sex positivity is not a form of coercion. Don't even don't even with that. People. You know, if you were really sex positive, you'd open our relationship, you'd let me tie you up, you let me spank you, you get a bigger dildo. No, oh no, that's not what it means. Embracing pleasure in sex is perfectly appropriate to talk about as part of sex positivity.

45:14 But sex positivity is the opposite of sex negativity. I knew that because I knew what homophobia meant, and we always had to put quotes around heterophobia because there weren't enough people frightened and tweaked out about heterosexuality that heterosexuals walking down the street had to feel worried. I mean, I actually don't think that in the main, that is still a thing. So the idea that we need to take what our diversity is as sexual people, how many different ways there are to be sexual, including being asexual, and all the ace spectrum insights that we've had in the last decade or so from especially younger generations coming up saying that stuff doesn't explain it well enough for us. We need some more language, we need some more thoughts about this, And I'm like, thank you. I think I just shared an idea about that with somebody yesterday who went, wait, that's exactly what that person said to me. I'm like, yeah, apparently it's a thing, and it's probably been a thing our whole lives, and we just didn't have the language yet. That's why I'm I'm waiting to hear what new letter will get added to the LGBTIQA et cetera, et cetera acronym, because there will be new insights for all of us living in all the kinds of bodies and all the kinds of sexual orientations and general identities. There always is. We have these profound links that we can share if we're up for it, if we are into it, and if we're not too full of shame or fear a hate to do that. So it's sex positivity isn't just about pleasure. It's about difference. It's about rights

46:50 and how we can communicate, how we get service if we need service from a doctor, from a lawyer, from a you know, what's the legal What can't we teach about in school? What are the ideas that people walk around with their whole lives that make us treat each other poorly around this set of issues? How could we make a more sex positive world? So you can see that through line too from the last many decades. But you can also see this idea that the drops out all that social consciousness stuff, all that sociology and anthropology and just leaves the Oh my god, I'm so grateful not to have to feel terrible for wanting sexual contact. And of course that definition is not just appealing to people, it's necessary in the same way that fighting homophobiaan gay pride was in that specific sexual orientation space. So the last thing that I'll say about that unless you want to know, delve some more into this stuff, because this stuff is I could talk for one hundred years about this stuff. This My ex girlfriend said, I could see if you if sex was your job. I could see if you did it for fun, but you you it's everything. I'm like, it's a freaking faceted jewel.

48:10 It's not one thing, it's so many things. It's so interesting. I just I just want people to be like sex, it's amazing whether or not they have sex. That's not required. You could be a sexual and sex positive. You can be very very sexual and not very sex positive and kind of awful about it too. So all of that. But but the last thing, I just I've started to use the phrase deep sex positivity to get into all this sexual justice diversity stuff. That is that to me underpins whether somebody can say, woo, I love that. I'm so sarcasmic now, and I would never say that there's any problem with somebody stopping this, except I want them to understand, just as I want them to understand that marriage equality for fifty years of work to achieve, not a few, not a few cool lobbyists who find the correct the code. It was social change for half a century or more. We were talking about it out loud in nineteen seventy four. So I want people to understand that the backstory of any of these things, of an old steampunk look and vibrator, or how we talk about sexual orientation and gender identity today, all of it, all of it's got a history, as we talked about before, and it's part of what allows us to understand the mess we're in, the opportunities we have,

49:46 what's going on. That's it's always got a backstory because just as you said, it's us as individuals and it's the culture over arching and you can't you can't either or that it's not helpful to either or that no very true, I mean, and it's funny. That's also I would say, like a theme through this that we've seen as a consistent problem kind of and on the on the social level, but then also into the into the sort of identity level too. Right, It's like when we actually insist upon a binerism. I mean, I'm thinking of the meta from Mars, when are from Venus to right, that that whole of the eighties nineties craze, you know, like these Yeah, this is the opposite push the binarism itself, right, and like so it's it's when it when we get to this either or space, like it doesn't really work well on a on this like human diversity level, and like most things areklinal, right, there's actually a a like spectrum of difference, you know, and so there may be like more extreme differences on the sides of a belcher like typically like where you can actually move across, and there's like not a like left or right either or one or zero.

50:45 And it's it's funny like and also refreshing to kind of then be more emphatic with folks about like this is actually how we have to understand more of actual reality, is that it is not in either or scenario and it really hasn't been bad mind virus but the virus. Yeah, right, it's like, you know, we we like to classify things as people, and that's not the worst characteristic of us as humans, but yes, when we then then take it the next step and say, actually, it's like here's my two boxes. We tend to run in issues, right, and even to this point that like sex positivity as recognizing that I think this is important, you know, to underscore that. Again, It's not this idea of just saying, oh, I'm super fun and I like to have all the kinds of sex with all the kinds of people things in places, And it's like, it isn't that or that only right? It's like, are you even okay saying that? And that's this is the great you know, anthological sociological point too. It's like, what are the conditions under which you feel safe doing that? And why why why might other people not feel safe doing that?

51:37 And so because there is the other story and what are the why are the boundaries? Yeah? Absolutely, it's so important. It's because even if there were only two types, like say, say there were only men and women, say we say, we say we give the folks who believe that, say we give them that for a minute and consider it a little. I'm going to take it back after I say this, of course, because I don't believe it for a second. But let's say let's say we did believe it. Thought experiment. Yeah, thought experiment for you buyinarists. Even if there are only men and women, that would not mean that if you touch girlfriend too, the way you touched girlfriend one, it would achieve the same sexual result because we are not exactly the freaking sane. We're each one of us somewhat different in what we like. We go to restaurants, we order different kinds of meals, we go to you know, it's just not We're not two kinds of gendered robots. And those of you who are trying to teach your kids and your community that that's what we are, you're setting them up for such pain, or other people who aren't like them up for such pain. I mean, great if that's your strategy, But you know, the idea that we could get to the point in our identity and our

53:07 relational life, our sexual life, and our life in general where we're comfortable and feel like we're where we belong. Why wouldn't we think that was great? Why would that be a problem for anybody? I mean, I wish that for all y'all imagining these spiners. I wish that for you. I would really appreciate you understanding that that life would be less stressy for everybody if we opened our eyes to diversity a little more. And I'm not just talking about sex and gender diversity either, of course talking about the kinds of diversity that impact us in our society, and there are plenty of those. I hope to that you know, that's a good, good thought experiment now now bracketed off now that yeah, okay, nope, no that's to do with it, yeah, right, Like, but I think that that's a that's a it's a great point to think about too. It's like I was thinking about this in a slightly different way the other day actually that it's it's that you know, there they got to put this. It was like, there's not there's there's many ways to even if one you know, doesn't think about a metaphysical, larger reality of if there's like a you know, if there's a God or some other bigger being out there or other whether it's collective or individual or external or whatever. But there's an interesting question of like there is a reality of human suffering though, whether or not there is, and that's an interesting question of like are we are we increasing suffering or are we alleviating it? And like what what do we feel is our responsibility in that regard?

54:37 And so I think to your point, like when we provide more space for people to well, I mean one, when you find belonging like that feels like it would lessen some sense of suffering. When you find self expression, it feels like that would lessen some suffering. And so we have to ask ourselves to what end and why would we and why do we feel the need to make other people or ourselves suffer when we feel these things? And that's it's a good question that we know obviously we have we're wrestling with here, but that we should I think we should continue to wrestle with and like, I'm hopefully we can solve writing more space, but like you know, it's it's an interesting notion in terms of that of like, I feel like that's part of this too, right, It's that are we how was the relationship between providing space or not for self and others and the role of suffering that we may enact And if you can honestly put on some limiting binders and then say, I'm also I understand I'm causing suffering and you're okay with that, and that that's a different question, your different answer, I suppose, But I think most people would not not aim for that there. I don't think so either, And you know, I've one of the one of the sort of early strategies that I undertook to try to try to think in a compassionate enough way to include the binary folk, the authoritarian folk, the folk who you know kicked my little friends out of the house for being gay boys, all of the all of those people who you know, not gonna lie.

55:53 I had thought in terms of is enemies to me and my people, and still can if I I had to go into that particular space and that rabbit hole. But one of the sort of thought experiments for me was that tried to heal that. And by heal, I don't mean make it all go away and ignore the problem. I don't mean that, But I mean I've got to talk to those people too. As I said earlier, I know that there are plenty of people in that world that need to hear the things that have been meaningful to me and to others in these communities. So let's keep talking. I basically say, I don't think there's anybody out there who wants sex in their own life to be problematic, to be painful, to be terrible not their own experience. There are people out there who are kind of awful to each other. Who might get a little thrill out of non consensual, non consensual terribleness. Sure, we see that, but I don't think any individual grows up, steps out in the world and says I want it to be terrible, I want I want my body to feel like it's wrong things happening. I mean, nobody feels that way. And why would we think, I mean, to your suffering point, why would we think it's okay to try to create a world where that is how people feel and what they do experience, because there is plenty of that in the world, and it's part you know, I'm talking some philosophical ideas, you know,

57:24 I'm I'm talking from my ology space. Of course, it's important to me. It helps me make sense of things. It's a tool, it's a pleasure most of the time. But honestly, there's also just the living as a human in the world among humans, which is what you really were getting too with that question of suffering. And if you go folks can't tell me how your authoritarian notions about all of these things are going to alleviate suffering. If you can't tell me how you think it makes it better for everybody, then go home. Start start opening your heart to why people live different ways. Yeah, I think that's right on and such an important piece for us to ruminate on. I mean, I think we could keep going on this and maybe maybe we'll do a sequel with this too, But I want to be respectful every time for now too as well, because I think it's such an important area and I think this has been such a fascinating conversation.

58:22 I appreciate you walking through this so far as I just wanted to as a as a wrap up question or kind of thought provoker. Is just I know you set up top you working on a memoir, which I think is really exciting. Is you know, I want to get a sense of like, what's what's really exciting on your radar now? I mean like on one level would be like the sequel might be the future of sex where we going Maybe you can tease that idea too, But you know, I'm curious and in your thoughts about this, like what what's getting excited these days? And it might be the future of sex, which could be a good good segue. But well, I think, you know, if we can find ourselves figuring out a way to work with the sociology of all of this, which is a big question. There is more and mostly better sex research happening now than has happened much in the past. The sex research of twenty thirty, forty, et cetera, backwards years ago wasn't always was often too binary, was often not fully informed. I mean, you know, like, you got to know some things about your topic before you do good research about it.

59:21 And people got terrible information about sex, So why would the research have been stellar all the time. It wasn't always stellar. I don't know if it's all stellar now, but I know that it's more interesting, it's more diverse, it's getting to different things. It's beginning to normalize things that many people didn't know much about, and I think that's extremely exciting. I think the sex told people are like, let's always build better sex toys, And honestly, why not as long as we are miired here in late stage capitalism and we buy some things and sell somethings, and why wouldn't we want to have more interesting bodily experiences with our toys. Fine, I think that's great, and I think that that there is going to be you know, I'm I'm not going to be your pro ai guest, at least not this year, because not real sure. I trust the way the people at the top of that scene think through the questions that we've talked about at any length here today or even alluded to a little tiny bit. And I like to run around San Francisco and go to nice restaurants and yell loudly from my table. Have they never read any dystopian fiction and they never understand that I'm talking about them.

1:00:46 So frustrating. But what I do think is if we, if we corral the society properly, that there will be ways for people to use technologies like this to even more readily learn into things that they weren't taught already, things that they want to know, things that can connections that can be made. I mean, I can't imagine that there aren't some pretty extraordinary possibilities in the project of getting all of the information in the universe together and sticking out on a gizmo that we many of us have access to. I have a hope that there will be some good that will come from that. I already see that people who we didn't even know were part of our communities thirty years ago found each other on the Internet and you can find your people who live anywhere in the world now. And because of the thing I said about global troubles earlier, I also want to say I feel like there is global support available for those who can get it. And to make this all stay a positive, growthful possibility, we've got to keep an eye on Internet privacy and all that that entails, because you know they're they're going to come for our search results. They're you know, the late stage capitalism already did. If

1:02:20 authoritarians can, they will. And all of us need to understand that we've got a dog in the race. You know, any of us who have a gizmo anyway, who ever looked up a sex thing, much less found a partner much any of it. You know, we've all got dogs in this race now. And it's both kind of harrowing and extremely exciting about the possibilities. You know, challenges are sometimes good for humans. I'm not going to say we always do great, but I think sometimes challenges are good for humans. And we've got an amazing challenge right now. We're sitting at an inflection point in all kinds of ways. I don't even say anything about global warming, oh, climate change, oh, just stop arguing about nomenclature and start thinking about harm in the future, because we can do it, you know, we can. We can point at our genitals and start talking about it, and we can point everything around us and have comparable conversations. We need to be having them. No, I love that, And I think this is like, you know, it's getting me thinking about like, okay, what both the title of this episode, but then also in general, it's like, yeah, like what why pointing out our genitals actually is a great starting point for conversations and climate change. There they are. We're just what doing? Don't we know? What? Do we need to do?

1:03:36 So many things? Yes? And also it's just it's just not tenable for us to say, well, you know, I guess, I guess I'm not really a person who can do anything about any of this. There are incremental things that we can do for the health of our planet and our quality and for our own bodies and our sexual pleasure, and our ability need to connect and our ability to communicate. And it turns out I think that all the tools we use for either of those big or small as above so below situations, those tools are also useful for the other we we need more media literacy. We need to understand some more. We need to not you know, take up I don't know why I don't feel good about this for an answer. We need to interrogate it. We need to you know, know ourselves and then talk about what we learned to each other. And that's how, you know, that's how the queer community grew, It's how all of our communities can grow. Right, it isn't always about sex, but if it's leaving sex behind in the closet, that's where that term came from.

1:04:44 People use it for all kinds of things now. But you do know, I've meant being closeted about homosexuality to begin with, right, if it's in the closet, if it can't be the other the other term we use in the old days with he's not for streetwear. You couldn't go out with someone who was too view because you might find yourself at you know, in jail at the end of the night. So we need to be able to communicate about all these things. It's crucial. It's crucial. And if and if people are overwhelmed by the things that we need and the big the big picture to save the world stuff. You can put your glitterest penis or whatever you got or whatever you call it, because you know what, you communicate about that too and have a better life and understand that you just crossed a barrier that my whole life, probably most of your life, people said you can't cross that barrier. So I was all, Okay, maybe I'll go do it for a living. And I'm so thankful that you're out there doing it too, and like, because we need we need this work, thank you, And so I'm yeah, hugely thankful of your working, Amiron. So excited to get your books out on the list for folks to check out as well if they have it already. And again, I'd love to have you back to either talk memoir or more conversations, because I think this is such important point to that I even didn't realize as we began. It's like how this is actually like how sex is both so integral and like biological, and then yet it helps us think about everything else too. So it's like, if we can communicate about this, we can talk about the other things too,

1:06:15 and we need to talk about both. So you got to pick where you can start, and but we have to start is the point right, yep, exactly right, And thank you for having me. I've had such a such an interal conversation with you. You have such great questions and make great points. So you know, when when ology minds connect, lovely thing why we go to college people, It's because this kind of conversation is, in fact one of the great pleasures that we have access to in this world. Indeed, indeed, well, thank you so much, you are so welcome. Thanks. It's been a phenomenal journey through anthropology and sexuality with the insightful Carol Queen. Today we've explored sex positivity from multiple lenses science, identity, society, history, the end personal experiences. The importance relevance of communication have been underlined, especially in the context of expressing and understanding each other's sexual identities. So this conversation reminds me how significant socio cultural aspects are in determining our perceptions and attitudes towards sexuality. Not only can understanding these facets open up new forms of dialogue, but it can also contribute to sharper perspectives to global conversations on well being, diversity, and rights. So as we wrap up, let's remember that the subject is not one that is separated from daily life, but rather it's an inseparable and integral part of being human. So I hope that the invitation to learn, grow and better connect with one another resonate's loud and clear. So remember each question that we ask, each conversation that we spark, is an exciting step towards a more humane world. So with that, I'm thankful for your time and your ears. As always, please

1:07:46 feel free to get in contact, leave a comment below, or join me over on social media and substack with our blog. You've been listening to this anthro life and I'm your host, Adam Gamwell, we'll see you next time.