Annie Sprinkle

Annie M. Sprinkle (born Ellen F. Steinberg on July 23, 1954) is an American certified sexologist, performance artist, former sex worker, filmmaker, and advocate for the decriminalization of sex work.

Sprinkle has worked as a prostitute, sex educator, feminist stripper, pornographic film actress, sex film producer and director, and documentary film director. She became known in the 1980s as a maker of feminist, lesbian, and sex-positive pornography. Sprinkle married her long-time partner Elizabeth Stephens in Canada on January 14, 2007.

Life and career Sprinkle was born Ellen F. Steinberg on July 23, 1954, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a Russian-Jewish mother and a Polish-Jewish father. Her family moved to Los Angeles, California, when she was five years old, and she lived in Panama City, Panama from age thirteen to seventeen. At eighteen, she began working at the ticket booth at the Cine-Plaza Theatre in Tucson, Arizona, when Deep Throat (1972) was playing. 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. She later changed her name legally to Annie Sprinkle. 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.

In 1992, Sprinkle and videographer Maria Beatty produced a humorous sex education video, The Sluts and Goddesses Video Workshop: Or How To Be A Sex Goddess in 101 Easy Steps. Sprinkle has also presented many sex workshops with fellow sex facilitator Barbara Carrellas, with whom she presented the stage production Metamorphosex. Her best known theater and performance art piece is her Public Cervix Announcement, in which she invites the audience to view her cervix with a speculum and flashlight. She also performed The Legend of the Ancient Sacred Prostitute, in which she did a "sex magic" masturbation ritual on stage. She has toured one-woman shows internationally for 17 years, some of which were titled Post Porn Modernist, Annie Sprinkle's Herstory of Porn, 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.

Her work and publications, spanning over five 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. Her most popular lecture was 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 a seven year long art project 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. 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.

She was featured in Maya Gallus's 1997 documentary film Erotica: A Journey Into Female Sexuality.

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."

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.

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.

Harvard's Schlesinger Library acquired her papers from 1967 to 2010, including those covering work with her partner Elizabeth Stephens.

Feminism and environmental activism

Sprinkle is known as a contributor to the development of pornography that intends to be feminist 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.

As a porn actress, Sprinkle drew greater attention to the female orgasm. A stated aim of her performance art and other works has been to expand and deconstruct mainstream ideals of sexuality.

Sprinkle and her wife Beth Stephens are known for promoting a combination of environmental activism and sexuality called ecosexuality, and launching the ecosex movement with their Ecosex Manifesto. They state ecosexuality involves imagining nature as a lover. Ecosexuality combines sexuality and ecology and opposes sexual dynamics of dominance and exploitation, placing it adjacent to ecofeminism, which highlights how women and nature are treated similarly in a patriarchal society.

Post-porn movement Annie Sprinkle coined the term "post-porn" to describe sexually explicit media that is experimental, conceptual, humorous, feminist, artsy, punk, and outside of mainstream porn aesthetics.

In her one-woman touring show "Post-Porn Modernist" (1989–95), she performed Public Cervix Announcement, Sprinkle inserted a speculum into her vaginal canal to display her cervix to the audience in a playful, satirical celebration of the female body. Sprinkle has characterized her own art involving erotic and explicit imagery of the vulva and internal female anatomy as feminist activism. Sprinkle has contributed to the post-porn movement through her artistic body of work which engages in critical reflection and parody. "Contributor". In:

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Filmography + Film and TV credits Year Title Role Notes 1975 Blow Some My Way B.J. 1975 Sue Prentiss R.N. First Nurse (uncredited) 1975 My Master My Love Margaret's Brunette Client (as Annie Sands) 1975 The American Andventures of Surelick Holmes Stewardess (uncredited) 1975 Teenage Masseuse (as Annie Sprinkles) 1975 Kathy's Graduation Present Anita (uncredited) 1975 Sherlick Holmes 1975 Too Hot to Handle Ellen (as Annie Sands) 1975 French Shampoo (Homage to W. B.) Little Mary 1975 Wild Pussycats 1975 Satan Was a Lady Terry (as Anny Sands)Directed by Doris Wishman 1975 Fanny June (uncredited) 1976 Pornocopia Sensual Susan 1976 Honey Pie Blow Job Annie (as Ann Sprinkle) 1976 Teenage Deviate Ella (as Annie Sprinkles) 1976 Ecstasy in Blue Hentai 1976 Expose Me, Lovely Robin (as Annie Sprinkles) 1976 M*A*S*H'd Gail 1976 Once Over Nightly 1976 Teenage Cover Girls Anne Sands (as Anne Sands) 1976 The Night of Submission Editor's Mistress 1976 Seduction Girl at bridge party No. 1 1976 My Erotic Fantasies Russian Porn Actress 1976 Bang Bang You Got It! Rhoda Thomas 1976 Slippery When Wet Stella Wilkins (as Annie Sprinkles) 1976 The Double Exposure of Holly Muff (as Annie Sprinkles) 1976 Call Me Angel, Sir Tracy Dixon 1976 The Affairs of Janice Susan (uncredited) 1976 Come with Me My Love Tess Albertino 1976 Funk 1976 Wet-X-Mas 1977 The Devil Inside Her Orgy Girl (as Annie Sprinkles) 1977 Cherry Hustlers Sprink (uncredited) 1977 Unwilling Lovers Hooker with Stole (as Annie Sprinkles) 1978 The Ganja Express Sherry Herring 1979 Jack n' Jill First Caller 1979 For Richer for Poorer Party Guest (uncredited) 1980 The Satisfiers of Alpha Blue Satisfier 1980 Midnight Blue 2 1981Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle 1981 Twilite Pink Prostitute (as Annie Sprinkles) 1981 Centerfold Fever Annie 1981 Pandora's Mirror The Queen of the club (as Miss Annie Sprinkle) 1981 Bizarre Styles Annie 1982 Night on the Town 1983 Oriental Techniques in Pain and Pleasure Annie (as Annie Sprinkles) 1983 Kneel Before Me Wife / Justine (as Annie Sprinkles) 1983 Big Busty 3 (Video) 1984 Throat... 12 Years After The Sewer Mother 1984 Electric Blue 12 (Video) Shelly 1985 Spitfire Lulu 1986 Wimps (Video) Head Stripper 1986 Sweet Revenge 1987 The Lingerie Shop 1987 She-Male Encounters 5: Orgy at the Poysinberry Bar 1987 She Comes in Colors 1987 Rites of Passion 1988 Tattoo Vampire (Video) 1988 The Horneymooners (Video) Jane Norris 1988 Hotter Than July 1988 Dreams of Desire 1988 Bazooka County (Video) 1989 Young Nurses in Love Twin Falls 1990 The Golden Boat Waitress 1990 Fantasy Salon 1991 My Father Is Coming Annie Directed by Monika Treut 1991 Shadows in the City Ex-GirlfriendDirected by Ari Roussimoff 1991 Mature Women 2 (Video) 1992 25 Year Old Gay Man Loses His Virginity to a Woman Self Directed by Philip B. Roth 1992 Linda/Les and Annie Self Directed by Johnny Armstrong, Albert Jaccoma, Annie Sprinkle 1992 War Is Menstrual Envy 1992 Pinned and Smothered (Video) 1996 Bubbles Galore God 1997 The Fanny (Video) 1999 Ecstasy in Entropy (Short) 2005 The Keep (Short) 2005 Electra Elf: The Beginning Parts One & Two 2005 H.C.E. Various 2009 Mutantes: Punk, Porn, Feminism 2011 Kenny Hotz's Triumph of the Will Self Episode 4 2012 Lesbian Sex Education: Female Ejaculation (Video) 2013 Goodbye Gauley Mountain: an Ecosexual Love Story (Video) 2017Water Makes Us Wet: An Ecosexual AdventureLead, Director 2025Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual EmergencyDirector, Producer, Actor