Climax Change: Annie Sprinkle, Beth Stephens, and Ecosexuality

When two queer, sex-positive, environmentalist artists meet, of course they’re going to fall for each other and make something truly fascinating. Filmmaker Beth Stephens and feminist artist and porn star Annie Sprinkles started the Ecosex movement which says that instead of “Mother Earth”, maybe we should treat our home like “Lover Earth”. Things are gonna get dirty - literally!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's weird sitting down to the mic again. Yeah, let
me just up right at the top. I will throw
for the listeners. I almost say, the viewers. The viewers,
that's how that's how disconnected I am from the audio
world right now.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
In their mind's eye, I'm sure they're picturing it.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Oh, they're picturing much better than what than reality.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
I don't like to share pictures of ourselves. We prefer
whatever you're thinking.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
But I will say we continue to be scattered and
sporadic for various reasons. But I am still very excited.
We will have news for you guys soon about you know,
our schedules lately and how everything's been going one way
or another. I think the you know, the fires of industry.
They burn slow, but we're on the break.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
They burn fast, but they warm slow. Yeah, maybe something.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
We're on the brink of cool new news. But until then,
got to.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Say, we appreciate your patience. Really sorry to be so
spotty with our recordings out, but we really really enjoy
making this show. We promise we are working on it,
and we miss you guys. So I'm missing us, guys.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
We've gotten some messages checking in, are you guys?

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Okay, how nice to we are people to care you.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Are, and I'll be worth it. I'm so, I'm so
very excited. But part of recently we did go out
of town.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
We did go out of town. We're reacted, of course,
the promised land Las Vegas.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Baby.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
We got offered some free rooms because of our last
trip to Vegas.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
It doesn't take much.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Apparently, Eli just kind of turned me. It's like, hey,
I don't know, do you want to go stay? Do
you want to go back to Vegas? And we hadn't
planned a trip for this year, so I was like, fine.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
If I may say, I got that email offering us
three free nights at Park MGM, and I turned to
you very much expecting an eye roll, and what yeah, sure, great,
No I'm not going back to Vegas. And I distinctly
remember you saying, you know what, let's do it. And
I was shocked, right, I was like, well, if you

(02:05):
want to, then we're definitely going, because I always want
to well, I want to go somewhere.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
I don't want all our vacations to just be Vegas.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
I don't either.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
That is not going to work.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
This one ended up being a full seven days, really
crazy and I'm good for a minute, and.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
I'm going to tell y'all seven days is too long.
It's too much Vegas. But I mean, we usually take
a trip for anniversary. It's the anniversary next week actually,
And we hadn't really planned anything this year because of
all the reasons. We're so scattered, we're not really sure
what's going on right now. So a lot of things
up in the air, a lot of balls up in
the air. So we were like, I was just like,
I don't know what else we're going to plan for

(02:42):
this year, so we may as well just go for it.
I mean, I feel like free stuff. I'm fine to
accept free stuff. And we did accept a lot of
free stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Oh did we? And I'll tell you well, we'll give
a little brief recap of the trip in the in
the upfront here. We got in the park MGM. They
gave us a nice upgrade to our room, which was
very kind of them. They put us up on the
twenty third floor, which had been recently renovated, and they
put us in a stay well room which has a

(03:11):
air purifier and hypoallergenic pillows and a vitamin C infused shower.
Whatever that means, it means nothing. What it is is
you go in there and the hose of the shower
has this little it looks like the Ninja Turtles two
secret of the loose canister except the orange and the
shower water is going through that before it comes out

(03:33):
the shower heads. You're like, some tang is being applied
to our skin right now in this shower there. The
room itself, however, did not appeal to us. It was
an accessibility room, which is wonderful and helpful I'm sure
for someone who needs it, but like, for example, are
the closet rod was set very low, so Diana couldn't

(03:54):
hang the dresses that she brought up in the closet.
And there's no furniture because obviously they want the walkways
to be so there was no drawers to put our
clothes in some of these things that or or for example,
we really liked the standing shower that we had last
time when we stayed there, and this time there was
a tub with some you know, accessibility features handrails and
a sitting tub with a bench and things like that,

(04:16):
which is all cool, but it wasn't for us.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah, we didn't need it. Yeah, So it was just like,
you know, a little bit disappointing. But I thought it
was very strange that a lot of the decor was
just gone. And you know, it was like some of
the stuff on the wall, I feel like it shouldn't
have an effect, or even painting the wall or something
just so that has some vibes in there. It's still
a nice hotel room. The view was great. It was
like a pool view.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
Oh pools had view lovely.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
But yeah, in a lot of ways, I'm just kind
of I was sort of like, well, I'm angry for
my accessibility friends who are getting this kind of like
dingy room, but I'm glad that they. Of course, it's
very important to have those accommodations. Yeah, that's more important
that you can your room is functional than pretty.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
So the next day, Diana had treated herself to a
Belagio massage spa package, and I know you had questioned
it do I you know, I don't want to spend
this money, and I was like, do it. We're here,
We're making this as cheap a vacation as we can
have your one splurge thing.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
It's true.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
And while she was gone, I thought, well, maybe I'll
see if I can get our room changed. And so
you tell them your SPA experience.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Which I was. I'm already looking into like a mister
Bean clown school or something, because I really want to
make anxious girl it goes to the spa clown routine
because there were many things about it that were very
anxiety inducing in some ways. And I told him right
up front, A very bad at relaxing, so we're here
to learn. But there are lots of things like the

(05:41):
shower was incredibly hot and I couldn't I couldn't change
the temperature because there's too many knobs. So it's just
various little things like that. It was totally making me
laugh though otherwise it was just a beautiful experience. I mean,
they were really nice there. They really weren't sneery at all.
Don't I don't go to spas, so I didn't know
what to do. I don't know if the policy protocols
or protocols or how you move around that space looking

(06:03):
like you belong, right, but they were so so nice.
It was really beautiful facility. The massage was amazing. I
also got this like CBD body scrub treatment thing that
was really nice, and so I was I came out.
Like when I went back out to leave, this other
lady was like, did you get a facial today? And
I was like, no, I didn't. I got, you know,
my my two treatments. She's like, well, you are just glowing,

(06:25):
and I was like, well, I feel like I'm glowing.
And maybe she says that to everybody, but it worked
for me. So it was just a lovely experience. I
was like, I'm so glad I did it. It was
so so wonderful.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
Cut to me, I'm like sweating. I did move the room.
So I'm hauling all of our bags up and down
elevators three days.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
But yes, I called him. I was like, I'm done
at the Bellagio and he's like, I'm just moving us
to our new room. So I'll come, you know, come
on through and I'll show it to you. And Eli
meets me down a lobby and he's he was like,
all right, so yeah, I asked about a room upgrade
or switching the room, and and you know, it's it's
a better room. It's definitely a bit it's worth moving.

(07:04):
I'm glad that we moved. Don't have, you know, lower
your expectations. And I was like, okay, it's just better.
So I was like, it's a standard room whatever. And
we go up to the twenty eighth floor, this time
higher than before. Oh that's nice. He's like the views
not as good and stuff, but whatever, it's fine, and
he's walking me to the room and it's like right
there by the elevators. Didn't realize he was filming me.

(07:26):
That would have been a real giveaway because he opened
the door and it was like the most amazing suite
that I've ever been in. I was like, what am
I looking at?

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Was closet?

Speaker 2 (07:38):
We had a walk in closet. The bathroom is amazing,
so cute and had all of the little decor and
details that I had been looking for, and it was
so lovely, and I was just like.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
Wow, it was it was a worse view.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
It was a worse view, but who cares better? Oh man,
it was just so such a nice surprise. So I
was just like, I'm already feeling so good, and then
he had spent all this time to make me feel
even better. It was really nice.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
Well look at me, look at you, sweating and dragon
and I know you had the very opposite of relaxing experience.
But but then bullet points, let's see lots of money,
want some money, saw caw it struck to Sole, which
is really cool. We saw a fantasy at Luxur which
was so we went for like, oh, we'll see like

(08:29):
a strip tease sexy girls show. It was hilarious. The
MC was just killer. She's an incredible singer and comedian.
And there was a stand up that was awesome. It
was just a great show. Really loved it.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Yeah, I was so surprised because it's one of the
cheaper shows that we went to, and I was like,
this one's actually really good. And then girls were very
pretty and they danced really well, and I mean everything
was really fun. So I was just like, I don't know,
this is great. And we were like right in the
front row too. It's kind of freaky, but fortunately nobody
bothered us. They had other people. They had drunker people
to make fun of.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
We saw Piff the Magic Dragon from America's Got Talent.
He was hilarious. And then and then yeah, and then
we were gonna leave Friday, and Caesar's Properties offered us
two more free nights at the Horseshoe. I don't know
why we're not high rollers. We're not big spenders. I
guess they just like us.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
We just said why not and.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Then we left. We checked out the day that MGM
got hacked, but we were we had moved over to
a Caesar's property so we didn't have to deal with it.
We didn't even know what was happening until we until
we left.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah, we also were there when Ed Sheeran canceled the concert,
just like an hour or something before it was supposed
to go on. God and I had gone up to
the room and seeing these five girls leaving their room
at the Horseshoe dressed like Ed Sheeran, like they had
full on Weasley red wigs, I was like, they're either

(09:52):
Weasley's or Ed Sheeran, I don't know which one. And
when I realized Ed Seron was playing, it was like
that's definitely what it was. All were in the same outfit,
they had like uh drawn on facial hair and everything,
and I was just like so excited for them because
I was like, what an amazing night they're going to
have it Ed Sheeran.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
And then he canceled, and I was just.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Thinking about them all weekend, like I hope they went
to karaoke and all saying shape of You together or something.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
People were mad, but I were mad. I heard it
was a legit safety issue.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yes it was. It sounded like it was the right
thing to do. But I definitely felt sorry because we
were talking about some people had the worst, very worst
possible Vegas vacation that they could have had because they
flew in to stay at an MGM property and see
Ed Sheeran and instead they did not see Ed Sheerant,
and they got their credit card information compromise and couldn't.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
Play anything slot like hours to check out of your.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Anyway, crazy situation. So we got very Maybe we didn't
make our fortune in Vegas, but I still feel like
we were very, very lucky.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yes, yes, we had a really nice time.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
It was wonderful, some good food.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
So that's the bullet point. We won't spend the whole
episodisode recounting like we did last year when we went
to Vegas with Cherry and Jason. But uh, but we're back.
We're in our in our in our house. Yay. Not
a sweet, not a.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
Sweet that does not get turned down every naw.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah, No one comes in here and cleans when we
go out to work.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Who's responsible for this bathroom?

Speaker 1 (11:18):
Right? And uh, none of the games I'm playing even
have the possibility of paying me money anymore.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
You're paying them. Yeah, so but onward you're different out here.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yeah. But I am excited to be back to this
because I do love doing this so much more than
sitting around and waiting to do this, which is what
I spend the rest of my time doing. Well.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Also, this one's really interesting. Yeah, this is fun because
I get last episode we were talking about fuck for Forrest.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
If you can remember way back, ask your grandparents if
they remember that episode.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah, go back to the ancestry decades ago. But yeah,
one of our story, and that one was about the
non well I guess it's not really technically a nonprofit,
but they're trying to basically make pornography to raise money
to give to environmental causes, and they sometimes have sex
with vegetables, okay, and so it's like, hmm, and apparently

(12:17):
that is part of being an eco sexual, which is
this whole sexual identity. I had never heard of this,
even doing this show for two years, had not this
had not come up for us. So this was really exciting.
And it turns out that the pioneers of ecosexuality are
a married lesbian couple who have spent decades making art
around female sexuality, gender identity, queer identity, and environmental action.

(12:41):
So all lots of things that we're interested in, especially
at this show. So let's talk about Annie Sprinkle, Beth
Stevens and the eco sexual identity that proclaims that Earth
is not our mother but our love. Oh okay, let's go, yay.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
Come listen. Well, Eli and Diana got some stories to tell.
There's no matchmaking a romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous
relations ships.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
I love.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
There might be any type of person at all, an
abstract concept or a concrete wall. But if there's a
story where the Second clans ridiculous romance.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
A production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Elizabeth Stevens was born in nineteen sixty in Montgomery, West Virginia,
deep in coal country, to a coal company owning family,
which must be an interesting thing for her to deal
with now that she's such an environmental you know, activists, right.
She went to lots of great schools, Tufts, the Museum's School,
and Rutgers, earning fine arts degrees, and then she was

(13:46):
hired at the University of California in Santa Cruz UC
Santa Cruz in nineteen ninety three, where as outsiderfest dot
Org writes, she was quote a feisty, punk, dyke, playboy,
interdisciplinary artist and professor exploring themes of gender, queerness and feminism.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
I know that that was my crowd in college. Hell yeah,
I honest.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
I don't know. If I could have hung out with them,
I would have felt not cool enough, but I would
have been like, they're so cool.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
Oh. I was just like sitting like, just keep your
mouth shut. Just it's cool that you're here. Just to live,
to be included. Just live in it. Don't say, don't
ruin it.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
Just let it happen. Just happy to be in the
room exactly. One of Beth's earliest projects is a film
from nineteen eighty nine called Women Eating, and another from
the same year where she interviews Wahawk and women and then.
She would eventually chair the art department at UC Santa
Cruz twice, once between two thousand and six and two
thousand and nine and then again from twenty seventeen until

(14:47):
twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
You know, it's very rude to watch women eating and
women talking at the same time.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
You can't.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
You want to make sure you've finished women eating and
then you can go into women talking.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
But don't then watch women swallowing. That's a very different film.
Oh nope, the in between film is not the same.
It's not part of the series.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
All right, So the other woman here, Annie Sprinkle. She's
going to take a little bit longer to introduce. She
was born Ellen f Steinberg in Philly in nineteen fifty four,
and then her family moved to la and then they
moved to Panama during her teen years, and when she
was eighteen, she was working at a movie theater in Tucson,
Arizona that was showing the seminole porn film Deep Throat,

(15:35):
Ah the classic. Ellen here was working at the Deep
Throat screening and the movie theater she was working at
got busted for showing an adult movie. Oh we swear
we thought it was about the Nixon tapes. Well. Ellen
was called as a witness during this case, and when
she went to the courthouse, she met and fell head
over heels for Deep Throats director Gerard Damiano.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
She became his mistress and she followed him to New
York City and Not long after, she of course naturally
started doing porn herself under the name Annie Sprinkle. Her
best known porn you all know and love. It's one
that she co directed. It's called Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle,
and it was the second highest grossing porn film of

(16:21):
nineteen eighty one. Did you happen to find the first?

Speaker 2 (16:24):
I did?

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Not?

Speaker 2 (16:25):
I should find it.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
You know, it doesn't even matter because who inside Annie Sprinkle?
I mean, come on, really, get me a lot of
I assume it's about an introspective look, yeah, exactly into
the soul of Annie Sprinkle and not.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
It's basically beat poetry.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
Sure, beat your meat poetry.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
Beat your meat poetry. You know, Annie would probably approve
of that. I think she'd be like, I'm down for
beat your meat poetry. Let's get this going.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
Bongo drums, Jack carra whass Jack Carroll whack off.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
Jack Carroll whack off. Yeah, doing beat the meat poetry.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
Jack off carohakoff.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
Oh my god, we should do that meat poetry. Okay,
I'm the work on anxious girl going to the spa,
but you need to work on jack off kro whakhoff
doing beat your meat poetry?

Speaker 1 (17:12):
All right, that's it everyone ridiculous from it's canceled. We're
focused on this project.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
Now we have some art.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
To make, all right. Well.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Anny then started getting into sex education as well as entertainment.
She created a Sluts and Goddesses workshop about female pleasure
in nineteen ninety one that then became a video workshop series.
In nineteen ninety six, she became the first known porn
star to earn a doctorate degree, which she got in

(17:40):
human sexuality. And I love the qualifier. They're like, lots
of people have doctorate degrees, lots of people are porn stars.
A lot of people with doctors don't tell you if
they ever did porn. Oh, they don't let you know.
But she's like, I'm just the first body who said it. Yeah, yeah, I'm.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Proud of it.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
I want you to know. Okay, I bet there's a
lot more people now that have like doctorates that are
on OnlyFans house.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
Do you think they paid for medical exactly right?

Speaker 2 (18:06):
But anyway, at the time, this was a real surprise.
And then she pioneered feminist pornography or porn based on
women's desires, which she kind of created because she wanted
to defy a feminist group that operated in the seventies
and eighties that was hilariously called WOP Women Against Pornography.

(18:27):
What but I kind of love the idea of Cardi
b and Megan thee Stallion being like, you know what,
I'm taking it back. WOP now means wet ass pussy.
How about that?

Speaker 1 (18:38):
Wow, women against Pornography? You get a bucket and a mop.
We're going to clean up this town. What if that
have been their slogan is like, We're going to get
a bucket and a mop and clean up this town.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Oh my god, I love it so much. Uh, Annie's
Beinka also made lesbian porn and a transgender love story
film Okay, which you know again she's she's making movies
in the nineties. This was a real boundary that she
was pushing.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
Some other genres that she has been at the for scanna,
I mean forefront of Wow whoops em uh are include
genres like edgy porn, triple X docu drama, gonzo porn, okay,
art porn, and feminist erotica.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
All right, gonzo porn more like gonzo journalism, not muppets.
I'm assuming.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
Well, look, you know what, there's something everybody with pornography,
but gonzo porn like gonzo journalism. It kind of sounds
like you run up on somebody.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
Like yeah, Wikipedia tells me it's the style of pornographic
film that attempts to place the viewer directly into the scene.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
Oh so it's like POV porn.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
Yeah kind of maybe so yeah, yeah, POV is what
they get into here. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
So, well, apparently any VR, porn, VR, early VR. I'm
surprised she's not working on so maybe she is.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
She may be. Well.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
Annie Spinkle one of the first to do POV porn.
I yes, she also worked as a prostitute. She got
into burless, she did live sex shows, and she wrote
for sex magazines. So she's just all over the sex industry.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
Annie also started doing performance art. Naturally, she needed every
outlet she could find to get this. She clearly a
lot of performance hey now. This included her best known piece,
public cervix Announcement, where where she lets the audience view
her cervix with a speculum and a flashlight to quote

(20:40):
celebrate the female body. And I mean I celebrate a
lot of things that I don't need a very close
look at. Don't tell me what's in that cake for example,
I'm good with the big picture.

Speaker 4 (20:55):
Well it doesn't know, won't hurt me? Yeah exactly, but
I don't know won't hurt me. Another formance piece she
did was called The Legend of the Ancient Sacred Prostitute,
where she does something called a quote sex magic masturbation
ritual on stage.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
Sex magic sounds like a very White song to me,
Oh yeah, baby, ooh, I'm gonna turn you on with
my six magic.

Speaker 3 (21:21):
Uh huh.

Speaker 5 (21:22):
Give it to us, very if it don't work for
you to bear that movie tragy, because we was made
for a low murderer, were made for to Juny of
those books and wed a lowe.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
Wow, very very.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
Journy.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
Other book, Very, how did you get in here?

Speaker 5 (21:55):
You gonna pull a scarf, ride out on my hat
and then you jump in the box.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
And I was ritual and half straight or blow out
the back, but out there.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
Us up. Okay, he tied the magic back in. I
see that's good.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
Okaye. He's a sex.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Magician, sex magician.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah, he's pulling things out of his sack.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
He's pulling things out of somewhere. All right, Well, thanks
for stopping by special guest star Very White today's episode.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
I'm doing a real bad job, David.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
All Right. So Annie also has toured internationally for years
doing her performance art. She is often presented as a
visiting artist at universities and colleges all over the US
and Europe, and her work is also studied in courses
all over in colleges like women's studies, queer studies, film history,

(22:56):
human sexuality, courses like that, the history of World War Two. Sure,
home economics, I'm sure ap calculus. That's high school, but
you know it's an advanced class.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
So making taught again with Annie Sprinkle, Now that would work,
I mean maybe it would. Well, that's pretty cool. I
mean that's cool to first of all, get get get
a doctorate in human sexuality and then start adding so
much to the study of human sexuality with your own
work and your own art and everything.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
I mean, in such a school, no pun intended, untapped field,
I mean, there is a lot of room for new
movement and new ideas and stuff. There's barely anybody focused
and studying it. So you come in and it's kind
of the you know, it's the world's your playground, right, Yeah,
you can got to say, no one's it now it's
up to new scholars to contest what you said. But

(23:52):
you've got no rules you want.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
I guess that's true. She also was saying, she said
in some interview that she was like a lot of
sex workers don't care about the art world, but I
found it to be more free, Like I was able
to be more free with my sexuality and with my
with my creative expression in the art world than I
was in the sex world. And I thought that was

(24:17):
interesting because the art world can be very stuffy, the.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
Art world can be very excluding.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yeah, So that was a cool thing to read from.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
Her, because artists are kind of sometimes artists I have
found dabbling in the art world ourselves a little bit.
I sort of feel like if you're not also an artist,
if you don't speak the language, if you don't understand,
you're less invited, yeah than us. Yeah, But with sex,
like everybody is invited, Like you can't exclude like literally everyone,

(24:48):
almost everybody, everybody, but you know, as a as a
general rule, most people are involved in sex in some
way in their lives, if nothing else. It's what brought
them here.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
So it's hard to exclude very true.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
You know, anyone from that very.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
True, and it's hard to I mean, you can put
a lot of academic language on the human body and
stuff like that, but there's still a lot of room
for a lack of pretension because it is I mean,
we make funny faces that, we make funny noises, you
know what I mean. It's a joyous expression a lot
of time. So anyway, it's hard to get too stuffy
about it, right, getting stuffed.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
Don't get stuffy about getting stuffed.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
Annie Sprinkleway. Well, anyway, maybe it's no surprise to anyone
that when these two radical queer, sex positive art making
feminists met each other, they like immediately fell head over
heels for one another, and they started collaborating together, and
in two thousand and four they committed to seven years
of art projects about love called the Love Art Laboratory,

(25:51):
and these projects always included a wedding. Okay, Now, at
the time, this was really pushing some boundaries because marriage
equality was a really big issue. Kind of hard to
remember how crazy this was now and we were there
for it, you know what I mean. But there was
such a tug of war going on in the US
about whether or not same sex marriage was okay. Basically

(26:13):
so over the seven years that these ladies were doing
these projects, many states would legalize same sex marriage in
their own state and then have it overturned by a
constitutional amendment, kind of like with California's Prop eight or
Prop eight as we called it. Between especially twenty four
and twenty fifteen, people were getting the right to have

(26:34):
domestic or civil unions instead of marriage. It was just
like a different word, so stupid, So they were getting
permission for that, while other states were at the same
time defining marriage as being between a man and woman,
no one else can get married. Many places were issuing
marriage licenses so people would get married, and then they
would later invalidate the marriage license, so now you're not

(26:56):
married anymore. Just a really chaotic situation going on for
many years until finally, finally SCOTUS ruled same sex marriage
bands unconstitutional in twenty fifteen. Boom, Now we barely remember relish.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
I know, well it's wild and you know, and it's
not like it's not coming up again because people are
still real sensitive about it for some reason. And I'm
sitting here after you know how many years we've been
doing this show and thinking, y'all, can you can we
just ignore that. We got people out here trying to
marry computer programs and buildings and shit and this, and
you know, personally, I'm like, there's nothing wrong with that,

(27:33):
but at least can y'all just get away from when
two humans are marrying each other? Just let it be.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
It's fine, it's.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
Fine, it's great. It's actually real nice, right, it's a
real nice thing that people do, and to be nice,
you know, like, what the hell is your problem?

Speaker 2 (27:47):
It's a wonderful expression of I'd like to stand by
your side forever. Holy shit, how beautiful, you know. But
people were like feeling somehow like their marriage was lessened
i same sex marriage or something, even though literally it
was just so they could have legal protections had nothing
to do with anything sacred. It had something to do

(28:08):
with whether or not you could leave somebody something when
you died, or if they could have custody of their
kids together and stuff like that. So it was kind
of it was just such a stupid temper tantrum that
lasted literally like eleven years.

Speaker 1 (28:22):
So Annie and Beth, their actual legal domestic partnership, was
in San Francisco. This happened alongside thirty three other couples,
a spectrum of LGBTQ and straight couples as well. Annie
wore a silver disco dress and a feather trimmed duster,
and Beth wore a silver tuxedo. And the San Francisco

(28:44):
Gay Men's Chorus and the Transgender Choir the Believers performed
at this ceremony. This is when they thought of this
idea of wedding as a performance art and they started
the Love Art Laboratory.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yeah, Beth was saying, you know, it is a lot
like a play. I think we said the same when
we had our wedding, because it was very much you
need a stage manager our day of planner. You have
to think about the audience, you have to think about
there's speeches to give monologues basically to prepare. There's cues.
I mean, everything about it is very performance based. Oh yeah,

(29:17):
So they were like, hmm.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
The only thing we missed was repelling down from helicopter
to the beginning of ours. There was a lot well,
there was a lot more performance. There was an idea
for our wedding at one point that we were going
to record a video message from ourselves from the future
and pop in and say something and we were going
to have to time it out so that us at
the altar would have to like speak to them.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
That's right. That's why we didn't do it.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
Like an old talk show bit man, it would have
been great.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
Yeah, when we knew the vows, it will have more
money and it's going to be amazing.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
We'll be in front of four hundred thousand people and
it'll be it'll be the new greatest.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
You'll have costume changes, there will be helicopter.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
So it's a wedding performance art idea. And each year
of the Love Art Laboratory was assigned a color based
on a chakra and a theme. Right, So everyone is
welcome to take their vows with these two and apparently
the ceremony would also always include an objection to the wedding,
where a friend would get up and read the top

(30:17):
ten reasons why marriage should be abolished about how it's
outdated and unequal, you know, just to make sure that
there is some perspective in the space in the conversation,
you know.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
Right, Because they were like, you know, we're having fun
experimenting with the performance of a wedding, the performance of love.
Who gets to get married in the country and stuff
like that. But of course lots of people find marriage
to be a very outdated institution that does nothing for anybody.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
So they were like, why not, It's just inclusivity, you know,
like your perspective is part of this too, but we're
also going to do it.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
But we're going.

Speaker 1 (30:52):
Going to so we kind of felt, you know, it's
like there's a real silliness to the idea of marriage,
the institution of marriage and the history we have marriage,
and also like we want to do that our own way.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yeah, it was. It was just there's something nice about
having a party where everybody gets to come together and
be excited that you found each other.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
That, and then there's something lovely too, at least for us,
since we liked each other's families. I guess I don't
know about others, but there's something too about that feeling of, oh,
you're part of my family now, so you need to
meet everybody, or you're all mixed together. I need to
meet your family. We're all one family, so it's important
for us to you know, share this space, break bread together,

(31:33):
you know what I mean? Say the magic words the
incantation right that creates a valve which which is real.
I think there is something magical about your promises.

Speaker 1 (31:43):
Right, Yeah, yeah, I think so. And then the cool
trip afterwards, and then of course shout out to the sologamists,
who I think deserve that party too, whether if you're
going to you know, just marry yourself or whatever.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
Find your true love in your own mirror if you
need to so. According to CNN, the first love art
laboratory wedding was in two thousand and four. It was
the Red Year, featuring quote a series of public cuddling
performances and hours long kissing sessions. They hosted sidewalk sex clinics,

(32:15):
and they held their red wedding at a former burlesque club.
Just a quick note, very different red wedding from the
game of their own's red wedding. Yeah, a lot of
these terms mean a lot of different things. Now, No,
back to CNN quote. In the Orange Year, they married
their community and guests came dressed as orange juicers and carrots.

(32:39):
All right, But it was Annie and Beth's fourth Green
wedding when they came out to the world as eco
sexuals and they started incorporating the environment more into not
only their artwork but into their love lives, and we
will tell you all about that right after this quick break.

(33:01):
Welcome back, everybody.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
So the Green Wedding to the Earth took place in
the woods, obviously where else. It had more than one
hundred and fifty collaborators and four hundred guests, and they
were all given bags of soil to breathe from deeply
during the ceremony.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
Oh sorry, all I could picture somebody breathing deeply and oh.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
Absolutely everywhere I need a breathe dirt.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
I guess I'm still on my mister bean tip, but
that's what I see if my head.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
During this, a soprano did an operatic strip tease. Some
guy got drenched in green paint and wrapped up in
a sheet, and a girl with a snake around her
neck read poetry. There was a floutist. Someone got spanked
with a bouquet of flowers, all very exciting, sort of
earthy kind of stuff. You can watch a compilation of

(33:53):
all these eco weddings on their website, which is Sprinkle
Stevens dot UCSC dot edu if you're interested, and if
you never thought you'd see an edu website where you
get to watch someone get spanked flowers or whatever. Well,
now you can.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
It's quite quite interesting. You should check it out.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
And what would you call it safe for work? Actually, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
It's not pornographic at all. It's really not like that.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
I hope the guy got drenched in green paint. It
was like an ecologically sound green paint, you know, you
know a paint.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
Great question, it's everytirement latex paint right now.

Speaker 1 (34:28):
Or who knows well? Who knows, not us. That's not
what we're here for, not us information. Okay. So Annie
and Beth then dressed all in green with big feathers
and flowers, and anyone else at the wedding who cared
to would repeat the vows to take the Earth as
their lover, and they took the Eco sex pledge, which

(34:50):
is quote, I promise to love, honor, and cherish you
Earth until death brings us closer together forever, which does
make Earth kind of pretty great partner. Do you know
human's gonna shove off eventually?

Speaker 2 (35:06):
They they that's true. Eventually the Earth will reclaim you.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
I suppose all of us.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
There's a whole Eco sex manifesto, and this is just
the pledge. At the end, the.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
Earth will reclaim all of us except for me, who,
as you know, my plans, Diana Postport is to be
frozen and shot into space so the aliens can find
me and either reanimate me or you know, learn about
humans and come here and you know, do their thing.
Whatever that is. I assume it.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
Whatever it is.

Speaker 1 (35:39):
My assumptions of aliens is that they would do good.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
Well, that's nice, that's nice. I will have to ask
our friends bleed.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
Blop, you know, they do need to make an appearance.
But I'm listening. I don't hear them coming now, So
maybe next episodion. We've been going for a while. They
clearly know that we don't have time.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
I know we don't have time for that, but right now,
So what is eco sexuality?

Speaker 1 (36:03):
Oh? Yes, the subject of the episode.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
We should finally get to that, because partly for Annie
and Beth, it's kind of a way to make environmental
activism a little more fun.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
They feel like it's usually pretty stuffy and moralistic and
very like you know, oh, shame, shame, shame, right whoa
and fear you know around it, and there should be
a healthy amount of fear around that sort of thing.
But they call it like al gore stuff, the alfect
or something.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
Don't get me started. I honestly like an Inconvenient Truth.
There's the lamest title for a movie that everyone should
be paying attention to. Like, by the time you finish
the word inconvenient, I'm asleep. I don't care, and I
don't need what. I don't know what this movie's about.
It doesn't sound like it's for me. It doesn't sound
interesting or important or an truth. Okay, right, take up everybody.

(36:58):
The Earth is dying right e.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
Xach was kind of a horrible death knell that you're
sounding with a very boring bell. But anyway, so they
kind of were like, you know, this way we can
bring a little humor, a little absurdism into the environmental
move make it a little more accessible and fun. But
mostly the idea is about changing our mindset. They kind

(37:21):
of feel like, since we see Earth as a mother,
we maybe take it for granted, like we might do
with our own mother. We expect it to take care
of us and need nothing in return, sort of unconditional
you know, I can take my laundry to her and
she'll clean it, but I can forget her birthday and
she'll forgive me wow. Kind of kind of relationship. But

(37:43):
they say a lover is a partner, and they require respect,
they require give and take, they require love and care,
and if you don't, they will leave you. They won't
just keep loving you forever. So Annie Sprinkle told teen
Vogue that by making Earth your lover, it's quote putting
the responsibility on you to uphold your side of the relationship.

(38:03):
It's revolutionary. I kind of like it, to be honest.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
Yeah, no, I really like that. It makes me think
that maybe people should start treating their mothers a little well,
and maybe not you know, their lovers, but certainly like
a partner.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
But yeah, I think more how you treat them when
you're When you're grown, you know, you start to understand
what it takes to be a mom, whether you have
kids or not. You're kind of like, wow, it turns
out that was really a really crazy thing somebody did
for me.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
I do try to pop into my parents now and
then and say, ah, wow, you know, you know, thanks,
because you don't recognize what they're doing when you're a kid,
not right, because of course they are. Somebody's gonna put
food in front of you, and somebody's gonna you know,
make sure you get to school on time and become
a decent person hopefully hopefully, and uh you know, and

(38:54):
then you're grown up and you're like, we who have
no children, I'm like, how the hell, oh my god,
I have the time and energy to devote to making
sure a person okay, becomes not the worst person right now?
I don't. I do not have no the focus for that,
let alone anything else.

Speaker 2 (39:11):
Or sometimes, like you know, my cousin who's like eleven,
will ask me a question about something, I'm like, how
the hell could I answer this without a making you
very cynical or or I don't know, just well, kid,
I know I tell you something about life. Well, I'm like,

(39:34):
sometimes you just want the kid to vent, right, You're like, ah, man,
that sucks whatever. And then other times you're like should
I be giving advice? You'd be like, people, don't think
about it this way, think about it this way, or
like what about what about that bully maybe is going
on at home? And we want to be compassionate, you
know whatever. It's just hard to figure out which way
to go and how to again just how to mold
a person, I guess. And then sometimes you're tired and

(39:54):
you're like, I don't care about your weird thing at school.
You won't care about this you're eleven, Like you're gonna
forget about this by the time you're in call. But
at the time when you're eleven feels huge. I remember
that being eleven and something feeling like it's going to
last forever and it's not going to ever be any
different than this, and I'm very scared and I'm very
afraid of how it's going to turn out. Anyway, Well,
parenting is hard.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
What take if your parents or your mentors or whoever
you owe that to is out there and you're close
to them, you know, say hey, say what's up?

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Say hey, thanks a lot, yeah, you.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
Know, yeah, minor listening, so I don't have to, or
at least my mom is she'll tell my dad.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
She'll say, by the way Eli's things, Eli.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
He cares, we'll see them on linesday, We're going to
a movie.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
By the way Elisa's things anyway. So basically, yes, they're like,
you take your parents for granted, but it's harder to
take your lovers for granted. We should see the earth
more as a partner in life, and that we need
to cherish and let them know how much we appreciate
them and all that stuff, or they're going to leave
us high and dry. And the eco Sexual Manifesto includes

(41:00):
conservation principles like buying less and then only buying local,
organic and sustainable products, as well as working towards world
peace because, as the manifesto says, quote, bombs hurt. Oh
and that's true, right, yeah, I scar the earth as
well as.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
People right now. Ecosexuality is a sexual identity, but it
doesn't have to be your main sexual identity. And how
far you take it if you are an ecosexual is
totally up to you. Vice News spoke to Amanda Morgan,
who's an ecosexual and she's faculty at the UNLV School

(41:38):
of Community Health Sciences. She told WECE that it's it's
kind of like the Kinsey scale, right. Some ecosexuals they
keep it real simple. They're just like, I just get
a sustainable, environmentally sound sex toys, right, This was not
this is not covered in blood, diamonds and the skin
of an endangered creature.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
I want to look made sure, although I don't know
what that does for the bees actually probably not not
eco sexual approved bees and a gorge.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
But other people also keep it kind of simple. They
might enjoy skinny dipping or naked sunbathings. They're just kind
of feeling the elements on them. Now. On the other
end of the scale, of course, is the people we
all think of when we hear the word ecosexual.

Speaker 6 (42:26):
Right.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
She says that there's people who quote roll around in
the dirt having an orgasm covered in potting soil. They
are people who fuck trees or masturbate under a waterfall.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
Oh right, they fuck trees.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
Yeah, we'll just leave that to your imaginations. These people
might also have sex with vegetables like our friends. And
for the last episode in Fuck for Forest and I
was going to ask you what you think is the
sexiest vegetable.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
I don't find the vegetables very sexual.

Speaker 1 (42:59):
I don't mean, what vegetable are you sexually attracted to?
But like, you know, if you were going to cast
a vegetable in a leading role in a movie, right,
they're just like, that's one sexy vegetable? Can you do
you have.

Speaker 2 (43:11):
One's funny is that I think melons and cucumbers, the
zucchini have been common, right, the ones that you usually
but thanks to emojis, it's now peaches and eggplants.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
Oh sure, so I don't know. Yeah, boobs emoji? Is
there peaches butts? Right?

Speaker 2 (43:28):
Peaches, melons, melons or boobs?

Speaker 1 (43:30):
Right? We don't. I don't think there's a two melons emoji.
There should be a bundle of melons.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
Wonder what the boob emoji is?

Speaker 1 (43:37):
Well, regardless of emoji.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
Maybe there's a blue footed booby emoji and they just
say show me your boob.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
Oh, show me your boobies. Yeah, I hope.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
So I don't think we got that to the emoji makers.
Make a blue footed booby emoji, and I promise it
will get some use.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
I will say there was a at the grocery store
the other day we got back from our trip, hadn't
cooked a home cooked meal in a while, really wanted
a salad. Yeah, And I went and got a cucumber.
And if I may say, this particular batch of cucumbers
were not only huge, but cooler. Straight. No, no, they

(44:15):
were just the straightest cucumbers I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
So you could really do something with that.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
I guess. So there was. I picked one up and
a part of me was like, what what cucumbers make
me think? Some kinds of things I'm not comfortable with.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
I don't appreciate the thoughts this cucumber may have Kroger.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Anyway, the answer is pomegranate, which is I guess, a fruit,
not a vegetable.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
Well, there you go. That's why I didn't say it.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
Well, it's a very uh that that goes back in
art history. The pomegranate was all about fertility and sex.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
Sure I lost seeds.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
Yeah, I guess, so gross. Now I don't like the
pomegran onwards. All right, Well, the manifesto does include the
quote we hold these truths to be self evident that
we are all part of, not separate from nature. Thus,
all sex is eco sex. And I get that. I've

(45:17):
I've kind of set myself in the past like, well,
you know, we talk about what we do is unnatural,
but we're we're animals kind of everything we do is
natural in a way.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
I guess. So, yeah, maybe this is the human animal.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
Yeah, I mean birds and beavers tear apart plants to
build their homes and things. You know, it's not we do.

Speaker 2 (45:38):
There are there are bugs that eat other things from
the inside out, sometimes to live, so it can be
a brutal world out there in the animal kingdom, hard past,
and we are part of the animal kingdom, and I
think we forget that a lot. So yeah, it's it's
a again. I like a lot of the underlying principles
of this. I don't think I could fuck a zucchini

(45:59):
or anything, but like I'm not about to start like
rubbing up on a tree. But I do love trees.
I enjoy looking at them, as you know, we've we've
we have stood an admiration.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
Of a tree in Atlanta. We're surrounded by beautiful trees.
I like that all sex is eco sex. You might
you might, uh you've had eco sex, then maybe you
might be having eco sex right now.

Speaker 2 (46:22):
Reason Well, after the green Wedding to the Earth, Annie
and Beth had even larger and more theatrical weddings all
over the world. They were always collaborating with different artists,
so these are, like you know, often dozens to hundreds
of people working on these weddings. In the Blue Year,
they performed a wedding to the Adriatic Sea at the

(46:44):
Venice Biennial, and then they married the Sky in Oxford, UK.
In their Purple year, they had a nighttime rave marriage
to the Moon in l a. Annie and Best both
dressed like aliens. I think a lot of people did
sort of like an outer speed alien thing, and it
looked really fun. I would go to that party. They
also did a daytime ceremony with the Appalachian Mountains. In

(47:07):
the White Year, they married the Snow in Ottawa, Canada,
right after a huge snowstorm. Get line listen, and it
was in this beautiful like cathedral like church, and so
it was really pretty. In the Golden Year, they married
the Sun in San Francisco, and it's like it looks
like they're at the top of a mountain and its
sunset and it's all very beautiful. Of course, everyone is
wearing the colors, you know, of the theme and everything too,

(47:30):
so everybody's very on theme.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
Can I say I would marry the Sun at sunrise
because otherwise as soon as you get married, it's gone,
it's gone. Well, San Francisco, probably sunset because they're in
the west, so you wouldn't really have a good sunrise,
but you'd have a great sunset.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
That's probably so. But yeah, well, and then you can
go right into the wedding night.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
Sure, but where's the groom he disappears.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
I mean he passed out because he got too drunk.
It's not the first time. Even after there's seven year
Love Art Lab project ended, the weddings continued. They had
a punk, rock, all black wedding to coal in Spain,
in Spain's Coal Country, and they also had a dirty

(48:13):
wedding to the Soil in Austria, where like literally everybody
is like rolling around in dirt, they're wearing brown, they
look like they're rocks through something. It's very crazy, all right.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
Well, in twenty thirteen, Beth Stevens went back to her
hometown in coal country to make a documentary about mountaintop
removal in West Virginia. A mountaintop removal or MTR is
also called mountaintop mining or MTM. You might have heard
it either ways. And it came about because tunneling underground
to get to coal seams is dangerous and expensive, and

(48:45):
people figured, all right, well, instead of going through the mountain,
why don't we just use explosives to take off whatever
is on top of the seam and expose the coal.
Right now, it is a lot safer, but it also destroys,
you know, a huge amount of habitat for for animals,
for plants, as well as obviously ruining the mountainous skyline.

(49:06):
Nobody wants a bunch of flat mountains.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
They're not mountains anymore, they're.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
Buttes, right. Plus, whatever they remove from the top of
the mountain often exposing four hundred vertical feet, so we're
talking about like a lot of rock and toxic byproduct
ends up getting dumped into neighboring valleys or hollers if
you know anything about most hollers are very important cultural

(49:32):
systems right.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
Right, well, and people live in them. You know, it's
not great to dump toxic waste anywhere.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
No, and there these are people who've had these homes
for you know, hundreds of years. Basically, the documentary itself
is called Goodbye Gaully Mountain, where Beth shows the struggle
of a community who who love their natural mountain environment,
but also they rely on mountaintop removal for the local economy.
It's kind of trapped between two worlds there. Now. After

(49:59):
a screen of the film, Beth and Annie married Golly Mountain,
Beth explained to one interviewer quote eco sexuality inserts an
erotic humor that plays against the horrific subject matter so far,
the feedback that I've received at film previews makes me
realize that these are effective strategies for creating space to
briefly cut the feeling of despair the MTR evokes.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
This is interesting to me because actually, your mom just
shared on Facebook this morning an article from I Believe
Forbes about sol nostalgia, which is the feeling of depression
and anxiety that comes from knowing that your environment is
in danger basically, so it was like the kind of

(50:44):
deep grief that you can feel when a natural landscape
that you're used to is changing dramatically around you. That
kind of thing, which is interesting that there's a word
for it. But also like the fact that they were
tapping into early on that climate change and global warming,
you know, environmental disaster, impending doom kind of stuff is

(51:06):
really depressing. It's very hard to look at it because
it makes you feel so hopeless and impotent. If the
world is ending, what are you supposed to do? You
know what I mean? So I think they're kind of
tapped into that a little early on, and we're now
just now kind of talking about it a little more.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
Reminds me of on Reddit recently, I read someone talking
about the concept of sonder. It's sort of the opposite
of sollipsism, like where you're very internally focused in your
world is the center of all things, and sounder is
sort of like, oh, there's storms happening on Venus right now.
You know, there's a guy in Spain eating a sandwich
and live in his life. It's this recognition that every

(51:45):
random person and even places where there are no people,
are experiencing time passing. Stuff is happening outside of your
perception of it. Yeah, and I find it both kind
of overwhelming to think about that because it's huge and
it makes you feel very It can make you feel
very insignificant. But someone also pointed out it can have

(52:07):
the opposite effect, where you feel there's so much existing
out there in the universe, your existence is very unique
and special, so it's kind of amazing feel the same time.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
You know who had a butt ton of sonder is
Kurt Vonnegut. Oh yeah, if you read any of his books,
he loves to do that where he'll just have someone
bump into somebody and then he'll tell you who they
bumped into his whole life yea, Like he'll just kind
of be like and then eventually they you know, whatever
happens to them, and they're not important to the story,
but he just tells you everything about them. And I

(52:40):
remember reading one of his books and being like, man,
how many people have I bumped into? And I haven't
thought about what they did after that? Like they cease
to exist for me basically, and I cease to exist
for them. But we both went on to continue to
do shit, right, Yeah, so that's really crazy.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
Yeah, A butt ton of Sounder by Kurt Vonnegut.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
He would write, he would write it, and he would
do this little ass drawing right on top. Well, both
in Annie's weddings. These eco sex weddings really struck a
chord with the art world and with a lot of
people because even after they stopped organizing the weddings themselves,
they kept getting married. Right before the pandemic, a group
called Future Farmers organized a wedding for them to marry

(53:20):
the fog at Uc Santa Cruz and then I bet
they used a lot of tool you know what I mean,
like something, oh, sure like that. And then in twenty
twenty one and artists married them to the brine shrimp
of Great Salt Lake in Utah. All told, they've apparently
performed something like nineteen weddings and nine countries. They've also

(53:41):
toured two person shows all over the world, and then
in twenty seventeen they were part of a German art
festival called Documenta fourteen. This is a really interesting arts festival.
I would love to attend one day in my life
because it happens every five years and it lasts nine months.
So the selection process, I think you get like like

(54:01):
three years to work on your projects and then you
have a whole nine months to work with with your project.
So people do various different performances and installations. They can
do some really large scale stuff at Documenta and Beth
and Annie were no different. They did a bunch of
shit document To fourteen. They screened their newest film, which
is called Water Makes Us Wet. Love it All their

(54:24):
titles are amazing. They set up a bed in a
museum lobby where they would cuddle people between them for
seven minutes, which Annie called quote an anti Trump Wall
protest of sorts. And they also did an eco sex
walking tour. The idea of that is just being like
you would walk around and you'd have your attention called
to stamens, you know, and like, oh, yes, erotic flower,

(54:48):
you know, like just look at the look at that flower,
begging for your attention kind of kind of thing, just
to call your attention to.

Speaker 1 (54:53):
The next flowers thirsty.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
Oh that flower is for you, baby. But Annie and
Beth are far from the only ecosexuals out there. We've
talked about a couple already, but there's several more and
we will fill you in, fill you up all right
right after this, welcome back, all right.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
According to The Guardian, right before document, Annie and Beth
hosted their fourth and largest ecosexual symposium, and this included
three hundred ecosexuals from all over the world and performances
that included quote eco sexy Shakespeare from Luke Dixon, the
founder of Theaterre Nomad in the UK, a demonstration of

(55:45):
grass Lingus by Annie Sprinkle on the law of you
see Santa Cruz, and a very eco sexy poem which
we'll of course read for you right now. So let's
go down to poetry Corner and.

Speaker 7 (55:59):
Read maybe one of the most poetry corner poems, Dirt,
which was originally written and performed by the musician Peaches.

Speaker 1 (56:11):
Dirt.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
Dirt Dirty, dirt, dirt. Stay away from the dirt. You'll
get dirty. It's a mess. Yes, Yes, we want to
get down and dirty. Hit the dirt, dig in the dirt.

Speaker 7 (56:27):
Dirt is a wonder. Dirt is real, Dirt is precious.
Dirt gives us breath. Dirt will sustain us. Dirt makes life.
Dirt is life. We need to be dirty.

Speaker 6 (56:41):
We neeed dirt, break it down, earthworm, break it down,
break it down, fungy, love me, humble, humous, all hail bacteria,
the criteria, release the nutrients, release, fertilize us.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
Treat us like dirt. Give us dirt.

Speaker 7 (57:07):
We want to be soiled, richly soiled in sand, silt
and clay.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
We will lay, We will lay.

Speaker 7 (57:16):
Let's get dirt on our hands. Cover us in dirt,
make us dirty.

Speaker 1 (57:22):
Dirt is the shit. Dirt is the shit.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
All right, Peaches, that sounds like a Peacha song. I
would listen to her do it, because you know she
would do so cootiou oh yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
It's probably got insane backing tracks.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
Oh my god, insane stuff. Also eco sexy Shakespeare. I
wish I could find some text for that, but right
it's nowhere. So Luke Dixon. If you're listening, I want
to transcri. Is it like two bees or not? Two bees?

Speaker 1 (57:57):
Oh? Two bees?

Speaker 2 (57:58):
Or is it like? Shall I compare thee to a
summer's day? Thou art more sexy?

Speaker 1 (58:07):
I don't know, uh I just every Shakespeare quote I
ever learned just vanished from my mind. And I I've
done three Shakespeare plays in my life. You sure have, yep, nothing.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
The quality of booty is not straight.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
There we go.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
It droppeth gentle rain hot like it is hot. It
droppeth like it is hot. In Interview magazine, Annie Sprinkle
also mentions a Chinese artist who made like ecosexual art.
Their name is Xiangbo and they have an ongoing film

(58:51):
series since twenty sixteen called Terra Doophilia, where he showcases
a sexual act with a terra do fight or a
dispersing plants in a forest in Taiwan.

Speaker 1 (59:03):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (59:04):
ARTnews dot Com describes the videos as showing quote close
up shots of men, some of them BDSM performers stroking
their penises with ferns, rubbing their nipples against spikey stern,
rubbing their nipples against spiky stems, or ejaculating onto tendrils
that then drip with semen. All right, I know. I

(59:27):
was like, this is not a movie I would spend
a last time watching, probably myself.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
Well, I'm thinking about the one brief time I tried
gardening and I pulled some some some of these little
clover looking plants out of the ground and came back
and my hand just turned red. They were all it
was like I was having some kind of reaction. And
then I was told by our friend Sammy, who's you know,
professional landscaper gardener. She said, oh, no, one's allergic to those. Oh.

(59:54):
I was like, well, I something happened here, so it's
just me. So maybe I'm hyper reactive to every thing.
And I don't want to rub my deck on any ferns.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
I don't want you to rub your deck on any
ferns either, Babe.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Done well.

Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
Zang isn't just making these for your shits and giggles
or anything. He feels it. By showing queer men having
relations with ferns, which are kind of common undervalued plants,
he is quote emphasizing structures of marginalization across species and
proposes possibilities of intimacy between them. So kind of you know,

(01:00:30):
ferns are lesser than our orchids, but who says and why?
And you know, and so like who is lesser person?
And who says and why? Okay, And this is kind
of reminiscent of Annie's work. Annie Sprinkle's work in the
post porn movements, where she's she was very concerned with
stereotypes in pornography, representation and porn. That's why she was
trying to make transgender porn and stuff like that. She

(01:00:52):
was kind of and you know, which bodies are allowed
to be portrayed as sexual bodies? Okay, So I'm sure
she also was thinking about plus size women and plus
size men and you know, just what we consider to
be sexy and sexual and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
Xeng has a less graphic, sixteen minute dance video that
came out in twenty twenty one called Le Sacre de prentopes,
which means The Right of Spring, where quote naked men
gyrate passionately against trees in a verdant forest. They writhe
and moan in ecstasy. At midpoint, the camera turns upside

(01:01:30):
down as the men dropped to the ground. What was
a frenzy dissipates into serenity. As they lie still, their
bodies melting into the mossy floor. What the artist calls
an eco sexual courtship. So a little less, you know,
ejaculating on plants and more just kind of a becoming
one with the earth and a dance yet.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
More of a dance film than a sex film, I.

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
Guess into it. Much like Annie and Beth. Jang sees
sexuality as this sort of mundane fact of life and nature, right,
like it just happens, He told Art News. Quote, sex
is everywhere in nature and interspecies. Sex is not a
human invention. He pointed to things like orchids that evolved
to look like bees visually, and that of course tempts

(01:02:15):
bees and to coming in and trying to hump a flower,
and that helps ponate them. Right. So a Sierra Club
even suggests that our old friend Walt Whitman might have
been an eco sexual. They quoted this passage in song
of Myself quote, it is for my mouth forever. I
am in love with it. I will go to the
bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked. I

(01:02:37):
am mad for it to be in contact with me.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
Actually, yeah, that does kind of make him sound like
an ecosexual.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
I certainly would lean more towards that he was a
poet who was good with metaphor, rather than like him
literally saying I want to fuck this river, yeah, you
know or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Well, several of our subjects have loved some naked sunbathing.
Harry Crosby, for example, who was married to Caress Crosby,
who invented the bra than the modern bra, he loved
to sunbathe naked, and Ben Franklin liked to liked an
air bath. Sure, so I don't know how much that
is ecosexuality and how much that was like Ben Franklin

(01:03:21):
literally thought there was some medicinal property to it, or
like people who sun their assholes whatever that's called. People
do still doing that, I think, And whereas.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
Me like, I want to dress like a Jawa every
time I go outside, cloak, no sand or sun or
little gold eyes.

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
Golden goggles. I'll help you see in.

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
A tub storm, I'm good.

Speaker 2 (01:03:48):
More recently, Annie was a consultant on the HBO series
The Deuce. That show. That's the show that shows the
rise of the sex industry in New York in the
seventies and eighties, what some people call The Golden Age
d of Porn. I didn't either. It stars Jane James
Franco and Maggie Jillen Hall. I know, I was like,
but Maggie Jillen Hall is great. Annie apparently, I guess,

(01:04:10):
was giving her most of the consultation. There was a
lot about the mindset around sex, sex work and stuff
like that, and so that's that's definitely very interesting, especially
if you're someone like me, who is who is a
little bit of a prude. When it comes to my
own body, I don't care about what anybody else is doing,
but when it comes to my own body, it's very particular.
People are allowed to touch and stuff of steam naked

(01:04:32):
or something like that. So I think Maggie maybe has
you know, she was sort of like saying it was
hard to get into that mindset, and Annie gave her
for some real help with that or whatever. Beth and
Annie updated the Eco Sex Manifesto to respond to COVID
policies like social distancing and masking, and there's even like
pictures of some eco sexuals wearing masks that have like

(01:04:52):
grass sprouting from it, and so you know, they kept
the they kept the vibes going all right during the pandemic.
And Annie is also in recovery from both lung cancer
and breast cancer, which said at least in twenty nineteen
or twenty twenty when she gave this interview magazine interview.
She says, she's doing fine now, but of course that

(01:05:14):
you know, took them away from art for a minute.
They had more important things to do. And she also
thinks that maybe the breast cancer may have been a
result of some toxic permanent ink that she used in
the nineties. She used to make these tit prints, she
called them, and they had like cubists or heart shaped
or like cone shaped boobs, you know, different with like

(01:05:34):
kind of it almost looks like tin types or something
like that. But anyway, they're fun, and she says, you
know a lot of artists, you know, they get killed
by their materials because people use toxic pains, so they
have films or whatever. And she's like, that's just that's
part of the life.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
But she's also trying to get her body of work archived,
including all her tit prints and all her writing and
all these amazing photos that she's taken over the years,
tons of her educational material and stuff, like that, so
she's working to get that archived, hopefully at Harvard. She
mentioned in the Interview magazine that their Schlessinger Library has

(01:06:12):
a sex worker archive. Oh nice, which I think is
really cool. So kind of maintaining some of that history, right,
people who actually lived that history, instead of from the
perspective of people who are judging it from one way
or another. Right, So I think that's really cool. Hopefully
she does get her It seems like she would deserve
a place in the Schlessinger Library.

Speaker 1 (01:06:29):
That's awesome, man, good for good for them and still
at it, which I love too. They must be what
nineteen fifty four, so almost seventy now, yeah, actually she's
sixty nine.

Speaker 2 (01:06:44):
Do you know? Nice?

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
That's cool? Wow, yeah, I think I mean, what do
I think? Well? On one hand, I like the sentiment
that we're all eco sexuals, right because we're all having
sex with natural living things of the earth. That's fine.
I don't need to roll around in the dirt as
was previous previously explained. I'm good with excluding the elements

(01:07:11):
for my life as much as possible. I'm a very
comfortable indoors. Well, I love the outdoors. I love camping,
of going out things like that. But but I don't
like bugs. So that's the main things. I just don't
like bugs. Keep them off of me. So I do
like a lot of clothes because they are to be

(01:07:35):
in my defense.

Speaker 2 (01:07:37):
Bugs love me, they do.

Speaker 1 (01:07:41):
And I've had a long history of like other beings
being really attracted to me that I'm that I have
to kind of fend off. It's been sort of the
story of my life.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
Now, this is actually a good point that you've just
brought up. Oh yeah, because of all nineteen at the
weddings that we looked into, not a single one of
them was to bugs.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
Hell no, why would you marry bugs? Bug?

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
They're part of the natural world. Well, you know, if
there weren't bugs, lots of things wouldn't eat, lots of
things would not pro create, lots of things would not pollenate.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
That's great, But you know what I want to do.
I want to hold a mass ceremony of divorce against
the bugs. I want to kick them out. No longer welcome. Here.
Take here's a box full of your stuff, Get out
and don't come back. Restraighting or to file.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
Full of your stuff. Here's the silk from your cobweb.

Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
You bastard. I love spiders.

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
I know spiders are great and not bugs, so technically
don't eat bugs.

Speaker 1 (01:08:36):
And that's why spiders are dope. And they're all welcome
to my house as long as they stay up in
the corners and inside the walls.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
Supposed to go. But yeah, I just think that's interesting.
I wonder why, why not if we could get them
to marry mosquitoes or something that is.

Speaker 1 (01:08:50):
Less uh, because they said they're trying.

Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
Pretty and less nice about nature.

Speaker 1 (01:08:55):
Because they said they're also trying to have fun, true
and silly, and that's no what he wants. Who would
come to that wedding, the mosquito marriage, Like what are
you going to walk out naked into a swamp, like,
cover yourself in honey and say, have at it, mosquitos,
let's become one. No, I'm going to end up in
the hospital.

Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
Oh well, they can marry bees. Bees are very important.

Speaker 1 (01:09:18):
Bees are very important, and I think that bees really
like their space and I don't want to I do
not want to impose on a bee's space. Okay for
any stinging insect.

Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
To say about an animal that lives like really packed
in with other bees that's why they're.

Speaker 1 (01:09:33):
Like, we don't need any giant human bodies coming near us.

Speaker 2 (01:09:36):
True, you take it up a lot of space.

Speaker 1 (01:09:38):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
Would I would go to any of these weddings one
hundred per I think they're probably really easy to laugh at.
I'm sure a lot of people are laughing because it's
very hippie and very art this and that, and you
know it's it's it is easy to laugh at, for sure.
Would I like, I really like the vibe of it
and at ways, and the I like the foundation of it,

(01:10:01):
which is we need to find a different way to
think about the world that makes us respect it more. Yeah,
and cherish it more. Obviously calling it our mother is
not working, right, We are not taking care of it, yep.
So we need to think about different language around it
or different mindset around it. That's that's huge, right, changing mindset,
that's everything.

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
And we talk in the last episode about Sexy Gaya
from Captain Planet.

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
Oh, we sure did.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
Yeah, I'd take her as a lover.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:10:29):
I was gonna say. We recently talked about the perception
of artistic things like this as being pretentious and serious
and and I really like something like this that I
think they want you to laugh. Yeah, right, Like obviously
it's silly that I'm marrying the sun, you know. Yeah,
there's like there's a realness to it, like there's something

(01:10:50):
that we want you to take from this. But also
like if you're taking it so serious layers like this
is art and but you know, then you're doing it wrong.
You're kind of the whole point is kind of be
lighthearted about it. Yeah, have a good time. So I
imagine there's a lot of silliness and laughing and like,
look we're doing isn't it Isn't it ridiculous Because ridiculousness
is also joyful?

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
Yes, today, I really think that's so true.

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
Yeah, and I do.

Speaker 2 (01:11:13):
I like that too, joy around loving the environment instead
of fear and moralistic shaming of others. You know, it's
more about like we love it out, go out and
touch grass. It's the touch grass movement basically of like
stop being inside on your screens, go out, look at
this miraculous world full of unpredictable surprises and beauty and

(01:11:34):
everything I do. I do. I like that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):
I do like that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
Yeah, me too, fucking a vegetable too far from me,
too far? But you know what, I guess I don't
care as long as you're not doing it in the
grocery store in front of me.

Speaker 1 (01:11:49):
And if you are, just make sure you buy that
one and don't put it back. I do. I'm really conscious.

Speaker 2 (01:11:56):
This is another layer that is upsetting.

Speaker 1 (01:12:00):
No one's fucking them in the grocery store. They are
purchasing them first. I've been very conscious lately about uh,
trying not to touch any produce that I'm not that
I don't put my cart. You know, I really like
sometimes you really have to pick up an avocado and
like give it a little grope and stuff, but it's
you know, like bell peppers. I really try to look

(01:12:20):
at it. Which ones looked rubbery. I don't want to
pick everyone up because you know, hey, everybody else is
doing that, and b let me just reduce the number
of hands that went out of this.

Speaker 2 (01:12:30):
I mean, but you wash the vegetables before you cook them, right, No?

Speaker 1 (01:12:34):
No, I put them in the cart bare naked. I
roll them down the conveyor belt at the grocery store
and then I and I just well, I'll rinse them
off in a puddle in the parking lot.

Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
For a home and a stranger sneeze on them.

Speaker 1 (01:12:50):
I just assume that they have. I don't know. I
can make more of an effort for that if you want, Okay, yeah,
no problem, just to make sure, yeah, I didn't assume. Yeah.
So that's the state of artists.

Speaker 2 (01:13:03):
I will never eat another vegetable in.

Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
Because I cook and I'm vegetarian.

Speaker 2 (01:13:11):
We don't need a lot of me. I am screwed.
Thank you for tuning into my final episode before I
become closer to the Earth forever. I would love to
hear what y'all think about eco sex. Definitely, this is
a different one for us. It's a you know, usually
our our weird sexualities. They're they're pretty honestly into the

(01:13:34):
sex part, really like having sex with the cars or
marrying the buildings and stuff like. They're very much feeling
a romantic connection. And I'm not saying they're not, but
I feel like it's more of a more of a
political artist.

Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
Ye. Message driven.

Speaker 2 (01:13:48):
More message driven is a good way to put it. So,
but I don't know. I think they're very interesting women,
that's for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:13:55):
I certainly would not be bored having a conversation with them.

Speaker 2 (01:13:57):
I don't think you would do it well. We would
love to hear what you think about ecosexuality, about Annie Sprinkle?
Have you seen deep inside Annie Sprinkle? You see you know?
Do you know anything about Beth Stevens, I mean, any
any of this that struck a chord with you. We
would love to hear from you. As always, our email
address is ridict Romance at gmail dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:14:19):
That's right. You can find us on Instagram. I'm at
Oh great, it's Eli.

Speaker 4 (01:14:23):
I'm at Dianamite Boom and the show is at redict Romance.

Speaker 2 (01:14:27):
And we love y'all very much. Thanks so much for
your patience between episodes. Hopefully it was worth the wait
and we will see you soon with more. All right, Bobbie,
love you bye.

Speaker 3 (01:14:37):
Solong friends, it's time to go. Thanks so listening to
our show. Tell you your friends names, uncles, and to
listen to a show Ridiculous Romance.