 Hello everyone. My name is Florence and welcome to my talk Why the World Needs a Vagina Museum. I just want to start really quickly by saying some content warnings I will be talking about vaginas. I'll also be talking about some difficult and sensitive topics including sexual violence and FGM and transgender issues as well so if you would rather not listen to that that's totally fine and this is your opportunity to leave and there's absolutely no judgement whatsoever. It's family friendly depending on what your family is like and you should know that there is a picture of a vulva at one point because obviously. I launched the project to build the world's first bricks and mortar vagina museum because I found out that there was a penis museum in Iceland but there is no vagina museum equivalent anywhere in the world and I thought that was a bit unfair as a bit sort of inequality on the nose so there's only one way to change that. That's to do it yourself. I was at a networking event once and I had one of those badges and it said Florence Schachter, vagina museum and this woman came over said hello and she looked at my boobs which I'm normally totally fine with and she was like oh what's the vagina museum and her friend had to be like darling it's what you thought it was because people are just so like they don't expect to see the word vagina in a public space and I've had some really weird reactions to the vagina museum and I'm going to show you a few of them just so you kind of know what we're dealing with. So obviously a lot of them are quite nice, you know I'm not going to say, I'll show you many of those because it might be a bit braggy so I'll show you the ones that maybe are not necessarily nice but more jokes. There's this one, there's a building in London dedicated to crusty old cunts but enough about Parliament, there's a vagina museum too. I get this all the time, so many variations the Republican Party, the House of Lords and it's funny the first time you hear it until you really think about what the crux of the joke is the crux of the joke is that cunts, vaginas, vulvas are bad things that's the joke and they're comparing the people they hate to other things they hate vaginas but I mean not all of them are quite so sinister this one's quite nice a vagina museum's coming in London officials caution that while crews work to respect warning signs and tour guide instructions caution slippery when wet which is much better than the endless jokes of will it be closed once a month for refurbishment? No, no it won't it's still going to be open and it's going to be even better we've even caught international attention I'm very short on time for this topic, for this talk so I'm not going to show you all the videos like Conan O'Brien mentioned us in his monologue which is really exciting and he made a joke obviously but he did make this joke and I'm very proud of that which is I bet I can't find it a vagina museum better can't find it which is interesting considering there is a flower literally designating its location but of course they don't actually mean the vulva what they mean is the cleteris a vagina museum better have a knocker on the door because no man will be able to find the buzzer apparently there's a cleteris museum very near the vagina museum but I could never find it I hate this joke so much because it is so easy to find it's right okay that's the only photo in there don't worry it's gone now and we get all sorts of jokes I promise you there's not a joke you could tell me that I haven't already heard also there's a lot of journalists for some reason who really hate the existence of the vagina museum people's like why so many genital related PR requests I don't know why they're so upset that sounds great and then people use it as a way of making personal commentary for example here Florent Jecter a particularly loopy British feminist is fundraising for a vagina museum I like the fact that they called me loopy if you look in the preview of the article they also call me a YouTube star I'm a feminist YouTube star they're actually complimenting me it's a little backfire the personal commentary never ends did you know if you say a weird idea out loud around Florent Jecter there's a 50% chance you'll do it referencing the vagina museum I don't know this person this was a complete Twitter egg but damn did they peg me about a year ago I broke my foot and I was in Brighton and I was walking around with one trainer and one slipper and some friends of mine that evening were like we should go clubbing and I was like I've literally got a broken foot and I'm walking around in a slipper yes of course I'll go and that is a picture of me in a club in a slipper it's just something off my bucket list and then sometimes it isn't necessarily personal commentary for me but for other people I won't read the first one because whenever I read it I always feel gross and then somebody says this sounds like a project that the Trump administration might want to grab I've heard so many Trump jokes I can't handle it anymore yet that person agrees a little baby just can't deal with Trump anymore but then it's not always fun and games I get quite a lot of people who don't like the fact that we're gender inclusive so this is an example of somebody who applied to us sharing a poster of an art exhibition we did in Edinburgh where it was something like art exploring people's relationship with their vaginas and somebody said why have you used the word people instead of the word women and I thought that was really interesting but I was like don't you consider women people? but yeah it's just a fact there are people with vaginas who don't call themselves women and there are people who are women who don't have vaginas that's just literally a fact there are people out there who do that and I think it's very arrogant and hubristic to tell somebody else actually I'm going to define you actually I get to decide who you are this happens quite rarely it's actually rarer than you'd expect but there is always the mansplaining this is indeed a real email that I received I blacked out the name because I don't want him to be embarrassed if he ever comes to my talk but also he is absolutely going to be embarrassed where he says I heard about your idea and here is the suggestions of things that you might want to include and then he gives me a number of suggestions the vagina monologs like I hadn't heard of the vagina monologs like I'm opening a vagina I was absolutely astounded I'd literally heard of like all of these things except for maybe one which was just a recommendation of a very specific researcher and um so I was far too nice to be honest and I was like oh thanks I knew about these but I'll keep them in mind and then he sends a follow up email where he says there are some more suggestions and this is the real list he suggested I include photos and illustrations information history he suggested I include history in a museum like I didn't know what a museum was it was really astounding I mean but hashtag not all men because obviously you're wondering what did my father think that's what I'm always wondering but after the that was way too dark I'm sorry I'm sorry I've never made that joke before but I'm definitely writing it in anyway after the first after the sorry I just realised I didn't put my timer on after the first article was published he sent me an email and this is the email he sent to me oh I click one thing and it all stops working he says hi Florence I read your article in the independent you've hit the G spot with this interview oh my father is one of a kind he really is but of all those reactions there are some reactions that really proved to me why we need a vagina museum so much and it's things like this people saying let's open a close your vagina museum instead the world needs lots of things but a vagina museum isn't one of them I obviously disagree with this and so I thought maybe I would make the case to you why does the world need a vagina museum now I'm about to talk about some very difficult topics and then I'm going to tie them all at the end so please bear with me this bit is about to get a bit depressing I normally start this section of the talk by showing you a video it's called My Cliteris it's a song by a charity called Integrate UK which works with victims of FGM in the UK it's a really great song and I'm going to play it at the end for us to all like you know exit to it's a really great song so why do we need a vagina museum what is the history that we need to learn about our vaginas and everything that goes with that what is happening right now in the world that we need to be learning here for example retake the night type protest about 1 in 3 women will experience sexual violence or sexual assault at some point in their lives in some countries that is as high as 70% child marriage is still occurring in the world all over the world there are more than 700 million women who are alive today who were married before their 18th birthday and this woman is one of them her name is Angel McGeehee this is a photo of her on her wedding day when she was 13 years old in Idaho in the US the legal age of marriage is mostly 18 except for two exceptions where it's 19 and 21 if you have parental and judicial permission in 25 of those states you can get married as young as 13 no, as married as young as 11 in the other 25 states if you have parental and judicial permission there is no minimum age for marriage there are over 200 million people alive today who have undergone female genital mutilation it is a problem that happens mostly in Africa but it used to be a problem in the US mostly in Africa but it used to happen in the UK until very recently maybe a hundred years clitoridectomies the surgical removal of the clitoris was quite a standard treatment for anything from masturbation to epilepsy to almost any mental health issue in a woman today women and girls together account for 71% of all human trafficking victims and only 3 out of 4 women are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation does anyone know who these people are? Heads of State yes, it is every head of state or head of government in the world as of when I last updated my talk so you can see for example there's Theresa May who I can't even think about now because every time she pops up in my head she's dancing and her brain wants to just die there is Angela Merkel and Sansou Chi the New Zealand President which is the bottom second from the left she is amazing by the way if you haven't heard of the New Zealand Prime Minister President, I'm not sure she recently came back from maternity leave she went on maternity leave while she was the head of state when she was having her election campaign people asked her what happens if you go on maternity leave what happens if you get pregnant, you're a young woman and she was like yeah, I'll just go on maternity leave New Zealand won't crumble you realise the government isn't entirely run by one person it'll be fine and talking of governments there are still over 70 countries in the world where it is illegal to be gay or to be LGBT 12 of those still carry the death sentence I was in the United Arab Emirates I was working at the Science Festival and I was in the hotel and United Arab Emirates is one of those places you can get flocked for just for being suspected of being gay and we were sitting at a hotel and a local man he was sitting on another table and he just interrupts our conversation he goes, can I ask you something why do you have beards and there were two men there who had beards two of my friends and they were like, I don't know it's just a fashion at the moment that's just what we're wearing and he was like, I think you're wearing beards I think you have beards because you want to show how masculine you are you want to show women that you're a good strong man you're definitely not one of those gays and to his credit one of my friends just stopped him and said well I know that can't be true because I have a beard and I was so impressed with him in that moment because this local the way that country works that local literally could have got him flogged and deported for that single comment he's okay, don't worry on an average day talking of of legal repercussions on an average day I do at least six things that would be illegal for me to do in another country just because I'm a woman things like cycling to work and leaving the house very recently driving someone just motioned to me the driving very recently in Saudi Arabia they allowed they let women to start to drive some people are saying it's a cover up for some other things that was like a distraction thing but like at least it happened I guess but until very recently in Saudi Arabia women could fly planes but they couldn't drive cars so women they would be driving this humongous plane they'd land the plane and they'd have to get a chauffeur and a taxi to their hotel because they weren't allowed to drive the car it's I beg as a belief if you want to find out how many laws you break every day just for being a woman and you can do it even if you're not a woman it just says if you were a woman that is the URL if you just google like match international but what will the vagina museum do to tackle these issues the world is shit yes the world is totally shit but I really do believe that a vagina museum can be one of those things that can help turn the tide of the world we'll have permanent galleries exhibitions where we can learn about the issues that I've just discussed because most of the time these issues are swept under the carpet they're taboo when they're brought up people don't even want to talk about them and by having an exhibition you can go there and you know that it's a trusted source there are people to talk to and people to ask questions and that I think that's why exhibitions are so important why permanent collections and museums are so important because they're a way of society telling itself what they deem important we'll run events which is basically another method of learning in a different format because not everyone will enjoy exhibitions but also we'll have events like comedy nights because we have to laugh sometimes we'll be doing outreach work this is really important the outreach work that we do is to encourage charities to do things like distributing menstrual products to the homeless, to refugees and asylum seekers to people in period poverty outreach work like working with cancer sufferers tomorrow is Guiney Cancer Awareness Month by the way because I just feel like you can't come to the vagina museum learn about how shit the world is and then just have no follow through you have to be able to channel that anger frustration into doing something good and policy work and advocacy is a big part of that as well so making policy recommendations to make sure that our government is protecting and furthering our rights and doing awareness campaigns and things like that and then of course there will also be a gift shop because it's a museum and a cafe with a vulva cupcakes because I mean come on don't those look delicious oh yes I went to an event at the feminist library where we made vulva cupcakes I made my first ever vulva cupcake and it was just the best I highly recommend, they're so easy so I decided to make a vagina museum that's what I did and this is the actual tweet where I decided to do that and you can see it dated 20th March 2017 it really wasn't that long ago where as a joke I said people there's a penis museum in Iceland but no vagina museum anywhere who wants to start one with me so I retweeted myself because I'm that kind of person and I said oh I tweeted this on a whim but it's actually a life goal now so what would the vagina museum look like that's the bit I kind of fly away dreaming about what will be in it so there's going to be four permanent galleries this is the current plan, it may change it takes a really long time to build a museum this is what I've discovered so the current plan is society culture science culture society and history because that's the order that I'm doing them in the slides so science I thought it would be a fun one to start with so there's so much misinformation about the gynaecological anatomy out there so I thought it would be a good place to start it's a good sort of starting point and to show you how much misinformation there is out there I thought I might show you something that went viral a few months ago this is a post from Kyle do women actually orgasm there is no conclusive physiological evidence of it men are very clear obvious but women not so much I have to disagree one thing is clear women are taught that they are supposed to orgasm are we where? I need to go to this place perhaps it is an unreasonable myth that would help explain why so many women are sexually unsatisfied I think we all know why women are sexually so unsatisfied in your life Kyle because they are expecting some defining moment like men have maybe a woman's sexual experience is just totally different from a man's I will study the issue further a true scientist I really don't think he is going to study the issue further to be honest there is so when I read this I was absolutely astounded that any person could think this I didn't even know where to start and not knowing where to start is something that's quite common in this country half of 26 to 35 year old women in the UK cannot label on this diagram which one is the vagina anyone want to give it a go it's okay I'm just going to show you really quickly camera I'm going to go out of shot for a second it's that one that's the vagina cervix, uterus, fallopian tubes ovarian tubes actually ovaries I don't like calling it the fallopian tubes because Gabriel Fallopio who is named after was an absolute dick if you want to find out why I have the most hilarious story about at home when we do the Q&A afterwards so the misinformation is having real impacts as well on people's lives so in child anyone know this show call the midwife it's an amazing show makes me cry every single episode it's really cathartic but the reason I brought it up is because tears during childbirth are on the rise in the UK and the Royal College of Midwives is trying to figure out why this is and they came to the conclusion that it is TV I know another reason why TV is the worst but because imagine this you're giving birth it is an extremely stressful situation you're not really listening to people you're just kind of and when you're in that kind of situation you just refer to what knowledge you already have what is almost the only experience we have as modern people of childbirth it's from TV and what do people do on TV but when you are crowning which is when the baby's head is coming out of the vagina you don't want to push that hard you actually want to push really slowly because that's the bit when you're most likely to tear you've got to take it really easy and the only show I've ever seen who has shown childbirth accurately is called The Midwife so you know we should commission the next season if anybody works with BBC here but all of this information is even not enough because not everyone fits in to the current information that is available so I don't know if anybody recognises who this is this is Lady Collin Campbell she is particularly famous for being on I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here she wrote books about Diana or something because she's a posh English white lady and that's what posh English white ladies do but the reason I bring her up is because she wasn't actually born a lady she was born as a so she was born when she was born she was born in Jamaica in the 1960s referring to my notes to make sure I get all the facts right and she had indeterminate genitalia as it's called she had a fused labia and a deformed clitoris I'm only using those words because that's what was in the medical notes and has been reported to me and that's as much as I know and her parents were given the choice by the doctor you can either raise them as a girl and I'll do the surgery or you can raise them as a boy and I'll do the surgery she was being posh white English people they were like, yeah boy but when she started going through puberty she was going through a sort of very female puberty she her hips were expanding she was developing breasts and they realised that they had made the wrong choice and she agreed with them she never felt like a boy and it suddenly all made sense so what they did is they put on hormone blockers so she would stop becoming a girl and when she was 18 and she now lives as a woman she's only called Lady Colin Campbell not because Colin is our old name but because posh English people they take their husband's name in full Princess Michael of Kent this kind of surgery is called normalisation surgery normally it is currently banned or restricted in three countries and one US state very recently does anyone know which countries they are Malta yes that's like the first person in the audience who's ever got their right well done Malta is super great it was the first one really random is anyone of the other two it's chilly where it's banned and it's restricted in Columbia and in this state of California they've condemned it but I'm not really sure what that means yet we'll see and then once you start having your you start learning about your anatomy learning about menstruation of course and this is a real thing that went viral a person tweeted saying tam chwm should not be free why does everyone keep saying they should be if you can't control your bladder then that's not the tax payers problem I know that's how much misinformation there is out there about our bodies there are real people out there who do not understand how periods work you'll be very pleased to know that after this tweet was sent now and with menstruation comes of course the terrors of puberty unless you're never long bottom I only put that photo in there for my own gratification and then with puberty comes of course the possibility of pregnancy which is another really important thing to learn because it's such an important thing in our society that there are so many myths about it if the baby sits high it'll be a girl if the baby sits low it'll be a boy there's so much misinformation so much misinformation for example this was a real ad where a person these two people were checking a pregnancy test like they did the tagline is when you want to be sure like you don't need but of course not everyone wants to get pregnant and not everyone wants to get pregnant and people go to great lengths to not be pregnant one of the ways, just an example is called God's loophole so the image that I've shown you is a comedy song by Garfunkel and Oats that is all about this loophole where basically in America there is a lot of abstinence only education they're not learning about contraception and this leads to a huge misunderstanding on how these sorts of things work so God's loophole is the idea that losing your virginity is penis goes into a vagina so how do you keep your virginity don't put it in the vagina put it next door and that is God's loophole problem is is there are all the associated risks of unprotected sex all their learning is you shouldn't have sex and for them sex is penis and vagina and STIs are on the rise basically and even when we're getting sex education it's often very poor sex education we're not learning about things like consent so this is still from the Thames Valley police video about tea if you haven't watched it I highly recommend it it's now compulsory in all schools and of course we've gotten over the sort of baby making years there comes menstruation menopause why did both those words begin with men I really don't like that basically menopause is kind of the reason why humans are so great and if you want to find out why we can do that afterwards because I don't have enough time but of course that is a very heteronormative point of view wait before the sex I was going to say I think about sex basically women have less orgasms or fewer orgasms than men do heterosexual women 61% of the time they will have an orgasm during sex for lesbian women it's much higher of course but for bisexual women it's even lower than heterosexual women I don't know why that is further studies are required but that is again sorry so everything previous has been quite a heteronormative point of view and learning about LGBT issues are really important especially the just actual information behind it because there are real people like this who try to prove that same sex attraction and being LGBT is unnatural and do you know how he proved this he did it with magnets he got two magnets and it was like look north and north they don't like to go together but north and south they attract therefore being gay is wrong I know beggars belief and of course that's to do with attraction which is very different to gender identity which people have been gender non conforming literally for millennia we have such early records of people not conforming to the gender binary including for example much more modern version does anyone know who this person is gay who I just wanted to share this image of them because they are modelling this new lingerie range and they look way better than I would in this underwear and I think that's something to be celebrated and of course because I am a scientist the research of the gynae anatomy will be something that's included because that is a very chequered history including its study of animals and the mascot of the museum will probably be the hyena again if you want to know why come ask me afterwards the hyena is amazing so that's the science one so I thought I'd labour over that a little bit because I think it's a really good starting point and now I'm going to just quickly raise through the other three galleries so there's the culture gallery where we will show examples of art paintings, sculptures music, genelmenes pink will just be on loop constantly books, plays things like Georgia O'Keeffe, the flower series I don't know if any of you have seen the flower series it's a whole range of paintings of flowers and they look like vulvas so much every single one of them looks like a vulva but to this day her and her estate because she's not with us anymore always said it's not a vulva get your mind out the gase it's not a vulva at all and I find it really interesting why they said that did they say that genuinely because she was painting vulvas or was she like it's 1926 in America where homosexuality is illegal of course it's not a vulva who knows we'll have exhibitions on books like The Hamay's Tale which I think is one of the greatest books about the gynaecological anatomy and of course more modern art as well like The Great Wall of Vagina the artist has already agreed to sell it to me once we have enough money and space and I only keep saying that so that he keeps to his promise it should be called The Great Wall of Vulva I totally admit this but then it wouldn't be a pun and I think the pun is way more important guys the society gallery so the society gallery will explore cultures all cultures around the world and how they have explored the gynaecological anatomy for example religious rights this is an image from the annual festival in Assam in India which celebrates the goddess shakti's annual menstruation very jealous only once a year the myths and legends that our society has about vaginas for example vagina dentata what a wonderful phrase wonderful phrase I'm gonna write that song you bring up Disney do you know the movie Moana I'm gonna assume you do you know the rocks character Maui so in the original Maui mythology do you know how he dies it's the best story he's a bit of a trickster and he wants to get the secret to immortal for immortality so what he does this is his plan he goes to find the goddess of death and his plan is to climb up her vagina exit through her mouth not sure how the biology works on that and by reversing the process of birth he will then be able to prevent death and so he waits until she's asleep and then she's a massive giant and he starts crawling up her vagina and on looking is a bird and this bird finds this scene so hilarious and they start laughing laughing hysterically so loudly that the goddess wakes up and she's like Maui what the fuck are you doing there and so sure what she does is she activates her obsidian vagina teeth and crushes him to death yeah so I really think it's the me too story of the ancient world myths and legends indeed will have exhibitions on the language that we use this is just an image from a book called colourful cocks and quims which if you buy it all the money goes to FPA so you know always a good shout out for them exhibitions on sexuality and sexual oppression I think maybe chastity belts might be one not necessarily in origin because vagina dentata happened before definitely before chastity belts maybe further the myth of vagina dentata and also legislation and courts and how it has been dealt with in the political world for example with Kesha this is an image of Kesha who tried to get out of her contract with her producer because she claimed that he was sexually assaulting her and the judge basically said actually I value his financial interests more than your well-being and so I'm not going to break the contract and so she appealed and the new judge said you should have known before you signed the contract that is the state of our courts and is a story that happens again and again in almost every country so that's the society gallery and of course the history gallery it is what it says on the tin the history of gynaecological medicine for a very long time doctors would not even look at it so we wonder why it's so behind every other field of medicine the history of the science behind the gynaecological anatomy so does anyone know what that is that's a vagina according to Vesalius people genuinely used to think vaginas were just inside out penises this is a cut out I'll zoom out because this is an image from a 1559 anatomy textbook and I don't know if you can see but on the image of the there's like a headless woman who has her insides on display and somebody cut out the vulva and the book was found like this so nobody knows who cut it out or why they did it but because these are woodcuts by Vesalius we have many other examples so this is what it normally looks like because they get reprinted all the time that is what the vulva looked like and I just think it's really interesting because her labia are poking out her inner labia are poking out from outer labia I don't know but I love it the history of menstruation I don't know if anyone remembers using these my mum definitely used these where before you had adhesive pads you had to clip them on the history of contraception this is a real comic sort of little thing where there's a stalk carrying a baby and it says and still the villain pursues her for as long as we've been having babies we've been trying not to have babies the history of vulval beauty standards very hot topic now but was a hot topic always as you can see this is Rubin's Three Graces so as we know by the name they are supposed to be the most beautiful women who could imagine number one they have rolls of fat and cellulite which is great but they also don't have any pubic hair and I think this is really interesting because people keep saying oh the removal of pubic hair is something that's only been happening very recently it's actually been happening for a very long time for hundreds of years for loads of different reasons so that's kind of an overview of what I want the museum to be how will we get there so we currently have a pop-up museum which is travelling around the country where you can learn about all sorts of different things we're then going to open an interim space so if anybody in London, Bristol or Brighton has an empty building they would like a vagina museum and know that I'm on the lookout and then once we've done that for a few years then we're going to start building the permit museum just to manage everybody's expectations here is where we're going to be having some future places we're going to be having the pop-up exhibition if you would like to come visit us and here are some events that we're doing we mostly do them in London but the on the female body one is in Manchester so that is kind of the cliff notes of the past year and a half of my life and I hope after sitting all of that thank you so much for being with me through this journey and I hope one day you can come visit and agree that the world does need a vagina museum thank you very much thank you Florence Shekter you'll be taking questions in the bar shortly after this let's go to the bar thank you and apparently we still need a lot of volunteers especially for the car park so if you haven't yet you can volunteer on the AMF website there's a link at the top or visit the volunteers tent thank you