NY offers revolutionary gender option

9/11/06

Gender becomes personal choice as New York’s Board of Health will allow people to alter their documented sex, even with no sex-change

In a momentous move, New York City is about to revolutionise its approach to gender by “separating anatomy from what it means to be a man or a woman”, according to the New York Times.

Gender, essentially, will become personal choice as New York’s Board of Health will allow people to alter the sex on their birth certificate, even if they have not had a sex-change surgery.

Those born in the city will be able to change their documented sex by providing affirmation from doctors and mental health professionals explaining why their patients should be considered members of the opposite sex.

The documents from the doctors must also ensure that the change will be permanent.
Applicants would have to change their name and show that he or she had lived as the adoptive gender for a minimum of two years.

The process to change gender identification on a birth certificate varies from state to state, and almost all 50 states in the US make it a fairly easy process for people who've undergone a sex reassignment surgery to obtain a new birth certificate.

However, only a handful of states allow the change to take place without a physiological change.

Although the move has been hailed by transgender advocates, some health experts have criticised a move which they consider to be re-writing history.

Dr Arthur Zitrin, a Midtown psychiatrist who was on a panel of transgender experts at a hearing, criticised the move.

“They should not change the sex at birth, which is a factual record.”

“If they wanted to change the gender for all the compelling reasons that they’ve given, it should be done perhaps with an asterisk.”

Joann Prinzivalli, a lawyer for the New York Transgender Rights Organisation, made a counterargument to the doctor’s opinion and suggested that the Board of Health’s move marks progress.

“[The decision] is based on an arbitrary distinction that says there are two and only two sexes.”

“In reality the diversity of nature is such that there are more than just two, and people who seem to belong to one of the designated sexes may really belong to the other.”