Florence Schechter is set to open the first bricks-and-mortar Vagina Museum in the UK. And yes, there is already a penis museum.
The Vagina Museum will be a curation of gynecological studies that are gender inclusive and intersectional.
"I found out there is a penis museum in Iceland, which is pretty cool," Schechter said. "But there was no vagina equivalent anywhere in the world. There's this art gallery in Tasmania, and there's a virtual museum based in Austria. But there was no physical museum that I could go visit, and I thought that was really unfair. So, I was like, 'Well, I guess I'm just making one now.' And ours is going to be a bit different. Ours is going to have exhibitions about the science, the history, the social aspect of it."
The World's host Marco Werman spoke with Schechter about why this museum launch is so important.
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On your website, it also says that the museum wants to be gender inclusive and intersectional. As far as attendance, I assume that means all genders are welcome inside the museum, but what does that inclusivity look like?
Gender inclusivity is one of our really core values. Firstly, because everyone needs to learn about vaginas, no matter whether you have them or you don't because, you know, half the population have them. We all come out of them. There's almost never a time when you're not going to interact with them. So, you need to learn about them. What gender inclusivity also means, though, is that our actual exhibitions are going to be gender inclusive. So, whether you like it or not, there are people who are not women, who have vaginas. The fact of the matter is, I think, we should all have the freedom to decide what we do with our own bodies. And so, what that means is that in our exhibitions we need to be gender inclusive and recognize trans stories, recognize nonbinary stories, as part of the human experience.
So, you hope that the Vagina Museum will put everybody of all gender identities kind of on the same playing field?
Yeah, absolutely. I think all humans are equal. Read more via PRI