San Francisco- The Center for Sex & Culture’s sex-positive philosophy will travel across the Atlantic this week when its founding director Dr. Carol Queen visits Oxford as the guest of the Oxford Union Debating Society.
Invited to speak “in proposition” on a team of four notable sex-positive feminists, Queen will address the topic of the evening, “This House Believes That Promiscuity Is A Virtue Not A Vice,” on Thursday, February 19, at the Oxford Union’s historic debating hall.
Joining her will be Hite Report author Shere Hite, Good Vibrations founder Joani Blank, MA, MPH, and former stripper and artist Stella Vine. Opposing this team (and the very notion of promiscuity) will be US authors Inga Muscio and Wendy Shalit (whom Dr. Queen has debated before, upon the release of Shalit’s book A Return to Modesty in 1999), as well as the Right Reverend Andrew Burnham, Anglican Bishop of Ebbsfleet.
The debate will be videorecorded by Oxford Union’s media team and Queen has received permission from Oxford Union to show it at the Center for Sex & Culture in San Francisco; the date of that showing is still TBA, but she expects to schedule it in March.
Dr. Carol Queen began working at Good Vibrations, San Francisco’s original women-friendly sex shop, in 1990 when she was still working on her doctorate in sexology, the academic study of human sexuality. She founded the Center for Sex & Culture with her partner, Dr. Robert Lawrence, in 2000.
She is an award-winning author and editor of essays, sexual self-help, opinion, and erotica, with eleven books in print (including her essay collection Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture; the Lambda Literary Award-winning PoMoSexuals; the Firecracker Alternative Book Award-winning The Leather Daddy and the Femme; and Exhibitionism for the Shy, currently in press in a revised and expanded second edition).
Dr. Queen speaks widely on behalf of the Center for Sex & Culture and Good Vibrations, and frequently serves as an expert lecturer about sexuality at colleges, universities, and academic and community-based conferences; as a media commentator on television and in film documentaries; and as an expert witness in legal cases having to do with sexuality. More detail about her books and other project can be found at www.carolqueen.com.
Dr. Queen is co-founder and executive director of the Center for Sex & Culture in San Francisco (www.sexandculture.org), which offers sex education classes and workshops to people of diverse sexual interests; maintains a library and archive; presents cultural events on a regular basis; and supports community-based and academic research about human sexuality. CSC is the originator of the live Masturbate-a-Thon, held annually in May as an educational, consciousness-raising event and major fundraiser for the nonprofit. Journalists and others who would like to be on CSC’s email list can contact Dr. Queen at [email protected] for inclusion; please specify press list, bi-monthly calendar listing, or both.
Dr. Queen also serves on the board of directors of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, dedicated to raising awareness about sexual freedom as a fundamental human right (www.woodhullfoundation.org). Named after nineteenth-century feminist icon Victoria Woodhull, free love advocate and first female candidate for president of the United States, WFF is a national organization based in Washington DC which monitors legislation, sponsors informational events about sexuality, and liaises with other organization working to advocate in varying locales and contexts for sexual freedom.