Notices by Vagina Museum (vagina_museum@masto.ai)

Just about the only Didn't Happen element of the twat cannon post is that forcibly ejecting a speculum at someone's head would be very unlikely to knock them out, as a plastic speculum is too light to accelerate to sufficient force at close quarters for a knockout, even with a direct headshot.

So, to conclude, yes, you probably could clonk your gynaecologist round the head with a speculum if they made you laugh at precisely the wrong moment. Which is why a lot of gynaecologists won't make a joke when the speculum and their head are in the danger zone.

Wow, you all enjoyed learning whether it's possible to render a doctor unconscious with a twat cannon. The Vagina Museum is a charity, and we provide free educational work here and in our London home! We appreciate any support you give, so whether you enjoyed this or it gave you ideas for a new siege weapon, please donate to help us keep providing space for learning, and sharing your stories of accidentally destroying a flatscreen TV with a vagina-deployed projectile. https://www.vaginamuseum.co.uk/donate

It is also worth noting that a tool such as a speculum as it's inserted, a vaginal dilator or certain designs of sex toy are nearly the perfect shape to be shot out quite some distance when lubricated. They're basically shaped like vagina-compatible bullets.

Remember: the pelvic floor is, on a day-to-day basis, carrying around at the very least the weight of your intestines (about 3.5 kilos). If you're pregnant, it supports the whole weight of that, too. These muscles are *strong*. Something smooth and slippery doesn't stand a chance.

When you squeeze your pelvic floor, you're essentially closing the holes in it. If the thing is small and completely inside the vagina, such as a menstrual cup, squeezing the pelvic floor might push it further up inside you.

But if something is rigid and slippery and at the entrance of the vagina, the laws of physics dictate a squeeze will probably push it out, possibly quite an alarming distance.

Anyway, the most pertinent information in assessing the veracity of the twat cannon post is that pelvic floors squeeze involuntarily when you laugh.

And now let's talk about physics.

Digression: The pelvic floor is also supposed to stop you from peeing when you laugh, cough or sneeze. Sometimes muscle tone isn't strong enough to catch this all the time. This might happen due to age, or having given birth vaginally, or something being really fucking funny so there's extra stress on the pelvic floor.. Strength can often be rebuilt through exercising the pelvic floor.

Have you ever had an experience where you try to grab a wet bar of soap with wet hands and it shoots clean out of your hand and across the shower? If you haven't, give this a go. Take the soap in your hand, and squeeze it just a little too hard. It flies right out.

Slippery, moist, smooth, rigid things will often go WHOOSH if squeezy force is applied. (sorry, we're a Vagina Museum, not a phyics museum)

It's the Fesshole/Vagina Museum crossover event you've all been waiting for. Tons of you tagged us into this across all of our socials, asking for a fact-check. The consensus of the reply guys is that it Didn't Happen. However, this is in fact very possible. Here's why...

Some common events put extra pressure on the pelvic floor. This includes coughing, sneezing, and a big ol' bark of laughter. In these instances, the pelvic floor needs to work a little harder, and it will squeeze. Usually this happens without any intervention from you. It's a useful reflex, because it prevents your internal organs from falling out.

Regardless of whether you have a penis or a vagina, everyone has a pelvic floor. It's a bowl of muscles at, well, the floor of the pelvis. There's two gaps in the pelvic floor - one where the anus comes out, and a urogenital one. If you have a vagina, the vagina and urethra both exit here.

The human pelvic floor has a couple of very important jobs. First and foremost, is keeping your internal organs inside you. The other is ensuring that peeing and pooing stays under your control.

The other thing is menstrual disorders. A 2025 study of German elite athletes led by Elisabeth Kirschbaum found that elite athletes were at high risk of menstrual disorders. 8% of their sample had secondary amenorrhoea - they were not currently having periods. 2% had primary amenorrhoea - they had never started having periods.

Even among the elite athletes who were having periods, there was a high rate (21%) of having an irregular cycle where it was more than 35 days between periods.

Recently, a sport story went viral: a man had discovered One Weird Trick in betting on women's basketball matches. He claimed to be inferring the athletes' menstrual cycles and believed they performed worse at certain points. So does the menstrual cycle affect sporting performance?

Results of studies into the topic vary. When focusing on self-report, athletes and exercisers frequently report that their performance is negatively impacted by symptoms in the pre-menstrual ("late luteal") and menstrual ("early follicular") stages of their cycles.

We will preface by saying that the scientific research into the topic is - like pretty much everything pertaining to gynaecological health - pretty sparse and fairly new. It's also a pretty difficult topic to measure as it involves collecting a lot of data on menstrual cycles, which not everyone is comfortable sharing.

Of course, any impact of the menstrual cycle on athletic performance is dependent on the athletes having a menstrual cycle at all. And many athletes do not.

There are several reasons why an athlete might not menstruate. The first is by choice. A lot of athletes use contraceptives such as the combined pill or the hormonal IUD. These methods suppress the cycle - meaning there is no cycle to have an impact.

Numerous literature reviews have also been conducted. These tend to find that there is no effect of menstrual cycle on performance, that it's heavily dependent on the type of sport being played, or that any effects relate to level at which the sport is played.

So, broadly, the picture on the menstrual cycle and athletic performance is very spotty indeed, and it's pretty unclear as to if there is any effect on performance at all.

When tested on cognitive effects and performance at varying stages of the cycle, some studies reveal a slightly different state of affairs. A 2025 study led by Flaminia Ronca found that reaction times were best around ovulation. A 2024 study led by the same author found that performance was best during menstruation.

Twilight sleep fell from favour almost as quickly as it rose to popularity. One of its most vocal advocates died in childbirth (for unrelated reasons). Also, the First World War made anything German, such as the Freiburg method, somewhat unfashionable. The practice didn't entirely disappear, although it ceased to be a fad and became less mainstream. Queen Elizabeth II was said to have used twilight sleep for the births of her first three children.