California Becomes Second State to Offer Third Gender Option!
HURRAY for all non-binary people, and all of us who have fought to be recognized as non-binary!!!! Big thanks to Governor Brown for signing bill SB 179 into law last night, and to Senators Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) and Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) for authoring it, and Equality California and the Transgender Law Center for sponsoring.
Special thanks to Jamie Shupe, the 1st non-binary US citizen, in Oregon, Sara Kelly Keenan, the 1st legally non-binary Californian, & 1st to receive an intersex birth certificate, & our associate director Dana Zzyym, the 1st to sue thw U.S. State Dept for a non-binary passport (case is pending), for advancing our LEGAL recognition! SO vital to ending intersex oppression.
Wonderful news, and isn’t it about time? Finally, those born intersex can be themselves and won’t have to suffer the pain and trauma of childhood surgeries done during school vacations in secrecy and shame. Finally, we recognize it’s up to us to change OUR minds NOT the bodies of our children. It is they who have suffered from being forced to live within OUR constructed binary gender system–as a gender that was chosen FOR them not BY them. Many have grown up to say we shouldn’t have surgically and irreversibly altered their bodies and attempted to annihilate their intersex gender. Now, and finally, they can be the people they are meant to be, expressing both male and female attributes. Throughout the ages, intersex people have been revered in some societies for these qualities because they don’t sit on either side of the gender divide, they incorporate and embrace both the masculine and feminine. Finally, our society will embrace them as they are! It is about time!