A statue of a nude bearded man breastfeeding a baby outside the former Danish women's museum is drawing ire, with some critics of the statue suggesting that it represents the erasure of women. The nude figure is apparently a self-portrait by Aske Kreilgaard, created in 2021, that presents a bearded man with breasts holding an infant, per Reduxx.
The statue was apparently meant to celebrate International Men’s Day, but the piece has now been moved outside The Gender Museum in Aarhus, Denmark, which was previously known as the Women’s Museum.
Reduxx reported that The Gender Museum was founded in 1982 to educate the general public about the history of women. But the name was changed in 2021 to reflect the ideological shift toward topics such as gender and sexuality. The claim is that gender roles have “changed significantly” over the years, which apparently motivated the museum to shift their focus to a “freer expression” of all genders.
Reddit post about the statue
Michelle Uriarau, Co-founder of Women's Action Group & Mana Wāhine Kōrero, took to Twitter following the news, posting: “In Aarhus, Denmark outside what was formerly called the Women's Museum, is now renamed to the ‘Gender Museum.’ The erasure of women.”
The museum’s website states: “A lot has happened in the relationship between the sexes since the Women’s Museum Association saw the light of day. Men’s gender roles and function in society have also changed significantly.”
“The cultural heritage rests in places on old divisions between genders and roles, while the present expects freer expression of all genders. Just as women’s research at universities today is called gender research, the museum has followed the same development in its ongoing depiction and documentation of cultural history.”
Reduxx reported that the Women’s Museum began to shift their focus to gender ideology in 2016, and they currently offer sex education in children’s primary school “through a culture-historical and norm-critical view of sexuality and gender.”
The description of the course on the museum’s website reads: “The societal norms that [children] experience on their own bodies are set against cultural history through objects from the history of sexual culture. In this way, we show the students that sex, gender roles and understandings of sexuality are rooted in our cultural history, and that ideas about gender, sexuality and sexual practices have changed over time.”
