Your baby isn’t quite a girl, or a boy

It was a quiet, slow realisation for Ryan’s mother. “The midwife made a passing comment to her that they could not tell if I was a boy or a girl,” Ryan Muiruri says of his birth some 30 years ago in Lari, Kiambu County. He now, out of choice, identifies as a male, and will be referred to as male in the story.

Ryan Muiruri in 2016. [File, Standard]
Breasts or beard?
The truancy went on for months. In Class Six, puberty struck and Ryan’s long-held fear was confirmed. He was “not a girl”.Bigger threat
Ryan moved from town to town, and he now embraced the fact that he was a man. He was hoping to lead a normal life. But even then, he met the brute of people who often accused him of impersonation as his identification card read female but he dressed and acted like a man.
Ryan presents his view during the public hearing on the Registration of Persons Bill before the Senate National Security Committee, August 16, 2019. [File, Standard]
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