Do you like women? It would be easier if you liked women. Then you wouldn’t necessarily want the vagina’, the psychologist said. She was part of a larger clinical team that was newly interested in MRKH. I was 20 years old, sitting opposite her on a sofa. At that stage, my vaginal depth was only half an inch at the most. It wasn’t a rhetorical question, and yet it came out of the psychologist’s mouth so carelessly that my voice disintegrated before I could think of a reply.
Did it bother me not having a vagina? Yes. But I had no way to articulate it to others because I felt like I was betraying my body. I was ashamed of having MRKH, this deep shame that catches at your breath every time you think about it. It has always been easier to tell people about not having a reproductive system than the vaginal agenesis part. It feels like a dirty secret, not helped by fact ‘the vagina’ is already a taboo topic in many contexts. Sitting in that room, I felt like I had to convince others that I was worthy of having one. If I claimed I was straight, would that convince her?
I had very little romantic or sexual experience at that point, and so I said what I assumed to be true – that I didn’t like women. As time went by, I created a vagina through surgery and dilatation, and I dated men. And it didn’t feel overly weird, in fact I didn’t think of women at all until I had a moment at a conference where I felt attracted to a female academic that I was speaking to. I remember calling my friend not long after and asking if this means I’m bisexual, to which she said, ‘not necessarily’. Little by little, Ieft unattended, it percolated in the back of my mind. It was not until I was 30 years old that I began thinking of myself as bisexual, adding both genders on dating apps and seeing what happened.
At 31, I met my now partner of nearly four years. They identify as genderqueer, and it was a cliqued romance story that progressed from having dinner, to holding hands watching movies, to falling in love. I now see myself as pansexual, which means that my sexual, romantic, and emotional attraction to people is not dependent on their gender identity. A huge leap from the time when I told the psychologist I only liked men!
Here is what I have learnt.
You can be attracted to women and love penetration. You can be attracted to only men and not love penetration. Having or not having a vagina presumes nothing about someone’s likes and dislikes, their kinks or their turn offs.
I like having a vagina, but it does not impact on who I am attracted to. It would be equally fine if I didn’t want a vagina but was only attracted to men. In this way, my approach to having surgery was very personal, and based on how I felt in my own body, and it is something that I am glad I did.
At the same time, while my decision was not about others, being told that the vagina would be less useful if I was a lesbian represents the heteronormative and pervasive messages that we receive in the various spaces we inhabit and move through from the moment we are born. It is also reflective of the heteronormativity that biomedicine is seeped in, assuming that bodies can be pigeonholed into binaries. Mainstream society often misses the necessary nuance with which this topic must be approached.
Through my own journey, I have also discovered that even when you do have a vagina, and like penetration, it is not the only part of sex. This has been my harder lesson, because when I first had surgery and had healed, I thought that it would be the only way to please men. I had unenjoyable sexual experiences that made me so uncomfortable because I hadn’t given myself time to really consider what intimacy and sexual pleasure could look like. Or with whom.
Much like gender, sexuality is not static or easily defined for some people.
It can continually be in flux, and that’s okay. I am infinitely happier now that I live by the motto that love and intimacy need not be limited to what we are told is appropriate, easier, or less messy.
Maybe being in my 30s has made me more open and accepting of ambiguity, maybe being loved as myself helps too. If I could magically channel this energy into the 20-year-old me, then it would have been glorious if I had said to the psychologist: ‘I want a vagina, I don’t know who I like sexually, but why the fuck does that matter?’
This article is dedicated to those newly diagnosed with MRKH and are told that vaginas are linked to sexuality or that they are necessary to have in heterosexual relationships.