ABSTRACT
Tamsin spent the early years of her working life as a schoolteacher, a bookshop manager, an
arts administrator, a vision mixer in an artists’ TV studio, and a freelance illustrator/cartoonist.
Oh, and as an ‘‘enthusiastic’’ heterosexual. It wasn’t until her late thirties that she fell in love
with a woman and decided that a lesbian life suited her much better. At around the same
time, prompted by the ignorant and inhumane response in Britain to the HIV/AIDS epi-
demic, she signed up for an MSc in gender and social policy and joined Bristol Polytechnic
(later to become the University of the West of England) as a researcher on an AIDS educa-
tion project. She is never sure which was more traumatic – becoming a lesbian or becoming
a social scientist! Almost two decades and more than ten books later, she is the UK’s first
Professor of Human Sexuality, an honorary member of the Gay and Lesbian Association of
Doctors and Dentists, and is internationally known for her work on the political and personal
aspects of lesbian identity and sexuality, the social and cultural issues surrounding AIDS, and
the complex relationship between sexual behaviours, identities, and wellbeing.
