Happy #BiVisibilityDay! We have a lot of bi+ members of the Vagina Museum team, so we're going to introduce you to some of our lovely bi, pan and queer eager beavers!
"I'm Rhi, I'm queer/pansexual. I volunteer at the Vagina Museum and I work in disability access in the music and live events industry. In my spare time I paint and hang out with my cat."
This is volunteer Ki (per/per/person): "Queer, polyamorous, bisexual activist. Microscopist in biomedical research to pay the bills. Avid crafter - I sew, crochet, and am currently learning embroidery! Love cats!"
Here's Emma @emmarcviolet (she/her). "When not volunteering at the vagina museum I do photography/listing for another charity. In my spare time I create photography about chronic illness and feminist issues."
This is our duty manger and purchasing agent Angela (she/they), also known as Lucie Liquor. Outside of the VM she’s a burlesque artist, pole dancer and cat fanatic.
This is volunteer Amy (she/her) "Outside the Vagina Museum I’m a mum of two boys, autism advocate, dressmaker & proud ginger northerner."
This is duty manager Alex (she/her): "I am a neurodivergent performance artist and associate lecturer. I’m currently doing my PhD at East 15, Acting school in theatre and performance and my research looks at gender, sexuality and the representation of vulvas in contemporary...
"...performance. So when I’m not in the vagina museum, I’m still writing about them and I fucking love it!"
This is Dara @dididrama (she/her) "I’m a vagina museum volunteer. I love social history, especially the history of sex and sexuality and history of women. I’m married to a man and we have two cats."
And last but not least, our founder and director @floschechter: "I'm bi and here's a photo of me at the museum in a top by @JayHulmePoet. I like starting museums, TTRPG, cats (even though I'm allergic which is an ironic tragedy), listening to the same song on repeat and carbs."
We promise you don't have to be bi+ and like cats to work here, but it helps...
All right, one more, since she really wanted to be included. Here's duty manager Madeleine (she/her). When she’s not at the vagina museum she’s working in theatre or exploring ruined castles.
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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.
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).
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.
Museum collaborations are a great opportunity for exchanging knowledge and best practice. We would like to share some of our learning from our residency at the Crab Museum. So who wants to hear about the mind control barnacle that feminises and impregnates its victims?
Sacculina carcini, also known as the crab hacker barnacle, is a parasitic barnacle which infects crabs - usually the green crab (although sometimes others).
The female barnacle larva finds a crab, and enters through the bristles on its legs. It's not fussy about the sex of the crab, it can infect either males or females.
It's been a while since we've shown you a weird fad in medieval Christian art, so here's one you might enjoy - Lactatio Bernardi: The Lactation of St Bernard.
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.
The Cholmondeley Ladies (circa 1600-1610) is a painting raising many questions. Today we're not going to talk about the puzzle in pegging down the identities of the women - we will focus on a different, more mundane puzzle...
Image courtesy of Tate Britain.
The Cholmondeley Ladies painting is accompanied by an inscription, which says "Two Ladies of the Cholmondeley Family, Who were born the same day, Married the same day, And brought to Bed the same day."
Many scholars have explored the identities of these ladies, who are unknown, wondered who the unknown artist who painted it was. Even the donor who gave the painting to the Tate is anonymous.