An eager audience, filling nearly every seat in Jordan A100 and lining the stairs on either side, awaited the start of Sprinkle’s lecture, “What I did for Love, Sex, Money and Art.”
Her reputation — as a former prostitute, adult film actress, sex work decriminalization activist, artist and ecosexual — preceded her.
“It’s an absolute honor to be here,” Sprinkle said. “I’m having a campusgasm.”
The 61-year-old went on to give a brief history of the last 40 years of her life using a Powerpoint presentation that displayed explicit images from her various films and photo shoots, speaking with no more pizazz than one lecturing about biology or business.
Sprinkle was born Ellen Steinberg in Philadelphia, she said, and her shyness made it so few people ever imagined where her future would lie.
Sprinkle’s career in the sex industry began politically and stayed that way, she said.
She worked as a teen selling popcorn for a movie theater that played “Deep Throat,” and she was made to testify when that movie theater was busted for illegally distributing obscene material.
Through the experience, she met “Deep Throat” director George Damiano. She became Damiano’s mistress and lived with him in New York City for the next 20 years while acting in his films and performing burlesque in Times Square.
Eventually, Sprinkle tired of being directed only by men and acting out their fantasies, so she made her own video, “Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle.”
When magazine Ms. took a stance against pornography, Sprinkle took up protesting for the rights of her fellow adult film actresses.
Anti-porn feminists pushed back, but Sprinkle stood firm as a sex-positive feminist.
Prostitution was added to Sprinkle’s resume when she realized the financial opportunity that came with it. She could work few hours, around 17 per week, and still make $4,000 in a week.
“I was very privileged,” she said. “I could have gone to college, I could have done a lot of things, but I chose to work in brothels. What an adventure.”
With the course of the lecture veering toward prostitution, several graphs were shown on the projector screen.
One compared the height of the Empire State Building to the total length of penis she has encountered. Another estimated the amount of semen she has swallowed in her lifetime: about 5.1 quarts.
Two of the graphs compared the advantages and disadvantages of her career choice.
While she said she might have hurt her parents and might have psychological damage, she said the positives outweigh the negatives.
Sprinkle did get arrested once for conspiracy to make pornography, sodomy and conspiracy to commit sodomy. The charges were eventually dropped, but she cites this as another reason she continues to push for decriminalization of sex.
When HIV/AIDS hit the sex industry, Sprinkle advocated for safe sex, founding Pornographers Promoting Safer Sex. Though she never procured the disease, many of her friends and lovers did.
Sprinkle has a doctorate in human sexuality, but her undergraduate degree was in fine arts. She identifies largely as a performance artist, she said.
One of her most popular shows was “Public Cervix Announcement,” in which she allowed audiences to view her cervix with a speculum and a flashlight.
“I was so excited to be able to see my own cervix, I wanted to share that with others,” she said. Sprinkle estimated about 40,000 people have seen her cervix.
Sprinkle’s time is occupied these days with creating and promoting ecosexual films with her wife, Beth Stephens.
The two have traveled the world doing performance art together, including several marriage ceremonies to the earth, sea, moon, soil and other aspects of nature. They also set up free sex clinics in the streets of cities throughout the world, in which anyone may sit down and receive free sex advice.
In 2005, Sprinkle was diagnosed with breast cancer and is now in remission.
She and Stephens reacted by making the first “cancer erotica.”
“We were in love, and we were exploring love through art,” Sprinkle said.
At one point during the lecture, Sprinkle called Stephens up to speak about ecosexuality, which is the intersection between ecology and sexuality.
The two went on to read off a list of 25 ways to make love to the earth.
Among those in the audience were the digital arts students of visiting assistant professor of fine arts Rachel Weaver, who required her class to attend. Weaver works with Debby Herbenick, a sexual health educator at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction.
“I feel like she has a lot of insight from all of her experience with the sex industry,” Weaver said.
Sprinkle closed with a short piece of performance art, her “Bosom Ballet.” She removed her breasts from her dress and used her hands to move them in a dance to classical music.
Before the Bosom Ballet, however, she allowed for a short question-and-answer session. One person raised their hand to ask what Sprinkle thought it would take to decriminalize sexuality.
Sprinkle said there’s a lot of fear in the world, and one of the only ways to stifle it is better sex education.
However, while the issue is making progress, decriminalization still has a long way to go, she said. The complexities are endless.
“It’s like life itself,” Sprinkle said.
