Pussy Galore:A Visitor From the Vagina Museum.

The final event of the London Skeptics in the Pub 2019 season,  Clitical Thinking:Why the World Needs A Vagina Museum, sounded as if it had at the potential to be timely, informative, and something quite out of the ordinary but when speaker Florence Schechter walked on to the stage to the sound of klaxons and Pop Will Eat Itself's unreconstructed grebo pop 'classic' Beaver Patrol and people sprayed beer in the air as she launched into a routine that was more bluer than even Roy 'Chubby' Brown in his pomp I was quite astounded.

Or I would have been if that had happened. Needless to say the evening was quite unlike that. Neither, however, was it some dull school biology listen that could only be livened up by staring out the window and passing small pieces of paper scrawled with scurrilous rumours around the 'class'.

In fact, there was a lot of laughter (possibly the most I've ever heard at a Skeptics event, hardly stony faced affairs even when confronting traditionally grim subjects) and a lot of that was down to Florence herself. As the founder and director of the world's first bricks and mortar vagina museum, just across the road in Camden's Stables Market, she clearly knew her subject and she approached with the ease and the professionalism of someone who would be equally at home in either the stand up or the lecture circuit.

There was little fannying around (sorry) as she set out to tell us what the museum hoped to achieve, what kind of people it hoped to attract (spoiler alert - everyone), why she felt some were so offended by its very existence, and what sort of messages she'd received since announcing the creation of the museum. On the most part they'd been positive but the negative ones, on the whole, were funnier so we were treated to a brief snatch (sorry, I'll stop soon) of them.

"Vaginas have looked the same for thousands of years. Why do we need a museum"? was one of the less offensive tweets she'd received and this was backed up by a WhatsApp message from a friend of mine who, on being told how I was spending the evening, replied (not entirely seriously) with "can't think of anything to discuss on that matter. They are what they are".

Which is sort of true. But dinosaur bones haven't changed much in thousands of years either and nor have ancient Egyptian relics but there are plenty of museums devoted to both those things so, considering 50% of the population are in possession of a vagina, it does seem like a subject that people ought to be educated about. Or at least have the option to.

Some definitely need educating. One man had genuinely written, in anger, that he felt tampons should not be tax free as periods are caused by women's inability to control their bladder and another, Kyle, had written to say that he firmly believed that female orgasm was impossible to achieve and that the reason so many women were sexually unsatisfied is that they'd been fed a lie that orgasm was possible.

At least that's what's he's been telling himself! Although, to be fair, he did promise to do 'further research' on the subject! Although these examples show how clueless many men are when it comes to women's bodies there were others that were intentionally humorous. Although, in most cases, the repetition of the same jokes got to be a trifle tedious!

There's a building in London dedicated to 'crusty old cunts' wrote one jester before going on to say that that's enough about the Houses of Parliament and how, instead, he was looking forward to a visit to the Vagina Museum. Schechter joked back that, unlike members of parliament, vaginas are actually useful before observing that signs have been mocked up for when spillages occur reading 'CAUTION:SLIPPERY WHEN WET', many have asked if it will be closed once a month for refurbishment, and others have inquired as to whether or not there will be a knocker on the door as men may find it difficult to locate the buzzer. Some have gone on to suggest there is a nearby clitoris museum but, as yet, nobody's been able to find it.

Other wags have suggested that Bill Clinton could cut the ceremonial hymen and there have been rumours that the Trump administration were interesting in grabbing a piece of it should the chance arise. We all, of course, laughed heartily but the tone changed as Florence, feeling correctly confident she'd got us on side, pointed out some even more serious reasons why such a museum was long overdue.

The societal stigma around gynaecological anatomy prevails to such a severe degree that many women simply refuse to have cervical smears, there's further stigma when it comes to conversations about the menopause and, inspired by unrealistic pornographic imagery, labiaplasty (a surgery to, essentially, make the vagina tighter) is one of the fastest growing cosmetic procedures.

In Michigan, in 2012, two politicians were barred from the floor for simply using the word 'vagina' during a debate about abortion and the Japanese artist Rokude Nashiko was arrested for twice for using a canoe modelled on her own vagina to take her for a river ride.

As well as some still finding the mere mention of a piece of the anatomy half the world share offensive, there's a fear that, in the current political climate and particularly because of the fatal policy of austerity, women and the LGBT+ community (some observers, by the way, have been upset by the museum's trans-inclusionary stance) are being disproportionately affected.

Depressingly, that's often the way with the kind of alpha males that end up being president or prime minister. Everything, and everyone, that threatens their power needs to be constantly attacked and women, it seems, more than most. Donald Trump has five children and Boris Johnson has, according to Wikipedia, "at least 5" which suggests that (a) there's a lot of women out there who aren't so bothered about this state of affairs and (b) if the worst sexists are breeding at this rate we better hope their children don't take after them or we're all fucked.

As a man I'm fully aware that I've been guilty of thinking and saying terrible and hurtful things about, and to, women in the past. I didn't realise why I was doing it at the time. I didn't realise I'd been conditioned to think like that and I didn't realise I was attacking as a form of defence. I've changed my behaviour a lot over the years and I've tried to educate myself but I don't doubt I still have a very long way to go so I'll do my best to steer well clear of any #notallmen type stuff and, for now, I think it's unlikely I'll buy a t-shirt with an image of a vulva on it and wave it around like one well meaning guy did at the talk.

He pulled it off. But I'd get it wrong. I'm sure of that. Once Florence had explained why there was a need for the Vagina Museum (currently working towards a permanent home) to a packed house of those who seemed to be on her side from the start there was still time for a few other anecdotes about the last couple of years of her life since she tweeted about the idea of the museum to its opening just two weeks ago and on to its first exhibition, Muff Busters:Vagina Myths & How to Fight Them!

They've a membership scheme (the Cliterati, obvs) and despite there being no permanent collection we were treated to pictures of vagina dentata (the ancient myth of the toothed vagina was brought back into the public sphere in 2007 with Mitchell Lichtenstein's horror comedy film Teeth), a brief section about the pre-Columbian obsession with anal sex in the pottery of South America (especially Peru), and to stories about the art of Gustave Courbet (whose 1866 L'Origine du Monde is regularly censored by Facebook, one Danish science teacher even sued them over it) and Georgia O'Keeffe's 'flower' paintings.

While Courbet's work raised the shackles of the tech giants, it seems that Paul Gauguin's images of his underage brides in the South Seas go, often, without mention as if to suggest that realistic depiction of a female body is somehow more offensive than sexualised images of children and even actual paedophilia.

More amusingly, Florence told a story of a man who'd written to her suggesting that she should check out The Vagina Monologues. The idea that somebody opening a museum to vaginas would not have heard of The Vagina Monologues is, of course, priceless but the poor guy followed it up by making other suggestions for the museum. There could be 'information' and 'history' and a 'vagina launch pad'! While it's difficult to work out what form the launch pad would take it appears, elsewhere, that he not only assumed she was clueless about vaginas but that she also didn't know what a museum actually is.

Information! History! If the Science Museum or the V&A get hold of these ideas they'll run with them, you mark my words. Elsewhere we heard the tale of the Nigerian scientist who claimed he was able to 'prove' homosexuality was unnatural using magnets, there was a brief detour into the realm of Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, Call the Midwife, FGM, and menstruation, and a joke about exhibits being 'stuffed and mounted' from one audience member, before Florence proposed her own theory that human babies are born, essentially, prematurely.

That's why, unlike other animals, they take so long to learn to walk and that's why evolution, somehow, extended our life expectancy so that most young mothers would have their own mothers available to help them with the impossible looking task (I've never tried, I'd be rubbish) of bringing up small children.

Evolution, she went on to speculate, came up with the menopause so that these useful grandmothers wouldn't be conflicted time and priority wise by having to deal with their own newborns at the same time as their grandchildren. It was the one part of the talk I wasn't sure about but, hey, I'm no scientist and nor am I anything like an expert on either the female anatomy or evolution.

I'm just a keen student and Florence Schechter, it turned out, proved to be a more than capable tutor. It's hardly surprising she's spoken at both the Freud Museum and at Conway Hall and with her enthusiasm, sense of humour, and can do attitude it looks to me like the Vagina Museum can go on to be a great success.

There's a penis museum in Iceland so it was definitely time that a museum to vaginas appeared as well (hopefully my blog can be filed along with the one I wrote about cocks, and worship of them, back in 2016) and I'm proud that it's in my home city of London. If, for some weird reason, you're offended by its existence there's a simple answer to that. Just don't go there.

There are plenty of things to be offended about in Camden (the amount of homelessness, the price of coffee, and I once saw some buskers who sounded almost exactly like Mumford & Sons) but neither Florence Schechter's new Vagina Museum nor the long running London Skeptics in the Pub are among them.

It had been a great evening and an anything but dry (I'm really sorry for that one) speech and as The Monarch blasted out Prefab Sprout's Bonny and Blondie's Sunday Girl (which kids at my school used to change the lyrics so they referenced a 'hairy fanny') I reflected on a year of wonderful London Skeptics talks that had covered topics as bizarre and interesting as obscenity law, anxiety and anxiety cures, the ideas behind 'race science', flat Earth belief, pseudoscience, and, last month, critical thinking and how Florence Schechter's talk had been a great way to end the season.

London Skeptics in the Pub (as well as Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub, the London Fortean Society, SELFS, our TADS and London by Foot walks, art, and, more than anything, all my loved and valued friends) has been a shining beacon during a dark time both politically and personally. They are reasons to carry on. For if we look for the light then surely that is our best way out of the darkness. I make no apologies if that makes me sound like a pussy because, we should all know by now, there's nothing at all wrong with pussies.