Page 16 - AVN Intimate fall 2016

FEATURE
By Dr. CARol QUEEn
Joani Blank’s Herstory Dr. Carol Queen remembers Good Vibrations founder
store was about the size of a postage stamp, but it made room for a shelf full of
antique vibrators (so her customers would understand that these handy helpers
had a much longer history than just as implements of the sexual revolution). This
became the seed of the Antique Vibrator Museum, of which I am today the proud
curator.
I began working at Good Vibrations in 1990 after I’d met Joani a year or two
before; we were both participants in one of Betty Dodson’s rare West Coast
Bodysex workshops, which is a hell of a way to meet a future employer! But
JB (as I called her) was more than that to me: she was a friend, a mentor, and
an inspiration, supporting my growing role at Good Vibrations as well as my
community projects and my solo work, including my writing. She published my
first book, Exhibitionism for the Shy, and her edits and encouragement added a lot to
its impact. She did this for so many people, from helping Susie Bright launch her
important Herotica series of women-authored erotic fiction to helping produce Shar
Rednour and Jackie Strano’s first film, Bend Over Boyfriend; she also consulted with
and supported many (maybe most) of the businesses that emerged in the 1990s
and beyond to become GV’s “sister stores.”
The story of these, and Joani’s visionary role in their creation and growth, is the
subject of Lynn Comella’s forthcoming book from Duke University Press, Vibrator
Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure. Joani was only the
second U.S. woman entrepreneur to open a sex shop; the other, Dell Williams of
NYC’s Eve’s Garden, died in early 2015.
On July 14 many of the current core staff of Good Vibrations gathered to honor
Joani’s role in our lives with more than two dozen past staff members, including
important colleagues from the 1980s and ’90s like Cathy Winks and Anne Semans,
who formed the heart of Joani’s inner circle when I arrived at GV in 1990. Though
rapidly organized, word spread far and wide, thanks to the energies of old-timers
Shar Rednour, Deborah Mayer, and Samantha Miller.
“I will miss Joani very much and am deeply sad about her passing,” says Jackie
Rednour-Bruckman, now executive VP at Good Vibrations but originally a mid-
1990s SESA. “She was so vital and so ready to do so much more before cancer took
her way too fast and too soon. She was 79 but young at heart and still had so much
to say about everything and was deeply involved in many social justice issues.
I will treasure her friendship forever––we had a special bond and I am grateful
forever to her loyalty and love and inspiration. I hope I have made her proud.”
All of Joani’s many communities came together on July 30 at the First Unitarian
Church in Oakland to celebrate her life. Just down the street from her home in the
Swan’s Market Cohousing community, this was JB’s own congregation, where
she’d enjoyed singing in the choir and making connections. She sat to the side,
happily engulfed in love and appreciation, as her beloved choir made music for
her and speakers from many sides of her world spoke up in tribute. Other entities
deeply important to Joani are cohousing; the Human Awareness Institute; and the
UU Church (which isn’t surprising, given its own revolutionary track record on
behalf of sex education)––and someone was on hand from each of these to talk
about Joani’s participation and contributions.
Joani selected five organizations to which contributions may be made in her
name:
• Human Awareness Institute (HAI.org)
• Democracy at Work Institute (Institute.coop)
• Center for Sex & Culture (SexAndCulture.org)
• Cohousing Association of the US (Cohousing.org)
• First Unitarian Church of Oakland (UUOakland.org)
Or support a nonprofit organization of your choice.
Carol Queen has a PhD in sexology. She has worked at Good Vibrations since 1990. Her
current position is staff sexologist and Good Vibrations historian. She also curates the
company’s Antique Vibrator Museum. She is also the founding director of the Center for Sex
& Culture, a non-profit sex ed and arts center in San Francisco, and is a frequent lecturer
at colleges, universities, and community-based organizations. Find more about her at
CarolQueen.com.
On Her Own Terms Good Vibrations founder Joani Blank
has died. She was 79 and had been diagnosed with
Joani Blank, who founded Good Vibrations in 1977,
pancreatic cancer just over two months before.
True to form for a woman who promoted her business
with the phrase “If you want something done right, do it
yourself,” Joani died at home, with family and her beloved dog
Bapu at her side, on her own schedule. Just a couple of months
after California legalized physician-assisted suicide, Joani
chose to treat her symptoms palliatively but not the aggressive
disease itself, whose poor prognosis and painful treatments
would have curbed her ability to enjoy her last weeks of life.
Her August 6 exit followed a month of tributes and time spent
connecting with family and friends; she was proud to face
death with the same degree of forthrightness and fearlessness
she brought to discussions about sexuality.
Joani was already working to change society’s attitudes
about sex, especially women’s sexuality, sexual health, and
reproductive rights, when the idea to form Good Vibrations hit.
Involved with San Francisco Sex Information in the early 1970s,
she founded Down There Press in 1975 (its first project was
her book about vibrators … in calligraphy!) and then began
working with famed feminist sex therapist Lonnie Barbach’s
project to support “pre-orgasmic” women, held at UC Medical
Center.
It was there that Joani heard countless women, when
recommended they try a vibrator, protest that they would
never want to enter one of those places to get one. In what we
called a “click” moment back then (like a light switch flipping
on), Joani realized how much she could contribute by creating
a very different kind of place. Touted as a “clean, well-lighted
place for sex toys, books, and [later] videos,” Joani’s brainstorm
did indeed immediately serve women––and everybody
else, since people of every gender and identity, it turns out,
needed a place that focused on comfortable communication,
correct information, and good-quality sex-related products.
In many ways, that’s still GV’s mission in a nutshell. Her first
16 | INTIMATE | FALL 2016