Notices by Vagina Museum (vagina_museum@masto.ai)

The perfect second sentence of a research paper introduction doesn't exi-

Did your period come unexpectedly and now you've got blood stains on your clothes? Always use *cold* water to rinse, and often that'll be sufficient on its own to remove fresh stains. It has to be cold. Here's why...

Blood - and most secretions from the human body - contains a lot of protein. The body in general has loads of protein in it, and blood is no exception.

When exposed to heat, such as by rinsing in hot water, blood "cooks". Think about how an egg white is clear-ish, then once it hits the heat it almost immediately goes white and changes texture. The same happens with blood.

If you'd like to learn more about what's in period blood now you know how to get the stains off your brand new white trousers, here's a primer... https://masto.ai/@vagina_museum/112892387509272810

Meanwhile, rinsing your bloodstained knickers or sheets in cold water won't affect the proteins - it'll just rinse the blood right out!

This works best if the stain is reasonably fresh. Once it dries out, the blood will clot and this, too, helps it to bind to the fabric like applying heat.

And finally, the same principles apply to cum. Just in case any of you need to know that.

Early 17th century illustration of the vulva and internal organs from "De formatu foetu" by Fabricius, 1604.

Courtesy of Wellcome Images

On Sundays, we're not just serving cunt, we're serving coffee! Pop in and buy a hot drink or a beverage from our bar, and settle down in our cosy cafe space! https://www.vaginamuseum.co.uk/visit

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).

For other animals, chromosomes are irrelevant to sex. Instead, sex is determined by the environment. This happens in some crabs, where males are hatched earlier in the mating season than females; or crocodiles, where temperature of the egg during incubation determines sex.

Once they've metamorphosed from a tadpole into a froglet, some common frogs from milder climates will undergo one more physical transformation: their ovaries will turn into testes, and they'll develop a secondary sex characteristic called "nuptial pads" (a mucous gland which helps the frog grab a female during mating).

Anyway, back to frogs. The common frog is unusual in that it has "sex races". Not as in speedrunning a shag. Common frogs have multiple different approaches to sex determination which vary by region.

A common frog living in colder northern climates will probably hatch as either female or male. The male will have XY chromosomes; the female XX. However, a frog born in a milder climate such as the Netherlands or the UK will always hatch with ovaries, regardless of chromosomes.

There's also a *third* sex race of common frogs: ones which sometimes use chromosomal sex determination and sometimes don't.

It's unclear as to exactly why the same species of frog determines sex in multiple different ways. But it seems to be working out pretty well for them, since they're so plentiful in the wild.

Bluesky is a platform which automatically slaps content warnings on posts. It also offers very limited options for putting warnings on your own posts, which look like this.

As you'll see, there's a lot of options for "adult". Which is a *very* loaded term.

The other two options under the umbrella of "adult" are equally inadequate. "Suggestive" is simply baffling and ill-defined. And "nudity" is NOT a neutral term. Nudity is a concept steeped in cultural attitudes, and in the anglo-sphere is linked to misogyny and colonialism.

Consider, for example, the empires which forced Indigenous people to abandon their traditional attire and instead adopt the colonisers' "modest" attire.

Now here's a fun fact: it's not only adults that have vaginas and vulvas. Most of you probably don't need to know this, but about 50% of children have this part of the anatomy, too. And most of these children came out of a vagina. Instagram/Meta is particularly egregious for flagging and shadow-banning anything that even so much as uses anatomically correct language, thus obscuring content which, frankly, young people probably *should* be able to access.

(we would also like to spare a thought for the poor souls who open a post marked "adult" in anticipation of finding some porn, and are instead confronted by things like an 18th century medical illustration of the major pelvic blood vessel. Not a primary victim, but sorry)

So nudity is not neutral. Adult content is not neutral. And the individuals creating automated content warning tools or content labels are most certainly not neutral either.

This use of non-neutral language creates a vicious circle wherein these taboos and attitudes are reinforced and amplified. This has real-world consequences - for example, 65% of women under 25 have a problem with using the word "vagina".