Florence Schechter – a feminist jewess from the United Kingdom – made waves around the world in 2017 with her idea for a ‘Vagina Museum’. She is the daughter of Russian-born jewish klezmer musician Gregori Schechter. (1)
Schechter described her motivation for this rather weird decision as follows:
‘“I felt quite upset because I’m a big feminist and I believe in equality. I thought, 'how can there be a penis museum and not a vagina museum?'”’(2)
She also claimed to want to promote ‘knowledge about’ and ‘pride in’ vaginas, (3) but yet also stated – inexplicably if she just wanted to promote feminism – that her ‘Vagina museum’ would also push ‘awareness of body shaming’, ‘gay rights’ and ‘trans acceptance’. (4)
She also wanted to fight female genital mutilation (aka FGM) among the world’s Muslim community and convince ‘religious girls’ to be proud of losing their virginity and not to engage in anal sex. (5)
Yet this was all a publicity stunt by Schechter.
We realise when we note that despite having initially decided to build her ‘Vagina Museum’ in the left-wing homosexual-infested seaside city of Brighton in the United Kingdom. (6) She had no money or backing let alone permission to create any such thing.
To quote the Independent’s profile of her:
‘At the moment, the museum is in its very early days. All that Schechter has so far is some keen volunteers, social media pages and a Patreon fundraising page.’ (7)
And the more detailed comment in the National Student’s interview with her:
‘Despite the fact Florence, with a helping hand from volunteers, is being proactive and getting out there with the project, it's "humongously variable" as to when the Museum will be physically up and running. "Best case scenario, minimum 5 years, worst case scenario, 25 years, it's going to cost a lot and takes a long time to build a museum from scratch, I've done research and the best way to be successful and not fall on my face is to start small and keep doing these little projects and talks and build it up."’ (8)
Then in the same interview she lets the cat out of the bag in regard to what her motivation really is: money and promoting her company.
To wit:
‘Florence describes the process as a form of market research, taking the project nationally, meeting with people to find out what they want and need because without that, "how can I educate and empower if I don't know what they need?", says Florence.’ (9)
It turns out that Schechter owned a company called ‘CollabLab’, which made ‘science films’ and was the legal entity behind her eponymous YouTube channel. Her YouTube channel is tiny with a mere 5.45k subscribers at the time of writing. (10) Part of the reason for this is because Schechter doesn’t really upload much new content and what there are largely short not particularly funny somewhat science-related skits.
Not exactly a recipe for a mass following.
That being said; the fact that Schechter has been riding the ‘Vagina Museum’ publicity wave as best she can (11) but at the same time she wants charities like Refuge, companies like sanitary towel brand Always and unspecified ‘high-profile women’ to fund her museum. (12)
While of course operating a for profit company in the form of ‘CollabLab’ that is tangentially linked and stood to benefit substantially from the operation of such a museum.
Put another way Schechter was essentially trying to build her own company – and concomitantly her own fortune and profile (ironically alluded to by the Jewish Daily Forward’s reference to her as a ‘communications professional’) (13) – by riding the fashionable feminist political wave and doing so in explicitly jewish way. As illustrated by her giving a presentation of her Vagina Museum recently at the Limmud Festival of Jewish Learning in Birmingham, England in 2017 (14) all of which culminated in a ‘temporary museum location’ in the fashionably ‘alternative’ London borough of Camden between 2019 and 2021 which then closed and was then reopened in the much less fashionable but rather cheaper location of Bethnal Green, London. (15)
Unfortunately, Schechter’s attempt to use the ‘World’s First Vagina Museum’ as a publicity platform for her for profit company ‘CollabLab’ failed and ‘CollabLab’ was wound in December 2018 (16) with all that Schechter was left with being an increasingly redundant, pointless and expensive ‘Vagina Museum’ which is clearly now a significant financial burden on Schechter given the need for the move from fashionable Camden to run-down Bethnal Green.
Poor old Florence… no one actually cares about her feminism let alone her vagina.
References
(1) https://forward.com/news/breaking-news/391147/this-jewish-woman-is-creating-the-world-s-first-vagina-museum/
(2) http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/vagina-museum-deserve-florence-schechter-women-learn-consent-health-education-equality-penis-iceland-a7655901.html
(3) https://forward.com/news/breaking-news/391147/this-jewish-woman-is-creating-the-world-s-first-vagina-museum/
(4) Ibid.
(5) Ibid.
(6) Ibid.
(7) http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/vagina-museum-deserve-florence-schechter-women-learn-consent-health-education-equality-penis-iceland-a7655901.html
(8) http://www.thenationalstudent.com/Arts_and_Theatre/2017-08-06/interview_florence_schechter_founder_of_the_vagina_museum.html
(9) Ibid.
(10) https://www.youtube.com/user/floschechter
(11) For example: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/florence-schechter/why-we-need-a-vagina-muse_b_15989852.html
(12) http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/vagina-museum-deserve-florence-schechter-women-learn-consent-health-education-equality-penis-iceland-a7655901.html
(13) https://forward.com/news/breaking-news/391147/this-jewish-woman-is-creating-the-world-s-first-vagina-museum/ ; also implied by http://www.thenationalstudent.com/Arts_and_Theatre/2017-08-06/interview_florence_schechter_founder_of_the_vagina_museum.html
(14) https://forward.com/news/breaking-news/391147/this-jewish-woman-is-creating-the-world-s-first-vagina-museum/
(15) https://www.vaginamuseum.co.uk/
(16) https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10464728/filing-history