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Vagina Museum

@vagina_museum

Nov 16, 2021 • 11 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X

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Today is a very special fanny-versary. On this day in 2019, the Vagina Museum opened its doors to the public with our first exhibition, Muff Busters: Vagina Myths and How to Fight Them.

We were nervous and excited, all at once. Would people come? Was there a demand for a physical space dedicated to vaginas, vulvas and the gynaecological anatomy? Were we ready to unveil ourselves to the world?

@KiRhymesWithPie

Before opening, we'd trained up our volunteers with a programme of pre-opening events (pic taken by vulvateer @KiRhymesWithPie)... but what would happen when we fully opened?

We discovered, very quickly, that there was an INSATIABLE APPETITE FOR ALL THINGS MUFF. In our opening weekend there were queues all the way around our corner of the Stables Market. (pic taken by vulvateer Amy)

@SharneMc

Look at the very first exhibition tour that took place!!! (pic taken by vulvateer @SharneMc)

@KiRhymesWithPie

We were getting more than 2000 people through the doors each day (pic taken by vulvateer @KiRhymesWithPie)

Did the world want a Vagina Museum? HECK YEAH IT DID! In the four months before the pandemic, 120,000 people came to visit our free exhibition. The only limit was how many people we could physically fit in our premises!

2020 didn't exactly play out how we'd hoped, and 2021 was a little weird too. We had to move out of our first home in September this year but we're still bursting with optimism: that flame of enthusiasm for the Vagina Museum still burns bright!

On 16th November 2019 alone, we proved the world needed and wanted a bricks and mortar museum space dedicated to vaginas, vulvas and the gynaecological anatomy, and we continue to prove it every day.

You've seen what we can do. But we need your help to survive, thrive and create a new space for you to come and visit. A donation of just £3 per month gives us a reliable income in uncertain times. Can you help support this little grassroots museum? vaginamuseum.co.uk/support/donate

@eve_burns_

One more video from opening weekend, just because it's cool: our educational, interactive anatomy diagram, shot by vulvateer and duty (booty?) manager @eve_burns_

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More from @vagina_museum

Vagina Museum

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Mar 6

We've been receiving a lot of requests for us to answer this crucial question, and we are delighted to attempt to provide you with the information you need as to whether you can read braille with your clit.

First of all, it is important to establish parameters on the scope of this question. It is in fact two questions: can you read braille with your clitoris, and does this impact reading speed?

For the purpose of answering this question, we will assume that the OP means the clitoral glans. The glans is the only part of the clitoris which sticks out. The rest of it is beneath the skin of the vulva. Here's what the whole organ looks like; the glans is at the top.

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Being a Vagina Museum, we run up against a lot of myths about the world's most misunderstood body parts. Heck, we even dedicated an entire exhibition to the topic.

One myth we encounter fairly frequently is that dogs have periods. Today, we're going to address that...

Having a menstrual cycle is very rare in nature. A period is a phase in the ovarian cycle where the endometrium - the lining of the uterus - is shed. It will then regenerate each cycle, because for whatever reason, embryos only implant in fresh endometrium.

Only a handful of animals shed the endometrium and have a menstrual cycle. For all other mammals, they get rid of old endometrium in a different way: they reabsorb it if they don't get pregnant.

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Jan 8

Rana temporaria is the taxonomic name of the common frog. They're very, very common in Europe and parts of Asia. Except they have a way of determining sex which is (so far) very, very uncommon...

Some animals determine sex based on genes - there's multiple approaches to this, including the XY system (most common in mammals); the XO system (many invertebrates) the ZW system (most common in birds); and the XYXYXYXYXY system (pretty much just platypuses and echidnas).

Under these systems, if an embryo has one type of chromosome set, it will develop as female; the other and it will develop as male (most of the time).

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Ever wondered what a menstrual cup is doing in there during use? Thanks to science, we now know where it sits: pretty close to the cervix, turns out. In this MRI scan, the cup is coloured in green, blue shows the vagina, the cervix is outlined in yellow and the uterus in orange.

The reason this research was done is rather interesting. Maria Friburg and colleagues (2023) needed to know exactly where a menstrual cup sits in the body to answer a related question: can bacteria that causes Toxic Shock Syndrome grow on a menstrual cup?

To answer this question, the researchers needed to know, first of all, whether the test environment for growing bacteria was aerobic (containing oxygen) or anaerobic. If the cup was lower, it would hold the vagina open, letting air in.

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Now it's important to note that St Bernard of Clairvaux isn't the one doing the lactating. He's the kneeling guy. That's the Virgin Mary right there doing the lactating, with baby Jesus on her lap.

Bernard of Clairvaux was a 12th century abbot and one of the founders of the Knights Templar. Here's a couple of depictions of him outside of the milky miracle.