Cis Women Born Without a Vagina Are they still real Women?

Hey Everyone I decided to post this for cis women who argue that Transgender women can never be real women because they don't have a vagina and can't have periods and give birth ect. 1 thing the people with this lame argument fail to realize is that there are one in 5,000 women Born without a vagina as in the case of 33yr old Jen Irwin

still hadn’t gotten her period by the time she was 15. A visit to her doctor right before her 16th birthday didn't offer any answers, but when she followed up the appointment with an MRI, the results were inconceivable: She didn't have a uterus.  

It turned out that Jen, who’s now 33 years old, had Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome (MRKH), an abnormality that affects about one in 5,000 women at birth. Those with the congenital syndrome are either born without a uterus and vagina or they have underdeveloped ones (they do have working ovaries, however). Jen spoke with us about how MRKH has affected every aspect of her life since her teen years.

Growing Up Without a Period

Not having to deal with PMS cramps and remembering to change your tampon every few hours sounds like a dream come true, right? But before her diagnosis with MRKH, Jen was jealous of her friends’ monthly bleed.

“I definitely remember being in middle school and my friends talking about having their periods—or girls in gym class saying, ‘Oh, I have cramps, I have to sit out,’” says Jen. “When I was young and didn’t know what was going on, I lied about it for a while. Now, everybody says I’m really lucky that I don’t have a period. But I would like to try it for a month just to see what it’s about.”

Jen and her husband, Jason PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JEN IRWIN

Love & Marriage

Jen met her husband Jason when she was 20 years old, and they’ve been married for more than five years. While her MRKH has never been an issue for the couple (in fact, she told Jason two weeks after they started dating), that hasn’t been the case with every guy.

“I once had a boyfriend who broke up with me when I told him,” says Jen. “He tried to be cool with it, but the next day he was like, ‘This is not going to work out for me.’ This definitely affected me. I became a little bit standoffish to men. When I met my husband, I really liked him—so I told him right away, and he didn’t care.”

Some women with MRKH are born without vaginas and others, like Jen, have shortened ones. In the case of having a shortened vagina, women can use plastic dilators to stretch and expand it over time. “I haven’t used them since I met my husband,” says Jen. “Sex is a little uncomfortable sometimes, but it’s not painful.”

Having Kids

While women with MRKH won’t ever experience a period and can’t carry a pregnancy, they can fertilize their eggs through IVF and use a surrogate. Jen and Jason briefly discussed IVF as an option; however, Jen found out her insurance wouldn’t cover any of it, and since she’s always wanted to adopt, they decided that that was the best option for them.

“We’re not currently in the [adoption] process,” says Jen, “but we’ve gone to some research sessions. We’re getting to the point that we’re ready, but we’re trying to save some money and knock off as many things as we can on our kid-free bucket list before we jump into that. It’s so intimidating—you have to be mentally prepared.”

Jen’s also at the point where a lot of her friends are having babies—and she acknowledges that it can be tough for her emotionally to deal with that. She started a blog, When Life Doesn’t Give You a Uterus…Make Lemonade, in 2012, to help her cope. “I posted my blog on my Facebook page for the first time three years ago,” says Jen. “I did it because I was tired of people asking when I was going to have kids. It was my way of saying, ‘This is the situation, and we’re not having kids right now.’ I had an outpouring of love and connected with other people with fertility issues. A lot of people have reached out to me since then.”

The Future for Women with MRKH
In November 2015, the Cleveland Clinic announced a revolutionary bit of news: Within the next few months, they hope to transplant a uterus into a woman born without one, making pregnancy possible for people who it was never possible for before.

“I personally feel like it’s very exciting for the MRKH community and others who it might affect,” says Jen. She's still got her heart set on adoption, but the fact that pregnancy might become an option for others fills her with hope. "Although I've never had the desire to get pregnant, a lot of women really, really want to do that, so I think this is great."

Tags: REAL WOMEN http://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/mrkh-syndrome

SO AFTER READING ABOUT JEN IRWIN WILL MOST PEOPLE STILL CONSIDER HER A "REAL WOMAN" 
BECAUSE SHE WASN'T BORN WITH A VAGINA?  NEVER EXPERIENCED HER FIRST 
PERIOD? AND CAN'T GIVE
BIRTH LIKE OTHER CIS WOMEN? I GUESS 
IT'S NOT REALLY OUR PHYSICAL BODIES THAT MAKE US MALE OR FEMALE BUT OUR SPIRIT, THESE
BODIES WE HAVE ARE TO COVER UP WHO WE TRULY ARE I.E. (SPIRITUAL BEINGS WITH SPRITUAL BODIES) 
THAT LOOK DIFFERENT FROM OUR PHYSICAL ANYWAY WHEN WE PASS AWAY IT'S NOT THE BODY
YOUR LOVES ONES MISS ITS THE SPIRIT THAT YOU HAD WAY BEFORE YOU WERE BORN IN 
THE PHYSICAL. SOME PEOPLE ARE BORN WITH A FEM OR MASC SPIRITS SOME WITH BOTH
AKA "DOUBLE SPIRITS" BEFORE DUALITY MALE AND FEMALE EXISTED AS ONE LIKE ANGELS

People who identify as transgender or transsexual are usually people who are born with typical male or female anatomies but feel as though they’ve been born into the “wrong body.” For example, a person who identifies as transgender or transsexual may have typical female anatomy but feel like a male and seek to become male by taking hormones or electing to have sex reassignment surgeries.

People who have intersex conditions have anatomy that is not considered typically male or female. Most people with intersex conditions come to medical attention because doctors or parents notice something unusual about their bodies. In contrast, people who are transgendered have an internal experience of gender identity that is different from most people.

Many people confuse transgender and transsexual people with people with intersex conditions because they see two groups of people who would like to choose their own gender identity and sometimes those choices require hormonal treatments and/or surgery. These are similarities. It’s also true, albeit rare, that some people who have intersex conditions also decide to change genders at some point in their life, so some people with intersex conditions might also identify themselves as transgender or transsexual.