Friday, June 28, 2013

"Judging from this 'mission' statement, the problem that Tina Gong’s cartoon vagina is supposed to solve is not that women can’t find their genitalia..."

"... but the 'cultural stigma' that makes them feel bad about … doing whatever it is they do with it, as often as Tina Gong does it, which seems to be pretty much all the time."

Writes Robert Stacy McCain, displaying an image that I'm not going to copy here because to my eye, it depicts the female genitalia as a baby. I think it's safe to click over there, but my answer to McCain's wondering how women can be supposed to be so dumb is that this is aimed at children and seems to proceed on the theory that little girls need to learn to play with themselves by perceiving their genitals as baby dolls.

McCain links to Daisy Buchanan at The Guardian, who says it "feels patronising."
Any woman gamely negotiating her neglected areas is probably going to be put off by the colour scheme, which features more pink than a Paris Hilton perfume launch. Similarly, there's something strange and infantilising about the cartoon instructions.
The simple answer is: It's aimed at children. This is what — back in 1994 — people were afraid the Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders was talking about when she said "I think that [masturbation] is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught" to young people. What we are looking at now are the teaching materials.

Even if this wasn't aimed at children, I would still object to a cartoon that turns the vagina into a baby. It's sexualizing babies! Talk about a cultural stigma that makes you feel bad about it.

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