Australia is first to recognize ‘non-specified’ gender
Australia may have made gender history this week, as the New South Wales government lays claim to being the first in the world to recognize an individual’s sex as officially “not specified”.
The NSW government in Australia has issued what is believed to be the world’s first ‘Sex Not Specified’ Recognised Details Certificate in place of a birth certificate. Norrie (also known as norrie mAy-Welby) is legally recognized as neither male nor female according to the Australian government.
Originally Norrie, 48, was born in Scotland and registered as male at birth. At age 23 Norrie commenced sex and gender conversion to female through hormone and construction of a vagina and was then issued with a gender recognition certificate as female in Australia.
But this did not work out for Norrie as zie (gender-neutral pronoun) did not feel comfortable living solely as a female so zie ceased lifelong hormone treatment and took up a neuter identity which is neither male nor female, resisting any further female or male normalisation.
(Full story: The Scavenger)
Posted by Rob Coe on March 11th, 2010 at 6:53pm
