Today.Az » Weird / Interesting » First ever genderless human lives in Australia
16 March 2010 [12:55] - Today.Az
A Scot is said to have made history after winning the right not to specify gender and to instead have "Sex Not Specified" on his birth certificate.
Norrie May-Welby, 48, who was born in Paisley a man and had a sex change operation 20 years ago, and now lives in Australia, managed to convince authorities there to create a genderless option on all official documents.
Doctors recently declared that they were unable to determine whether Norrie's body was male or female because several years after the gender reassignment operation he stopped taking female hormone pills.
Norrie, from New South Wales, told how government agencies pledged to accept the "no-gender" breakthrough.
"Those concepts, man or woman, just don't fit me, they are not my actual reality, and, if applied to me, they are fiction," the Scotsman quoted Norrie as saying.
"At 48 years of age I'm less inclined to just humour other people's delusions about gender and try to conform to one of their expected options.
"I've never felt completely male or female, except for a brief period in early transition when I first identified as a transsexual because I thought there were only two gender options and male was wrong and female felt better," Norrie said.
As well as fighting a public battle for acceptance, Norrie's campaign was motivated by a need to make life easier when checking into airports or filling out forms.
"If I need to show identity documents, I certainly don't want details that are false, for this will only cause trouble when officials realise I don't match my documents," Norrie explained.
"If my passport states that I am female, I may be detained when travelling if the local jurisdiction classes me based on the gender assigned at birth, or my physically noticeable masculine aspects.
"If the passport states male, again there is a dissonance with my physical form and I am usually moving and talking in a feminine manner.
"The solution is simply to not have any sex identification on my legal documentation.
"They first told me it couldn't possibly be done," Norrie stated.
But the New South Wales government confirmed they had issued the first non-gender specific certificate last week. Norrie said that it was new legislation that forced them into action. Norrie admitted to a great deal of confusion surrounding sexuality, necessitating an internal heart to heart.
"'What do you want to be', I asked myself as I pondered these questions on the train," Norrie revealed.
"A male, I answered, thinking about the 'gay' guys I was most attracted to.
"When I was male, you wanted me to be female, I pointed out. Now that I'm female, you want me to be male. Do you just want to be whatever you're not?
"'No', I replied from the heart, 'I want to be male and female'.
"It had initially been a difficult time for many people, including family.
"I talked to my mum about this when we were discussing how parents could be helped to deal with transgender children.
"You love your children, she said, you may try to change them when they're growing up, but after a time, there's nothing you can do but accept the way they are.
"You may not always understand them, but you accept them," Norrie added.
The UK's Gender Trust welcomed the gender pioneer's legal result.
"It is unusual, but there are many people here who like the idea of being genderless and will welcome this news," spokesman Rory Smith stated.
/Sify News/
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