In perhaps an unsurprising bit of irony,
the cover never got circulated because it was censored, the newspaper
said on its Facebook page.
Honi Soit, the University of Sydney’s
student paper, first attempted to print a cover with entirely naked
genitalia (click below for the original cover) but was told by lawyers
for the Students Representative Council to obscure the images. Then it
published a version with the vulvae covered by black bars. However, the
council, which operates the publication, determined that the black bars
didn’t hide enough and seized all 4,000 copies off shelves this week,
Jezebel reported.
“The cover was meant to be an empowering
message to women that they don’t need to be ashamed of their bodies,”
Editor-in-Chief Hannah Ryan told Jezebel. “This response, and the fact
that it is possibly criminal, is therefore incredibly disappointing.”
In an essay titled “The Vagina
Dialogues” on Honi Soit’s website and Facebook page, the editors wrote:
“We are tired of vaginas being either artificially sexualised (see:
porn) or stigmatised (see: censorship and airbrushing). We are tired of
being pressured to be sexual, and then being shamed for being sexual.”
And it concludes: “We hereby present to
you the censored vaginas of 18 Sydney University Students. We present
them, tarnished, enraged, and enlarged. And we ask you, the reasonable
person, are you seriously offended by a body part half the population
has?”
The SRC feared the original cover was
against the law, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. But when the
printing came back with the black bars not as dark as expected, Ryan
told the metro daily, “I was surprised it wasn’t fully opaque, but I was
slightly happy it happened because the original plan was to publish it
without the black bars.”
In attempting to sum up the contretemps,
reader Trisha Jha wrote on the paper’s site: “If you can’t push the
boundaries in a student newspaper at a university, where can you?
Universities are places where you’re meant to be challenged and
confronted — any censorship goes against that spirit.”
The Huffington Post reached out to Honi
Soit editors and Students Representative Council President David Pink
but did not immediately hear back.
UPDATE: In an email to
The Huffington Post, Honi Soit Editor-in-Chief Hannah Ryan wrote: “It’s
fantastic that we’ve started a worldwide conversation. Women have
contacted us telling us they’d never seen other people’s vulvae before
and that they feel better about their bodies. Perhaps young heterosexual
men’s expectations have been adjusted to become more realistic, as
well. Other media organisations have come on board and argued that it’s
ridiculous that to show a body part that 50% of the population has is
illegal, and possibly criminal.”
Source: The Huffington Post