Controversial Statue Causes Waves on Twitter
A sculpture depicting a man breastfeeding a baby is spreading across Twitter, causing a stir amongst users on the platform.
The tweet by Michelle Uriarau reads “In Aarhus, Denmark outside what was formerly called the Women's Museum, is now renamed to the ‘Gender Museum.’ The erasure of women.”
The statue currently resides outside a museum formerly known as Kvindemuseet (Women’s Museum) founded in 1982 with a focus on woman’s history, and has since been renamed KØN - Gender Museum Denmark. The museum’s name change occurred in an attempt to broaden its focus from women’s issues to gender and equality.
The museum’s website reads “KØN – Gender Museum Denmark is a Danish museum in the heart of Aarhus. It is one of the few museums in the world, focusing on gender and equality.”
The sculpture, named AGAPE, was a topic of controversy in Denmark in 2022. Standing 3.5 meters tall, the white statue, created by Aske Jonatan Kreilgaard, features a man with exposed genitalia and breasts breastfeeding a baby.
The sculpture was created in connection to International Men’s Day in 2021 and donated to the museum by its artist with the following statement:
"Traditionally we have always associated the unlimited love (agape) with the woman and sexuality (eros) with the man. These are boxes which can seem very limiting for the individual. In the last fifty years of feminism, women have gradually freed themselves from the idea of exclusively to be able to be self-sacrificing and caring beings to also accommodate a strong sexuality and great independence. The opposite is only just beginning for men. As a man, I am personally limited by being seen only as a sexual being, in which vulnerability and love are seen as signs of weakness. The violent reactions to the sculpture are, for me, a clear example of the constant sexualization of the man's intentions. The sculpture was created to challenge just this. That is why I am donating the sculpture to the museum so that it can continue to create conversations between people."
Critics of the statue have referred to it as “pedophilic” and promoting a fetish while supporters think it opens up an important conversation in regard to gender roles and expectations within society.
Twitter users weighed in calling it “extremely disturbing” and another example of “the erasure of women.”
You can learn more about the controversy surrounding AGAPE here.
The sculpture depicts a man with supposedly lactating breasts. A man could only do this if he were taking a concoction of drugs to grow moobs and then produce a simulacrum substance nearing a mother's breast milk. It's offensive, disgusting. It makes no statement about real men in a nurturing role with their children. It's a fetishist's imagination.
Sure the messaging surrounding this is...fine, i guess, but the imagery is unmooring, gross, and inflammatory.