On April 22, dozens of letters protesting President Donald Trump written by women around the United States will arrive at the White House in a giant envelope (of sorts) in the shape of a vagina, courtesy of female-oriented platform Mogul. The campaign, called #ReadMyLips, is a reference not to George H.W. Bush's fateful 1988 campaign promise not to raise taxes, but to female anatomy. And so the anti-Trump vagina protest motif has moved from the abstract and craft-centric (that is, the pussy hat) to the branded and literal.

Vaginally oriented resistance wasn't born in response to Trumpism. Eve Ensler's play The Vagina Monologues, as much a remonstration against women's oppression as an ode to the pudenda, first appeared in 1996. The current, ubiquitous incarnation is a reference to Trump's notorious 2005 "Grab them by the pussy" remark, the recording of which made waves during (but evidently didn't decide) the 2016 presidential campaign. But it also evokes the accusation, made against women who supported Hillary Clinton, that they were voting with their vaginas. All of that "vagina" talk was demeaning and insulting, and thus a prime target for a reclamation campaign. Clearly The Vagina was posing some sort of threat, so what could be more delightful than rubbing The Vagina in oppressors' faces? (Metaphorically, of course.)

The 'pussy hat' represented the growing movement of resistance to Trump and his threats to women's rights. Credit:Getty Images

The vagina protest also offers an opportunity for large-scale solidarity, at a time when feminism appeared in need of unity. Had Clinton lost because of an insufficiently intersectional approach - that is, because of a focus on middle-class white women? Or was her mistake failing to win over, well, middle-class white women? What if both were true? A New York Times headline on December 30 that read "Feminism Lost. Now What?" seemed to sum up the state of the women's movement writ large.

If women couldn't agree on a moderate Democrat to become the nation's first female president, what was left? Well, there were vaginas. The visual provided by that sea of Women's March pink pussy hats served as a cathartically necessary moment of solidarity, a pause in the ongoing contentious debates over where, precisely, the feminist movement's boundaries should be drawn.