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Ever wonder what happened to sex-positive feminism? Turns out it grew up, got married, bought a Labrador retriever and moved to the suburbs. Well, not that last part, but you get my drift.

Sex-positive feminism is dead. I guess I didn't need to point that out. You don't see many PVC-clad performance artists like Annie Sprinkle showing their cervix on stage any more, and frankly, it's a poorer world for it.

I didn't manage to catch Sprinkle's cervix the first time round (I was in high school), but I always liked the sound of her résumé: stripper, prostitute, porn star, cable television show host, porn magazine editor, writer and sex film producer. She even has a PhD! It's from a place called the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, but never mind. The woman never claimed to be a philosopher. She was the postmodern hooker with the heart of gold.

Given my deep and enduring admiration for Sprinkle, I was delighted to see that she and her partner, art professor Beth Stephens, were performing a show this week at Toronto's Buddies and Bad Times Theatre. Exposed: Experiments in Love, Sex, Death and Art. In the show, the couple enact the story of their courtship and marriage while pleasuring each other under the covers (a close-up of the action is projected on a video monitor). And this weekend she is leading two workshops on ecstasy breathing and energy orgasms at Come As You Are, a Toronto sex shop near my house.

While I won't be attending either event (public orgasms are just not my thing), I caught up with Sprinkle and Stephens at Buddies.

The question at the top of my mind was what happened to the fringe (and I don't mean theatre, but come to think of it, whatever happened to that too)? Whatever became of all the weirdos and performance artists and drag queens and self-identified metamorphosexuals who were going to change the world by lowering our collective inhibitions and upping our libidos?

"We won!" Sprinkle says when I put it to her (figuratively, of course). "AIDS certainly put a bit of a damper on things, but then the Internet blew it wide open. There's more diversity; it's all out in the open. At least now anyone can find out what a clit is."

Anatomical definitions aside, I'm not so convinced. Sex is everywhere, for certain, but can a paparazzi shot of Britney's bits really classify as a positive image? And what about the rise of the religious right, the growing anti-abortion lobby, our obsession with celebrity weight loss? Surely these things signify a shift toward prudery, rather than a loosening of bonds.

Annie Sprinkle and her academic wife (who runs the art department at the University of Santa Cruz) patiently hear me out. They are utterly unruffled in the way that the blissfully united tend to be.

"Sure, our society can be sex-negative," Stephens says, "but in the end it's not about sex, it's about love. Sex is just another way of getting close to another person, and that's what we want to promote."

So this is the new trip of sex-positive feminists: love. And with Sprinkle and Stephens it's no wonder. They got married on stage (in Calgary of all places) this year and plan to recreate the ceremony annually for the next seven years, themed to the colours of the human chakra system.

"We're doing it because we're so crazy in love," Stephens says, "but it's also so Annie can get a new dress."

They giggle and finish each other's sentences. I ask what their day-to-day life is like. They live in San Francisco. Stephens teaches. They have a black lab named Bob. Sprinkle works from home. "She's currently trying to adjust to her life as a not-so-desperate housewife," Stephens jokes.

I am stunned. Annie Sprinkle is ... normal? My inner adolescent feminist rebel is howling in protest.

"You guys sound like old hippies," I complain. "I thought you were supposed to be hardcore."

"But we are hardcore," Stephens says. "We're hardcore love. We use weapons of mass seduction." They both titter.

"Look," Sprinkle says, "I hate to disappoint you, but we're really very wholesome."

Stephens adds, "But when Annie Sprinkle is wholesome you know wholesome's been subverted."

Or maybe it just got married and moved to the suburbs. But hey, whatever gets you off.

lmclaren@globeandmail.com