Gay men draw vaginas

If you're a human being who identifies as a gay man then we are interested in publishing your work. “So you’re really committed to doubling down on using a term that you’ve been told many times is exclusionary & harmful?” asked one self-described intersectional feminist blogger.

Which brings us to this from Eva Gantz at the Good Men Project:

“Gay Men Draw Vaginas,” a project that—you guessed it—has gay men draw vaginas, has taken the internet by storm.

So what happens when you ask a gay man to sit down and draw one? (She mentioned “internal genitals” as an alternative.) When Plimpton insisted that she would continue to say “vagina,” her feed filled up with indignation. We’re trying to get Dan Savage to draw one. In January, the actress and activist Martha Plimpton tweeted about a benefit for Texas abortion funds called “A Night of a Thousand Vaginas,” sponsored by A Is For, a reproductive rights organization she’s involved with.

Then his boyfriend drew one, and it was way prettier but way more inaccurate. I heard the word “vagina.” What I saw was a wattle. That is what a vagina is in my mind.

David Ramsay

My inspiration for my vagina was Shirley MacLaine in All That Jazz. While I was in a bit of a rush when I drew this picture, I wanted the vagina to exude creativity, hence the musical notes, and I also added purple on the lips to give it some edge and to make it stand out from your garden-variety pink labia.

What response are you hoping to get?Wilson and O'Malley: We just want reactions. Who wouldn’t want a jazz-singing vagina?

Gent Lee Ryder

My drawing is brightly colored because I wanted it to be different from the mostly taupe­-toned creations I saw. I pictured her welcoming visitors with her jazz-hand vaginal lips.

Ultimately, though, we hope people do a lot of things; we hope they'll laugh, we hope they'll think about what it means to identify as a "gay man," we hope they'll think about ideas our culture has about bodies and body parts.

Peter Max Lawrence

I read articles and looked at diagrams of the clitoris for historical context.

Co-creators Shannon O’Malley and Keith Wilson have curated a collection of incredibly diverse portrayals of the ways that gay men conceive of a vagina, ranging from the realistic to the abstract. I managed to capture the anger, depth, texture, color, and—most importantly—the hairiness of this truly spectacular creature. It was conceptual and funny and “of the time” and unexpected.

First, there's "the implicit assumption that gay men will find vulvas/vaginas ludicrous or mystifying." But Gantz's primary objection to "Gay Men Draw Vaginas" is this:

The more glaring omission—and the more dangerous one—is gay men who happen to have, or used to have, vaginas.