Swedish feminists push for Midsummer 'mayhole' revolution

While most Swedes look forward to dancing around a traditional maypole this Midsummer, one group of gender-conscious revellers is pushing Swedes to celebrate the holiday by gathering around a vagina instead, contributor Lina Sennevall discovers.

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With the cherished Midsummer holiday just around the corner, Swedes across the country are busy planning how they'll spend this most traditional of holidays.

Among the most important parts of a traditional Midsummer celebration is the decoration and erection of a flower-adorned maypole, around which joyous Swedes, young and old, dance and sing merry tunes like "Små grodorna" ('Little frogs') in a rapturous celebration of the summer's warmth and sunshine.

But this year, a growing chorus of voices rising up against Sweden's traditional Midsummer celebrations, implore Swedes to break with tradition and dance around a vagina instead.

“In the future I want coming generations to say on their trips abroad that ‘In Sweden we celebrate midsummer by dancing around a vagina’,” says Alexander Alvina Chamberland, co-founder of the group Midsommarfitta ('Midsummer Cunt').

Chamberland, a self-proclaimed 'femme genderqueer' who launched the group on Facebook in 2008, believes the traditional Midsummer maypole is a sexist phallic symbol that should be replaced by something of a more feminine flavour.

Rather than erecting a maypole, he and other members in the group want Swedes to spend time fashioning 'mayholes' by digging a hole in the ground or arranging tree branches in the shape of a vagina.

“It could be all different sizes, laid on the ground, or erected into the sky. It could be built from flowers, fabric, leafs, stones or glass," says Chamberland, who believes Sweden's current Midsummer tradition is too "heteronormative".

“It’s not just the pole," he explains.

"The tradition of girls picking seven different flowers to put under their pillow to dream about their future man is also very heteronormative and patriarchal."

As a femme genderqueer who feels neither like a man nor woman, but nevertheless chooses to act in a feminine manner, Chamberland says the goal of the Midsommarfitta initiative is to bring down the phallic symbols everywhere in society but also to get people to look at other holidays with a critical eye.

“Everything is politics,” says Alexander.

“Just look at Santa Claus. He’s working while Mrs Claus sits at home. And he has little slaves that make everything for him."

However, some experts dispute Chamberland's assertion that the Midsummer maypole is in fact a phallic symbol.

“The short answer is that the maypole is not really a phallic symbol. A person’s interpretation of the maypole is of course very individual but generally you could say that the pole symbolises party, summer and time off work,“ says Katarina Ek-Nilson, of Sweden's Institute for Language and folklore (Institutet för språk och folkminnen).

“The maypole is in fact a German custom that came to Sweden around the 16th century, so it’s not an ancient tradition."

Ek-Nilson adds that the shape of maypoles can vary, with some also being shaped like a cross.

"There are also indications that they used to look more like smaller poles or sceptres,” she explains.

Others suggest that the pole indeed represents a penis but that the earth symbolises the woman being fertilised by the pole, meaning that both sexes are actually being represented in the traditional symbol.

But such explanations fail to convince Chamberland, who has just finished his master degree in gender studies, that Midsummer celebrations don’t need changing.

“That still reflects the different gender roles and the view that there are only two genders and that sex should only be vaginal and between a man and a woman when in fact there are lots of different ways to have sex,” he argues.

Stina Svensson, a spokesperson for the feminist political party Feminist Initiative (Feministiskt Initiativ - FI), welcomes Chamberland's efforts.

“I think it seems like a creative new way to celebrate Midsummer and I think it’s good when people celebrate the way they want to instead of how they should,” she says.

Chamberland hopes to utilise the Midsommarfitta Facebook group, which now boasts more than 3,000 members, to help spread awareness about how to create a Midsummer vagina by encouraging people to share pictures of their ‘mayholes’ with one another ahead of this year's holiday.

So far, the response has been encouraging.

“I’m very surprised over the positive feedback and that so many people like this fun and political way of celebrating,” says Chamberland.

Although thousands have embraced the 'Midsummer Cunt' movement, the group has received its share of criticism, especially from anti-feminists.

But Chamberland shrugs off the negative reactions, arguing that detractors are simply taking the group too seriously.

“Feminists are often accused of not having any humour and then when we do, people complain that we’re ridiculous. I’d like to say though that most people have been positive,” he says.

Either way, Chamberland plans on spending his Midsummer holiday in Berlin this year.

And while he won't be dancing around a vagina, he plans keep a close eye on the group's Facebook page to monitor the expected flood of Midsummer 'mayholes' he expects to turn up.