Annie Sprinkle, Beth Stephens Add ‘E’ for ‘Ecosexual’ to SF Pride

SAN FRANCISCO—Celebrated Bay Area performance artists Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle will create the first official ‘Ecosexual contingent’ at the San Francisco Pride Parade on June 28. They will march with their human-powered 'Pollination Pod’ parade float, and a group of over one hundred collaborators who embrace the ecosexual identity. The contingent is sponsored by the Center for Sex & Culture and is part of the Queer Arts Festival. Everyone is invited to participate. Stephens and Sprinkle want to raise the visibility of Ecosexuality and have it recognized as an identity alongside lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transgender and intersex. The Ecosexual parade event will kick off with a ribbon-cutting ceremony to ‘Add the E’ to LGBTQI and a water toast. “We’d like to see more queer people involved in the environmental movement, so we want to make the movement more sexy, fun and diverse,” said Sprinkle. In 2008, the two artists made a commitment to infuse the environmental movement with more play and sensual pleasure to counteract prevailing doom and gloom narratives. That led them to hold 19 public ecosex weddings to marry nature entities such as the sky, sun, soil, sea, and moon, with thousands of participants in nine countries. They also made a documentary, Goodbye Gauley Mountain—An Ecosexual Love Story, in 2014, in response to mountaintop removal coal mining in Stephens’ home state of West Virginia, just released by a respected distributor, Kino Lorber. Stephens, a professor of art at UC Santa Cruz and longtime environmental activist, said, “The Ecosexual movement is really about imagination and desire, and creating a more pleasurable and loving relationship with the Earth. Ecosexuals say that humans are not better than other species, and we are not separate from the ecosystem around us. We are part of it and it is part of us.” Annie Sprinkle added that “Ecosexuality is an inclusive identity—you can be gay, straight, queer, or even celibate and identify as ecosexual.” The artists agree that their work is inspired by the direct action tactics of highly visible movements like ACT UP in the 1980s. “These are very serious issues we’re addressing. There’s almost nothing more serious than California’s current water situation. Our activism is celebrating the Earth as our lover using performance art.” The Pride event will launch the “Here Come the Ecosexuals” California summer tour, in which Stephens and Sprinkle will lead ecosexual walking tours, glamping trips, and start a new documentary film to raise awareness of California’s water issues.   SF Pride starts at Beale and Market at 10:30 AM on June 28, with a ribbon cutting & toast at 10:00 AM.  For details how to collaborate, join the contingent and attend the ribbon cutting toast, click here: www.theEcosexuals.org.