Germany
allows ‘indeterminate’ gender at birth
BBC NEWS: Germany has become Europe’s
first country to allow babies with characteristics of both sexes to be
registered as neither male nor female.
Parents are now allowed to leave the gender blank on birth
certificates, in effect creating a new category of “indeterminate sex”.
The move is aimed at removing pressure on parents to make
quick decisions on sex assignment surgery for newborns.
However, some campaigners say the new law does not go far
enough.
As many as one in 2,000 people have characteristics of both
sexes.
‘Bruised and scarred’
They are known as “intersex” people because they have a
mixture of male and female chromosomes or even genitalia which have
characteristics of both genders.
The intense difficulty for parents is often that a gender
has to be chosen very quickly so that the new child can be registered with the
authorities, the BBC’s Steve Evans in Berlin reports.
Sometimes surgery is done on the baby to turn its physical
characteristics as far as possible in one direction or the other, our correspondent
says.
The law in Germany has been changed following a review of
cases which revealed great unhappiness.
In one case, a person with no clear gender-defining
genitalia was subjected to surgery. The person said many years later: “I am
neither a man nor a woman. I will remain the patchwork created by doctors,
bruised and scarred.”
German passports, which currently list the holder’s sex as M
for male or F for female, will have a third designation, X, for intersex
holders, according to the interior ministry.
It remains unclear what impact the change will have on
marriage and partnership laws in Germany.
Current laws define marriage as a union between a man and a
woman, and civil partnerships are reserved for same-sex couples.
Silvan Agius of IGLA-Europe, which campaigns for the rights
of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex people, said the law needed
to go further.
“While on the one hand it has provided a lot of visibility
about intersex issues… it does not address the surgeries and the medicalisation
of intersex people and that’s not good – that has to change,” he told the BBC.
While Germany is the first country in Europe to legally
recognise a third gender, several other nations have already taken similar
steps.
Australians have had the option of selecting “x” as their
gender – meaning indeterminate, unspecified or intersex – on passport
applications since 2011. A similar option was introduced for New Zealanders in
2012.
In South Asia, Bangladesh has offered an “other” gender
category on passport applications since 2011.
Nepal began recognising a third gender on its census forms
in 2007 while Pakistan made it an option on national identity cards in 2011.
India added a third gender category to voter lists in 2009.
While transgender or intersex people have long been accepted
in Thailand and are officially recognised by the country’s military, they do
not have any separate legal status.
