‘I founded the world’s first vaginal museum to educate and end the shame surrounding our anatomy’

School is also quite difficult. I went to a Jewish school and I definitely got some bad messages there that I’m glad I didn’t absorb. For example, I had a Religious Studies class, where the Rabbi told us that masturbation was bad because it was “wasting sperm.” I was a 14-year-old who felt comfortable enough to ask about masturbation in class so I raised my hand and said, ‘But Professor, what about female masturbation?’ He froze with fear, tripped and described it as “inappropriate sexual feelings”.

I think we often get the message that our vulva is dirty, especially when you walk into the pharmacy and see all these feminine hygiene products. It’s like ‘mop that, wipe this’ and you think, ‘Oh my god, why all these products? Am I dirty in some way?

There has been a dramatic increase in labiaplasty in recent years and there are many factors at play. There is clearly a capitalist element to businesses doing whatever they can to make money. But there are other factors as well. There is no good research yet to explain why short labia is so prized, but the wisdom of the field is that it has to do with mainstream websites and online porn.

In this kind of porn, you see only one kind of vulva, very small and shaved. Then the question is why do we see this kind of vulva? And the origin is in racist science.

In the 19th century, as slavery was gradually being abolished around the world, many white cultures wanted to find ways to continue to justify the oppression of blacks and natives.

And one of the ways they did that is by using scientific racism. Scientists and anthropologists around the world have developed eugenics theories, saying, ‘Look, blacks and natives aren’t as smart as whites, they don’t feel pain as much. ‘ and a big problem is that they are more sexually promiscuous.

They’ll look at a black woman’s vulva and say, ‘Look how big the clitoris and labia are – this is proof that they’re sexually promiscuous while white women’s labia small, the evidence that they are good, clean and “better women”. ‘ There’s no real proof for this and it’s all completely untrue.

When it comes to the vulva and vagina, what is normal, we are said to be abnormal, and what is not normal, we are said to be normal. Take for example a video I watched on TikTok the other day about the word ‘fishy’ in the drag community. The term fishy in drag associates women with a fishy-smelling vulva. It means you pass very well and you really look like a woman.

Video of the day

But really, the vulva shouldn’t have a fishy smell. If your vulva has a fishy odor it is usually a sign of an infection and you need to see a doctor. And this leads to people who smell fishy will not do anything. They think, ‘OK, it’s embarrassing but that’s normal’. These are just some of the myths that circulate in popular culture and we want to debunk.

I started opening the Vagina Museum in March 2017 and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I think most people can see a need for it. They see how embarrassing the vulva is and they can immediately see why we need to get rid of them. There are many benefits to health and body confidence, empowerment, women’s rights, and LGBT rights.​

But obviously it’s not 100% positive. We got some small feedback from people who thought it was inappropriate. Sometimes we come across people passing by and their children asking ‘what’s that?’ and the parent will say, ‘Oh, it’s not for you’. Especially annoying when they say that to their daughters – what are they teaching them about their bodies? We get some trolls who use it as an opportunity for a joke. And we get some transgender people who don’t like that we’re transgender. We didn’t care – they couldn’t say anything that would stop us from fitting in.

​Early on our journey, when we were doing pop-ups around London, I asked a guy to try to convince the museum to let me hear it. He emailed to say he was a researcher at a university and he said, ‘That’s a great idea, I just wanted to send you stuff in case you haven’t heard of it. ‘. He sent me things like Vagina monologue – like I’m starting a vagina museum and I’ve never heard of Vagina monologue! He sent another email a few weeks later saying – I’m not kidding you – that I should have included ‘history’. Like I don’t know what a treasure is?

My favorite exhibit at the Vagina Museum is the vulva wall – we basically have a wall of pictures of the vulva. When people visit us at our first traditional space in Camden Market, they want to see different types of pussy for all sorts of reasons. In some cases, they feel embarrassed about the shape of their vulva or they have never seen a vulva before and they want to normalize seeing the vulva in a non-sexual way.

There is this database called Gynodiversity. You can take a picture of your vulva and add it to the database and there are around 500 different vulva to review. I scrolled through it and picked out my 50 most diverse, favorite pussy, printed them out and stuck them on the wall. It’s my favorite part of the whole museum. I could just stand there for hours looking at it.

We have another exhibit which is three rather old pairs of panties that have been bleached in the bushings. Do you know that little bleach pad you get? That’s because our vaginas are acidic between puberty and menopause. If you wear a pair of panties for a long time, your vagina will naturally whiten them and many people don’t know it and think their body is disgusting or it’s a menstrual stain. period or the like. We put it on display and the number of women of all ages walking in and saying, ‘I’ve been worried about this all my life!’ They never knew what it was and they had to learn it from an exhibit.

We sometimes invite visiting schools to do self-guided tours, which I absolutely love. There are some schools that are really gender-positive and then there are some schools that teach sex just like us as children. However, this generation is very interested and tuned into these things because they have all this information at their fingertips. They know a lot of things that we don’t, but they get all the same negative messages about the vulva and vagina.

I have a book coming out with Penguin in March. It is called V: Vulva and Vagina Empowerment Ceremony. It’s all about learning to love your vulva and features chapters on anatomy, folklore, religion, and mythological and exotic issues. It is intended for readers over 14 years old but it will also be interesting for adults.

I don’t have children but we do have a lot of parents who come to museums and ask us how to talk to their children about their gynecological anatomy. They want to raise their children in a feminist way but don’t have many examples to follow.

I always tell them that there are ways you can be really positive about your vulva while being age appropriate and one of the important things is to always use the right words. Try not to use slang 100 percent of the time. I’m not saying never use slang, because slang is fun. But when teaching children body parts, teach them ‘nose’, teach them ‘eyes’ but also teach them ‘vulva’. Don’t say ‘fanny’ or ‘nunny’ or whatever because that implies there’s something embarrassing about it if you can’t use its own name. And make sure you’re teaching them what’s going on with their bodies and all the normal bodily processes.

Everything we do at the museum is about anatomical destiny. The most important thing that we always try to achieve and we want people to overlook is that the vagina is a normal part of the body that no one should be ashamed of and in fact it should be respected. honor.

I feel there are a lot of problems where the root cause — or at least the main factor — is taboo. And we can’t solve many problems without first addressing the taboo. How can you stand up in government and talk about abortion if you can’t even say the word ‘vagina’? How can you talk about sex workers’ rights if you’re so embarrassed?

When we resolve the confusion, everything else will follow.”

​Florence is the keynote speaker at SCI:COM, taking place December 7 at Aviva Stadium, Dublin. For more information, see scicom.ie

As told by Katie Byrne