Annie M. Sprinkle (born Ellen F. Steinberg on July 23, 1954) is an American certified sexologist,[2]performance artist, former sex worker, and advocate for sex work and health care.[3] Sprinkle has worked as a prostitute, sex educator, feminist stripper, pornographic film actress, and sex film producer and director.[4][5] In 1996, she became the first known porn star to get a doctoral degree,[2] earning a PhD in human sexuality from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco.[6][7] Identifying as ecosexual, Sprinkle is best known for her self-help style of pornography, teaching individuals about pleasure, and for her conventional pornographic film Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle (1981).[8] Through the production of feminist based pornographic content, include understanding of female genitalia and pornography based on women's desires, Sprinkle has contributed to feminist pornography and the larger social movement of feminism; she is also known for contributing to the rise of the post-porn movement and bisexual/lesbian pornography.[9][4] Sprinkle, a bisexual woman and member of the LGBTQ+ community, married her long-time partner Beth Stephens in Canada on January 14, 2007.
Sprinkle was born Ellen F. Steinberg on July 23, 1954, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,[1] to a Russian-Jewish mother and a Polish-Jewish father.[10] Her family moved to Los Angeles, California, when she was five years old, and she lived in Panama from age thirteen to seventeen.[7] At eighteen, she began working at the ticket booth at the Cine-Plaza Theatre in Tucson, Arizona, when Deep Throat (1972) was playing.[11] The film was busted, and when Steinberg had to appear in court as a witness, she met and began a relationship with Deep Throat's director, Gerard Damiano, becoming his mistress. She followed him to New York City, where she lived for twenty-two years.[11]
Not long after becoming Damiano's mistress, Steinberg began working in porn herself and, at that time, started calling herself "Annie." As her career continued, she says that one night, "as if from the goddess herself," the name "Annie Sprinkle" came to her.[12] She later changed her name legally to Annie Sprinkle.[13] Her first porn movie was Teenage Deviate released in 1975. Perhaps her best known mainstream porn featured role was in Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle (co-directed by Sprinkle and sexploitation veteran Joseph W. Sarno) which was the No. 2 grossing porn film of 1981.[8]
In 1991, Sprinkle created the Sluts and Goddesses workshop, which became the basis for her 1992 production The Sluts and Goddesses Video Workshop – Or How To Be A Sex Goddess in 101 Easy Steps. The film was co-produced and co-directed with videographer Maria Beatty, and it featured music by composer Pauline Oliveros. Sprinkle pioneered new genres of sexually explicit film and video such as edu-porn, gonzo, post porn, xxx docudrama, art porn, and feminist erotica.[14] Sprinkle has also presented many sex workshops with fellow sex facilitator Barbara Carrellas, with whom she presented the stage production Metamorphosex.[15]
Sprinkle has appeared in almost 200 films, including hard- and softcore pornography, B movies, loops, and numerous documentaries. She starred in Nick Zedd's experimental films War Is Menstrual Envy (1992), Ecstasy in Entropy (1999), and Electra Elf: The Beginning (2005). She also appeared in various television shows including four HBOReal Sex programs. She has also produced, directed, and starred in several of her own films, such as Annie Sprinkle's Herstory of Porn, Annie Sprinkle's Amazing World of Orgasm, and Linda/Les & Annie—The First Female to Male Transsexual Love Story. Her work in adult films earned her a spot on the Adult Star Path of Fame in Edison, New Jersey, and she was inducted to both the AVN Hall of Fame and the XRCO Hall of Fame in 1999. For three decades, she has presented her work as a visiting artist at many major universities and colleges in the US and Europe.
Annie Sprinkle is known as the "prostitute and porn star turned sex educator and artist."[16] Her best known theater and performance art piece is her Public Cervix Announcement, in which she invites the audience to "celebrate the female body" by viewing her cervix with a speculum and flashlight.[17] She also performed The Legend of the Ancient Sacred Prostitute, in which she did a "sex magic" masturbation ritual on stage.[18] She has toured one-woman shows internationally for 17 years, some of which were titled Post Porn Modernist,[19][4]Annie Sprinkle's Herstory of Porn,[6][15] and Hardcore from the Heart. She then performed two-woman shows with Beth Stephens titled Exposed; Experiments in Love, Sex, Death and Art, Dirty Sex Ecology, Earthly: An Ecosex Bootcamp, and Ecosex Walking Tour.[20]
Her work and publications, spanning over four decades, are studied in courses at numerous universities, in theater history, women's studies, performance studies, LGBTQ studies and film studies courses. Through The New School of Erotic Touch, she has released several video classes, including Female Genital Massage and Amazing World of Orgasm.[21] Currently her lecture presentation is called "My Life and Work as a Feminist Porn Activist, Radical Sex Educator, and Ecosexual". She has also presented dozens of "Free Sidewalk Sex Clinics", offering free sex education to the public in public space.
Sprinkle's work has always been about sexuality, with a political, spiritual and artistic bent. In December 2005, she committed to doing seven years of art projects about love with her art collaborator and eventual wife, Beth Stephens. They called this their Love Art Laboratory. Part of their project was to do an experimental art wedding each year, and each year had a different theme and color. The seven-year structure was adapted to their project by invitation of artist Linda M. Montano.[22] Sprinkle and Stephens have done twenty-one art weddings, eighteen with ecosexual themes. They married the Earth, Sky, Sea, Moon, Appalachian Mountains, the Sun, and other non-human entities in nine different countries including at Montreal's Edgy Women Festival in 2011.[23]
Sprinkle and her partner Beth Stephens became pioneers of ecosexuality, a kind of earth-loving sexual identity, which states, "The Earth is our lover". Their Ecosex Manifesto proclaims that anyone can identify as an ecosexual along with being "GLBTQI, heterosexual, asexual, and/or Other."[25]
Sprinkle identifies as a sex-positive feminist, and much of her activist and sex education work reflects this philosophy. In 2009, she appeared in the French documentary film Mutantes: Punk, Porn, Feminism, speaking about the beginnings of the movement as well as her own contributions to it.[26]
In 2017, Sprinkle and Stephens were official artists in Documenta 14. They presented performances and visual art, lectured, and previewed their new film documentary, Water Makes Us Wet: An Ecosexual Adventure.[27][28]
Harvard's Schlesinger Library acquired her papers from 1967-2010, including those covering work with her partner Elizabeth Stephens. [29]
Sprinkle is known as a contributor to the development of pornography that intends to be feminist[4] and is known for her disagreement with women against pornography, feminists who do not believe that the creation of feminist porn is possible and argue that porn is a means of hyper sexualization of women, that it is inherently harmful, promotes violence, and objectifies women.[30] In contrast Sprinkle is known for arguing that women should contribute to the production of pornography or other erotic media and that censorship or restrictions on pornography will not cease its production.[31][32]
As a porn actress, Sprinkle refused to play any submissive roles. She also drew greater attention to the female orgasm.[33] A stated aim of her performance art and other works has been to challenge the censorship of female genitals including the vulva, clitoris, vagina.[14]
Sprinkle and her wife Beth Stephens are known for naming and promoting a combination of environmental activism and sexuality called ecosexuality. They state ecosexuality involves seeing nature as a lover, viewing people's relationship with the Earth is two-sided and considering humans accountable for taking care of the planet and the planet as responsible for taking care of us.[34][35] Ecosexuality combining sexuality and ecology with an added focus on female sexuality and opposition to heterosexual and patriarchal sexual dynamics of dominance and exploitation places it within ecofeminism, which highlights how women and nature are treated similarly in a patriarchal society.[36]
After receiving her breast cancer diagnosis, Sprinkle made a collage of her breast tissue scans in order to provoke questions about whether a body that has been subject to surgical procedures and illness can be a sexual one.[14] Sprinkle continued to engage in this medical commentary by juxtaposing medical scans with erotic images and using an electrocardiogram to record the waves of an orgasm.[14] In her performance Public Cervix Announcement, Sprinkle inserted a speculum into her vaginal canal to display her cervix to the audience.[14] The previous acted as satirical-commentary on the private and invasive nature of gynecological procedures. Sprinkle has characterized her own art involving erotic and explicit imagery of the vulva and internal female anatomy as feminist activism.[17]
Post-porn movement
The post-porn movement is a counterculture body of scholarship and ideals that were developed within Europe and the USA. Within the post-porn movement there is a critical lens applied to corporations producing pornography and non-corporate pornographic content is instead valued. The post-porn movement also values the production of pornography which centres queer and gender diverse folks as well as questions the racialization and reliance on stereotypes found in the pornography industry.[9] Sprinkle has contributed to the post-porn movement explicitly in her now retired show Post-Porn Modernist and implicitly through her artistic body of work which engages in critical reflection and parody.[9] Sprinkle has also contributed to this movement by challenging who can be represented in porn and which bodies are sexual ones.[14]
Publications
Sprinkle as pictured on cover of her book Spectacular Sex (2005)
With Vera, V.; De Ridder, W. (1985). Annie Sprinkles ABC Study of Sexual Lust and Deviations. New York: Radio Art Publications. OCLC80467203.
The Kinky World of Annie Sprinkle. New York: Hudson Communications. 1985.
With Gates, K. (1995). Annie Sprinkle's Post-Modern Pin-Ups: Pleasure Activist Playing Cards. Richmond, Va.: Gates of Heck. ISBN978-0-9638129-3-3.
アニー・スプリンクルの愛のヴァイブレーション[Annie Sprinkle's Love Vibrations] (in Japanese). Tokyo: Kawade Shobo Shinsha. 1996. ISBN978-4-309-26284-0.
With Gates, K.; Adams, C. (1997). XXXOOO: Love and Kisses from Annie Sprinkle (30 Post-Porn Postcards). New York: Gates of Heck. ISBN978-1-889539-00-3.
Dr. Sprinkle's Spectacular Sex: Make Over Your Love Life with One of the World's Great Sex Experts. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin. 2005. ISBN978-1-58542-412-2.
With Jong, Ellen (2006). Pees on Earth. New York: PowerHouse Books. ISBN978-1-5768-7317-5.
"Foreword" (2007). In: Carrellas, Barbara (January 2007). Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century. Berkeley, Calif.: Celestial Arts. ISBN978-1-58761-290-9.
"Foreword" (2014). In: Sundahl, Deborah (November 21, 2023). Female Ejaculation and the G-Spot: Not Your Mother's Orgasm Book! (revised 2nded.). Nashville, Tenn.: Hunter House Publishers. ISBN978-0-89793-702-3..
With Stephens, Beth (2017). Laimer, Quinn; Symczyk, Adam (eds.). Documenta 14: Daybook: Athens, 8 April-Kassel, 17 September 2017. Munich: Prestel Verlag. pp.19–20. ISBN978-3-7913-5655-6.
With Stephens, Beth (2017). Explorer's Guide to Planet Orgasm: For Every Body. Illustrated by Yu Dori. Greenery Press. ISBN978-0-937609-85-9.
Filmography
This article contains a list that has not been properly sorted.Specifically, it does not follow the Manual of Style for lists of works (often, though not always, due to being in reverse-chronological order). See MOS:LISTSORT for more information. Please improve this article if you can.(February 2024)
Film and TV credits
Year
Film
Role
Notes
2017
Water Makes Us Wet: An Ecosexual Adventure
Lead, Director
2013
Goodbye Gauley Mountain: an Ecosexual Love Story (Video)
Marie Louise Hartman, known professionally as Nina Hartley, is an American pornographic film actress and sex educator. By 2017 she had appeared in more than one thousand adult films. She has been described by Las Vegas Weekly as an "outspoken feminist" and "advocate for sexual freedom", and by CNBC as "a legend in the adult world".
Shemale is a term most commonly used in the pornography industry to describe trans women or other people with male genitalia and female secondary sex characteristics acquired via hormones or surgery. Many people in the transgender community consider the term offensive and degrading. Using the term shemale for a trans woman may imply that she is working in the sex trade.
A facial is a sexual activity in which a man ejaculates semen onto the face of one or more sexual partners. A facial is a form of non-penetrative sex, though it is generally performed after some other means of sexual stimulation, such as vaginal sex, anal sex, oral sex, manual sex or masturbation. Facials are regularly portrayed in pornographic films and videos, often as a way to close a scene.
Sex-positive feminism, also known as pro-sex feminism, sex-radical feminism, or sexually liberal feminism, is a feminist movement centering on the idea that sexual freedom is an essential component of women's freedom. They oppose legal or social efforts to control sexual activities between consenting adults, whether they are initiated by the government, other feminists, opponents of feminism, or any other institution. They embrace sexual minority groups, endorsing the value of coalition-building with marginalized groups. Sex-positive feminism is connected with the sex-positive movement. Sex-positive feminism brings together anti-censorship activists, LGBT activists, feminist scholars, producers of pornography and erotica, among others. Sex-positive feminists believe that prostitution can be a positive experience if workers are treated with respect, and agree that sex work should not be criminalized.
Candida Royalle was an American producer and director of couples-oriented pornography, pornographic actress, sex educator, and sex-positive feminist. She was a member of the XRCO and the AVN Halls of Fame.
Lesbian erotica deals with depictions in the visual arts of lesbianism, which is the expression of female-on-female sexuality. Lesbianism has been a theme in erotic art since at least the time of ancient Rome, and many regard depictions of lesbianism to be erotic.
The feminist sex wars, also known as the lesbian sex wars, sex wars or porn wars, are collective debates amongst feminists regarding a number of issues broadly relating to sexuality and sexual activity. Differences of opinion on matters of sexuality deeply polarized the feminist movement, particularly leading feminist thinkers, in the late 1970s and early 1980s and continue to influence debate amongst feminists to this day.
Pornography has been defined as sexual subject material "such as a picture, video, or text" that is intended for sexual arousal. Made for the consumption by adults, pornography depictions have evolved from cave paintings, some forty millennia ago, to virtual reality presentations. A general distinction of adult content is made classifying it as pornography or erotica.
Carol Leigh, also known as The Scarlot Harlot, was an American artist, author, filmmaker, sex worker, and sex workers' rights activist. She is credited with coining the term sex work and founded the Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival and was the co-founder of BAYSWAN, the Bay Area Sex Worker Advocacy Network.
Petra Joy is a German feminist film director, film producer, TV producer, distributor, author, and photographer. She lives in Brighton, England. Along with Candida Royalle, Annie Sprinkle, Maria Beatty, and others, she is one of the pioneers in producing pornography for women. Her genre is described as "art-core," meaning the focus is on sexuality from the female perspective, female pleasure, and creative, sensual play. Common themes in her erotic films include safe sex, men seen as sexual objects, female fantasies, and male bisexuality.
Linda Williams is an American professor of film studies in the departments of Film Studies and Rhetoric at University of California, Berkeley.
Madison Young is an American filmmaker, author, performance artist, feminist activist, and former adult film performer and award-winning erotic filmmaker. Young is a prominent figure in the feminist porn movement and is known for their work as a queer and kink-focused educator and an advocate of sex workers' rights.
Feminist views on pornography range from total condemnation of the medium as an inherent form of violence against women to an embracing of some forms as a medium of feminist expression. This debate reflects larger concerns surrounding feminist views on sexuality, and is closely related to those on prostitution, BDSM, and other issues. Pornography has been one of the most divisive issues in feminism, particularly in Anglophone (English-speaking) countries. This division was exemplified in the feminist sex wars of the 1980s, which pitted anti-pornography activists against pro-pornography ones.
Feminist pornography is a genre of film developed by or for those within the sex-positive feminist movement. It was created for the purpose of promoting gender equality by portraying more bodily movements and sexual fantasies of women and members of the LGBT community.
Feminist views on sexuality widely vary. Many feminists, particularly radical feminists, are highly critical of what they see as sexual objectification and sexual exploitation in the media and society. Radical feminists are often opposed to the sex industry, including opposition to prostitution and pornography. Other feminists define themselves as sex-positive feminists and believe that a wide variety of expressions of female sexuality can be empowering to women when they are freely chosen. Some feminists support efforts to reform the sex industry to become less sexist, such as the feminist pornography movement.
Porn for women, women's porn or women's pornography is pornography aimed specifically at the female market, and often produced by women. It rejects the view that pornography is only for men, and seeks to make porn that women enjoy watching instead of what is being offered in male-centric mainstream pornography.
A feminist stripper is a professional exotic dancer who does not conform to the stereotypes associated with exotic dancers, and instead identifies positively with the identity of stripper. Feminist strippers are sex-positive feminists who view their profession as a choice and a career field. Feminist strippers interact with their profession in a positive manner and view it as a female-centric form of power by asserting their autonomy and by making informed decisions in regard to the regulation of their bodies.
Sexecology, also known as ecosexuality, is a radical form of environmental activism based around nature fetishism, the idea of the earth as a lover. It invites people to treat the earth with love rather than see it as an infinite resource to exploit. It was founded by Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, who describe themselves as "two ecosexual artists-in-love", whose manifesto is to make environment activism "more sexy, fun, and diverse". Sexecology employs absurdist humor, performance art and sex-positivity, which Stephens claims "may produce new forms of knowledge that hold potential to alter the future by privileging our desire for the Earth to function with as many diverse, intact and flourishing ecological systems as possible." The couple promote education, events such as the ecosex symposium, and activism, such as protecting the Appalachian Mountains from mountain top removal.
Elizabeth M. "Beth" Stephens is an American filmmaker, artist, sculptor, photographer, professor and two time Chair of the Art Department at UC Santa Cruz. Stephens, who describes herself as "ecosexual", collaborates with her wife since 2002, ecosexual artist, radical sex educator, and performer Annie Sprinkle.
Shine Louise Houston is a filmmaker and the founding director and producer of Pink and White Productions, an independent production company creating queer pornography in San Francisco. Houston makes feature-length pornographic films in addition to producing, directing, and shooting hundreds of installments for her queer porn membership site CrashPadSeries.com. Houston distributes her own work and that of other indie adult filmmakers through PinkLabel.tv, catering to different sexual communities.
References
1 2 Sprinkle, Annie (1998). Annie Sprinkle [Post-Porn Modernist: My 25 Years as a Multi-Media Whore]. San Francisco: Cleis Press. p.12. ISBN978-1-57344-039-4. I was born Ellen F. Steinberg on July 23, 1954, 11:34 a.m. in Philadelphia, the first of four children.
1 2 Garretson, Tom (2006). "Sprinkle, Annie". In Ditmore, Melissa Hope (ed.). Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. pp.458–459. ISBN978-0-313-32968-5.
Sprinkle, Annie (1998). "Introduction". In Sprinkle, Annie (ed.). Annie Sprinkle [Post-Porn Modernist: My 25 Years as a Multi-Media Whore]. San Francisco: Cleis Press. p.14. ISBN978-1-57344-039-4.
1 2 3 4 Williams, Linda (Winter 1993). "A provoking agent: the pornography and performance art of Annie Sprinkle". Social Text. 37 (37): 117–133. doi:10.2307/466263. JSTOR466263. Beginning her professional performance career as a masseuse, soon after becoming a whore, Sprinkle next expanded into burlesque and live sex shows, then to writing for sex magazines and performing in pornographic films and videos, where she eventually became a director. Reprinted in:
↑ Brown, David J.; Novick, Rebecca McClen (1995). "The Pleasure Principle with Annie Sprinkle". Voices From the Edge: Conversations With Jerry Garcia, Ram Dass, Annie Sprinkle, Matthew Fox, Jaron Lanier, & Others. Freedom, Calif.: Crossing Press. pp.26–53. ISBN978-0-89594-732-1.
1 2 Smith, Tyler Stoddard (2012). "Hustling for a higher cause". In Smith, Tyler Stoddard (ed.). Whore Stories: A Revealing History of the World's Oldest Profession. Avon, Mass.: Adams Media. pp.98–99. ISBN978-1-4405-3605-2.
↑ Kramer, Tamara (February 18, 2011). "Annie Sprinkle". Shtetl on the Shortwave (podcast). Montreal: CKUT-FM. Event occurs at 6:32 – via Shtetl: Your Alternative Jewish Magazine.
↑ Reyes, Dean Luis. "Annie Sprinkle". Miradas: Revista del Audiovisual (in Spanish). Havana: Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión. Archived from the original on May 1, 2008.
↑ Menon, Rekha (2010). Seductive aesthetics of postcolonialism. Hampton Press. p.51. ISBN978-1-57273-973-4. How can one miss, the Sex Goddess, Annie Sprinkle (the postporn modern artist), Tantric inspired cosmic Kali, Sprinkle as the Neo Sacred Prostitute / Goddess. She is known as the prostitute and porn star turned sex educator and artist. Sprinkle's work has always been about sexuality, with a political, spiritual, and artistic bent.
1 2 Kapsalis, Terri (1997). Public Privates: Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum. Duke University Press. pp.113–134. ISBN978-0-8223-1928-3.
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