"You know you’re in poor company when you’ve chosen the same word as Valleywag’s Sam Biddle, who describes Cotton as “the queen of evil tech PR” in his headline, and quotes an anonymous source who describes her as “wicked witchy”. Jiminy."
Even by Valleywag's phenomenally low standards, an anonymous source describing a female executive as "wicked witchy" is atrocious.
I can understand why people might think that its sexist, I can also understand how it can be used in a manner that the writer did not intend to be sexist.
I struggle with this. Most of the time its hard enough to convey the message you want, without then having to second-guess every word you use to see if someone somewhere might consider it offensive in some way
"There’s almost never a good reason to use a different word to describe a woman’s job than the words you’d choose if the position were held by a man."
I don't think it really matters what specific connotations you personally have for the word "queen". What matters is how the conversation subtly becomes about the person's gender instead of their job in these articles.