Julie to Julius

I lived as a woman for 17 years

EUNICE RUKUNDO

He kept it a secret, until he could not keep quiet any more. Eunice Rukundo writes about a man who was brought up as a woman until he stood his ground

He is not your ultimate tight abs guy with a firm behind and muscular arms, but Julius Kaggwa is in all essence, a man. A notch too chubby maybe, slightly below average height and a bit too rounded but he is still not the least masculine man you have come across.

For the first 17 years of his life however, Kaggwa, 39, lived as a female and is in fact referred to as Gayaza High School’s only ‘Old Boy’. Registered there as Juliet Kaggwa, he did his O’ Levels between 1984 and 1987, sleeping in Hutchinson House.

“When I first came out with the truth about my gender, some of my OGs admitted they’d at one time found me weird. One even said she’d suspected I could have been male but banished the thought instantly,” he reveals.

At the time, he was 17 at Makerere High school, a mixed school where he had relocated for his A levels. “We’d been praying with one OG of mine who was still at Gayaza when I’d blurted out ‘You know I’m not exactly a girl’. That was the first time I’d ever said it out loud and it felt good, light on my shoulders, to have let out the secret without fearing I was going to die,” recounts Kaggwa.

Julius Kaggwa

Kaggwa had first noticed ‘she’ was different from the other girls in Primary Six in Natale Primary School in Kyaggwe, when she followed them up the hill to perform girl rituals commonly known as ‘visiting the bush’ among the Baganda. “It was when the girls took off their panties that I realised they didn’t look like me.”

Where she had a vagina with a penis protruding at its base through which she urinated, the other girls only had a vagina.

“I had only been in boarding school that year. I think mum had taken me there to protect me from possible gossip from the slummy neighbourhood in Ndeeba where we lived,” he says. At home, the fourth born with two brothers and three sisters, Juliet had been brought up to be secretive about her nakedness, never visiting relatives or playing about naked like other children for fear of being found out and stigmatised. Now for the first time, she thought she knew why, but it seemed too complicated for a 10 year old to comprehend. She became more guarded and withdrawn, awaiting her mother’s next weekly visit to inquire about why she was different.

“First she told me we were all different but I insisted I had been the only one among all the other girls like me.” Left with no choice, Aida Kaggwa must have realised then that she couldn’t protect her child from the truth much longer. Then would be when she admited to her daughter that indeed she was different, per the circumstances of her birth.

Born both a girl and a boy

When her baby was born and Ms Kaggwa inquired after its sex, the midwives looked at each other and said nothing. They just whispered in bewilderment. When she saw her baby, she understood why. The baby was neither boy nor girl. It was both. Ms Kaggwa was both religious and a traditionalist. Her first instinct however was that this was witchcraft. At the shrine, she was told it was no mistake that her baby was born ambiguous, she was in fact a special child chosen to serve the spirits when the time was right. In the meantime, they were to concentrate on bringing her up as a girl or it would die since the responsible spirit was female, the great grandmother’s.

While his father, loving and gentle with his strange daughter, was a fleeting image in his life because of his business that took him far from home most of the time, his mother was around and seemed to have dedicated her life to keeping him comfortable, alive and as normal as possible.

“She got me herbs which were to keep me feminine, talked to nurses in school who helped keep my secret from other people when I joined boarding school in P.6 and changed my schools too often for anyone to realise I was different.”

Until the incident at the hill, the burden of his identity crisis had only been incurred by his mother. As puberty hormones set in though and ‘she’ started to experience the effects of this difference. He started to understand that his difference wasn’t as minor as his mother tried to make him believe.

“I believed her when she said everything would be fine but I started to struggle with more differences internally especially when I joined Gayaza. The usual girl chirping for instance irritated me. I always felt like doing more vigorous non-feminine things like escaping from school and I felt myself involuntarily responding to girls’ nakedness in a confusing way,” he says.

He developed breasts but along with them hair on his legs. “I felt more male than female inside. Puberty was a very confusing and difficult phase for me,” he says. To keep his confusion in check, Kaggwa started to add hormonal pills to a much bigger collection of herbal medicine by now, which he bathed, steamed herself in and drunk, under the school nurses’ protection. Bathing was a challenge; when he didn’t bathe long after bathing hours, he missed it altogether and got in trouble for it sometimes.

He would have wanted to let go and be whatever he felt but for the warning that he would die if not brought up as a girl. He took refuge in the school chapel instead, preaching, singing and praying that he would one day wake up a normal girl. When he found himself developing funny feelings for his choir mates too, Kaggwa knew he wouldn’t survive much longer in Gayaza and therefore went to a mixed day school for A’ Level.

There he meditated on his life seriously for the first time and knew he didn’t want to live in fear and hiding forever. “I wanted to be whatever but freely like everyone else. Blurting out my secret was like testing the waters. It worked wonders.”

Kaggwa never looked back after that first confession. In no time he had sought counsellors who explained what was happening and linked him to medical personnel. He discovered his problem was more biological than spiritual and could have in fact been treated much earlier. It took a lot of psychological and physical treatment but by 2000, Juliet was Julius, with proper male genitalia and no breasts.

His parents had both passed on by then. On her death bed, his mother begged him to stay far away from this land. “There’s a belief, spirits don’t follow one beyond the oceans. She believed I would be safer away now that she wasn’t around to protect me,” he explains.

Julius was scared for a while too and kept away in South Africa, Nairobi and other countries but later decided enough was enough. God must have preserved him for a purpose, most likely to help others like him be free. Today, married with two children, Julius’ life story is published in a book he wrote in 1997, Juliet to Julius. He has started up the Support Initiative for People with Atypical Sex Development (SIPD), and even appeared on Betty Tibaleka’s The Unstold Story show on UBC, to encourage others like him out there to speak out and be helped.

It’s many years since he was a young man trapped in a girl’s image but no one shades 17 years of their life that easily. Julius still has to consciously hold himself back from responding whenever anyone calls out Juliet in his hearing and he admits the no bathing habit also stuck to a significant extent.

Kaggwa was born with an intersex condition

What most parents, like Julius Kaggwa’s, would instinctively blame on witchcraft is medically referred to as an intersex condition, biologically explained as the unusual development of physical sex characteristics.

Kaggwa’s condition was evident at birth due to the abnormality in the external genitals. There are incidences however where the abnormality is with the internal reproductive organs, sex chromosomes, or sex-related hormones. Dr E.B. Mwesiga, a gynecologist consultant at City Hospital says that in this case, the condition becomes apparent later in life around puberty when one lacks or has something extra.

“I sit in a taxi sometimes and see someone I’m almost sure is an intersex case even if they may not know. Muscular bearded women with deep male voices, men with breasts and hips and the like,” says Kaggwa.

Many intersex conditions discovered late in life are associated with infertility and sexuality issues. www.apa.org, an American Psychological Association website explains that delayed or absent signs of puberty may be the first indication that an intersex condition exists; a hairy girl who doesn’t menstruate for instance, and develops more masculine than feminine features around puberty, or a boy who among others develops breasts.

“There are drugs, disease and environment conditions that could result in development of these features though so it is not necessarily always an intersex condition when a man develops breasts or a woman beards. Their genetic constitution has to be determined first to confirm,” warns Dr Mwesiga.

Intersex cases are otherwise also most likely to display gender-atypical behaviours or interests; for instance some forms of intersexuality in the females will result into girls being tomboys.

Sexually, www.apa.org says, although most intersex persons grow up to be heterosexual, some specific intersex conditions seem to have an increased likelihood of growing up to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual adults.

Kaggwa says unsuspected incidences like infertility, intolerance of sex by a female because it hurts among women could be due to existence of an intersex condition. “If her reproductive system inside is male, it means she has no vaginal canal or functioning ovaries hence infertility and obviously painful sex because the penis has no where to penetrate to,” reasons Kaggwa.

According to Dr Mwesiga, the basis for allocating gender, while it may be due to raring or physical composition, should be according to the chromosome composition. He explains that gender determining genes are XY and if one’s composition contains a Y, they are male and if they lack it, then they are female.

“These could however get distorted during development in the womb resulting into gender ambiguity,” he says. Kaggwa for instance had XXY composition, which means although he was male the extra X resulted into female hormonal production and feature formation.

Unfortunately, the lack of information about intersex conditions makes it more unbearable in a country like Uganda.

“The standard solution among the most women is that a child that is born like I was is killed or dumped because it is attributed to witch craft or bad omen,” says Kaggwa. He tells of a woman with a three month old daughter with ambiguous genitalia whose mother has looked for ways of disposing her off but only been held back by motherly love.

“It is a bad omen I know and I have tried to leave her on the road or bush but I can’t take the thought of her being eaten by a wild animal or car crashing her,” lamented the mother as she begged Kaggwa to take the baby because she was a bad omen for her family and would be killed.

Intersex conditions are correctable

With surgery, the physical abnormalities are corrected, even as early as at birth. The hormonal imbalances that will make a man bear breasts for instance can also be corrected with hormonal therapy.

From experience however, Kaggwa says in cases when this correction comes later in life, it also takes a lot of psychological treatment to heal the trauma of leaving with the confusion and stigma of being intersex.

He tells another story of a boy here in Uganda who was dumped at his uncle’s place by the mother as a baby because he was born intersex and was only discovered recently, now undergoing treatment. “He will be a normal boy now but the trauma he has gone through will leave its mark,” regrets Kaggwa. When his uncle couldn’t look after him anymore because of poverty, he published his condition in the media hoping to make money out of his condition. 16 years old now, he had dropped out of school in P.6 to escape his school mates’ taunts about his condition.

“He got help through the same publicity but it was late; he had become a sort of attraction for the locals who paid to see him and we don’t know how to get him back to school now,” explains Kaggwa.

What if the condition is not corrected?

With the inadequacy of the information on intersexuality, there are definitely many people that don’t get treatment especially those with the subtler forms.

Even when one can take the discomfort of the effects like infertility and identity ambiguity after puberty, lack of treatment poses health issues. “The tests had found that I had an ovary much as I had testes. It was first left inside because the doctors thought it would be harmless. I had to have it removed recently however because it had started to become infected and could have gotten cancerous,” says Kaggwa.

Where to get help in Uganda

Support Initiative for People with atypical sex Development (SIPD) located in Rubaga-Wakaliga provides support for intersex people with counselling, information, and referrals for medical and other social support. SIPD has established support networks with doctors at International Hospital in Kampala, at Kampala Family Clinic and at CoRSU rehabilitation hospital in Entebbe. “We are working to widen medical and psychosocial support all over the country,” says Kaggwa, Director, SIPD.

Contact SIPD on aissgeastafrica@gmail.com. P.O Box 16618 Wandegeya. Uganda

Inter Sex: Neither Man, Nor Woman.

UPDATE

Yeah, I like this Black Looks article about the same issue...

SA Feminists speak on Caster Semenya, sex tests and gender mix

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Not a man. But not a Woman, either. So, what is she/he?

No, don’t laugh. Because the question that I ask is something that is a daily occurrence. We tend not to think about it. It is automatic. A child is born, and we ask, girl or boy? Our minds have been wound like that. It must be a girl or boy. It cannot be neither of the two and it still is a human being. At least, that is ‘common sense’. Or is it?

The Inter-sex. Neither male nor female.

I first faced this when there was a hullabaloo about Julius. The only male who attended Gayaza High School, one of the premier girls’ (if not THE premier) girls’ college in Uganda. Oh yeah. The guy went ahead and wrote his amazing story in a book, “From Julie to Julius”. A real live story of an inter-sex person living and working in Uganda. Remember Nsubuga Aldrine, the guy who railed against homosexuality in football in Uganda? He was incensed at the questions on Julius’s sex. He had known the guy as a guy, and he was a friend, Aldrine insisted. The guy was a guy’s guy, and let those who questioned his manliness go to hell. To give him his due, Aldrine did defend a friend, from the malicious gossip of the Ugandan society.

I have talked to Julius. He was (or is) a staunch Christian. Attending Kampala Pentecostal Church, the mega church in the middle of Kampala. And when Julius wanted to get married, the church asked him for ‘proofs’ of his maleness. Needless to say, the wedding did happen, but not with the blessing of KPC, now Watoto Church.

Ok, so, now I begin my rant. Or, to educate a tiny, big lil sis of mine, here is the whine.

In the large, wide, heterosexual world ‘sexual minorities’ do not exist, we are punished for being different. That is not a whine. That is reality. That is what happens on a daily, hourly basis. It is not that we don’t exist. It is that we are not thought to exist, and as such, we are excluded from church, from the things which you a good, healthy, heterosexual takes for granted.

So, Julius became a scandal. Like Caster Semenya is at the moment.

Just like good old gug is a scandal. Oh, for gug, it is because he is a male who falls in love with other males. Other men. Different from usual? Of course. But does it happen? Yes, it does. And because it is not common, because it is not the norm, that does not mean that the majority should have a right to persecute and exclude me. Just because I am different.

Now, there ends the whine. Flick, flick, flick. The mud does feel sticky. Flick it off.

Now, now, now. Princess, consider the beauty of our world. The diversity, and what is as it is. You have heard of that runner, the one who is under investigation. So, what will happen after the investigation, and the debate by the experts. Will Caster Semenya be a man or a woman? What will the panel of experts decide? What will happen when the Caster gets to the point of getting married? What will the church say?

What does this say, what challenge do you face here? To stop thinking in staid, old boxes. Life is life. It is not clear black and whites. It is the very shades of the rainbow. It is grays and greens and whites and blacks. It is pale greens and dark oranges, purples and pinks. Life is not an absolute. And, life is beautiful as in-absolute as it is.

I think it is Spiralx who once commented that straight people are boring… And the gay are ‘fabulous’. I think what he meant was that those who consider themselves straight tend to think in a box that is boring. Talk sex, children, parentage, etc, etc. Nevender will come charging with the Bible in hand, to condemn and hit me with it. Me, I will dance and tease him with words. He will not understand me. Because, in his world, god made them male and female. And male has sex with females. Not male with male, not female with female. So, when one who is neither male nor female steps out of God’s creation, what will Nevender say? Do you still read this blog, dude? If you do, what do you say? Should KPC have married Julius? Or not? Is Caster Semenya a man or woman? Is Caster part of God’s beautiful, rainbow varied creation? Yes or no? A challenge to your box of thinking.

To me, proof that the creator never thought in terms of absolutes. Julius, and Castor are, beautiful human beings. Whatever sex a ‘panel of experts’ labels them, they are human beings, like you and me. And, they deserve all the blessings (and curses) that our humanity and our legal systems endow us with. Not to be excluded. Not to be shamed. But to be affirmed. To be held close to heart. To be understood.

Here is to love of all human beings.

gug

A Glimpse into our world of Diversity…

The I in LGBTI

South Africa to test gender of 800-meter runner

By RYAN LUCAS, Associated Press Writer Ryan Lucas, Associated Press Writer – 9 mins ago
BERLIN – South Africa's track and field federation had been asked to conduct a gender test on an 800-meter runner amid concerns she does not meet the requirements to compete as a woman.

Eighteen-year-old Caster Semenya is a favorite in Wednesday's 800 final at the world championships.

The world track and field federation requested the gender test about three weeks ago, after Semenya burst onto the scene by improving her personal bests in the 800 and 1,500 by huge margins.

IAAF spokesman Nick Davies said the "extremely complex, difficult" test has been started but that the results were not expected for weeks.

The verification requires a physical medical evaluation, and includes reports from a gynecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist, an internal medicine specialist and an expert on gender.

"So we're talking about reports that are very long, very time consuming," Davies said.

Semenya qualified for Wednesday's final with the best time of 1 minute, 58.64 seconds. She posted the world's top time this year of 1:56.72 three weeks ago at the African junior championships in Bambous, Mauritius.

It was not clear what would happen if Semenya were to medal in Wednesday's final and the test results determine she does not meet the requirements to compete.

"I can't say that if 'X' happens in the future that we will, for example, retroactively strip results. It's legally very complex," Davies said.

"If there's a problem and it turns out that there's been a fraud ... that someone has changed sex, then obviously it would be much easier to strip results," Davies added. "However, if it's a natural thing and the athlete has always thought she's a woman or been a woman, it's not exactly cheating."

He said a decision in such instances is "done on a case by case basis."

"It's something that would have to be considered by the legal experts at that time," Davies said.

some more detail from CNN

There have been precedents in such cases, the most famous being that of Polish athletics great Stella Walsh, who won Olympic gold in the 100 yards at the 1932 Olympics and silver in the same event in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

However, after she was shot dead during an armed robbery in 1980, the subsequent autopsy revealed she possessed male genitalia, although she also had female characteristics as well.