Swedish feminists push for mayhole not maypole

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. 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 C*nt'). Chamberland, a self-proclaimed 'femme genderqueer', 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".