Updated Oct. 30, 2013 3:39 p.m. ETGermany on Friday will become only the second country, after Australia, to allow parents to leave the gender blank on a child’s birth certificate, as people born without a clear sex gain more rights and recognition, especially in Europe.
The European Union cited so-called intersex people in June for the first time in its antidiscrimination guidelines. A month later, Australia adopted guidelines saying people filling out any official forms should be able to choose male, female or “X.”
Growing Recognition
Rights being granted or raised:
SCOTLAND: Outlaws violence due to bias against identity “not standard male or female. (June 2009)
SWITZERLAND: Bioethics commission says gender equality “also applies to people whose sex cannot be unequivocally determined.” (Nov. 2012)
UNITED NATIONS: Special Rapporteur on Torture calls on nations to reject “forced genital-normalizing surgery.” (Feb. 2013)
FINLAND: National Ombudsman for Equality declares “not everyone can be unambiguously defined as a woman or a man.” (June 2013)
EUROPEAN UNION: Intersex people included in antidiscrimination guidelines. (June 2013)
AUSTRALIA: People can choose male, female or X on official forms. (July 2013)
GERMANY: Allows parents to leave sex blank on a newborn’s birth certificate. (November 2013)
Switzerland’s bioethics commission last year said gender equality “also applies to people whose sex cannot be unequivocally determined.”
While the U.S. hasn’t granted formal recognition, American surgeons, like their European counterparts, are increasingly holding off on some operations designed to immediately assign a gender to babies born with what doctors call ambiguous genitalia, opting to wait until the child can make a choice.
That is the biggest demand of intersex activists, who scored what they considered a victory in February when the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture called on countries to reject “forced genital-normalizing surgery.”
Activists are less enthusiastic about the new German law, which they worry might backfire.
An Interior Ministry spokesman in Berlin said the goal of the legislation, which passed the Bundestag unanimously in February, is “to take the pressure off parents to commit themselves to a gender immediately after birth,” so that they don’t feel compelled to seek surgery right away.
But activists say the law appears to actually require parents to leave the gender blank if it is ambiguous.
The law states that if a child “cannot be assigned to the female nor the male gender,” the status “shall be entered without such information in the register of births.”
Activists say parents in that situation, fearing stigma, may actually pursue surgery more avidly. “Our main criticism is that this will increase the pressure on parents,” said Markus Bauer, an activist based in Switzerland.
The ministry spokesman didn’t respond to a question about the criticism.
The condition is fairly rare: Heino Meyer-Bahlburg, professor of clinical psychiatry and psychology at Columbia University, estimated that one person in 2,000 to 4,000 is born with ambiguous genitalia.
About half of the cases result from an identifiable abnormality in the genetic makeup. Others have a murkier genetic foundation, or stem from another factor like drugs taken by the mother during pregnancy.
The German government expects only a small number of people will be affected, so other statistics or calculations are unlikely to be affected, the ministry spokesman said.
Almost everyone born with the condition is assigned a gender for official purposes at birth, based on the parents’ and doctors’ best calculation.
While “surgeons have become more reluctant” to operate on mild cases, “in more severe cases, at a minimum because it looks very unusual, people are less likely to hold off,” Dr. Meyer-Bahlburg said.
Most people end up keeping the assigned gender, though some switch and a small number decline to identify with either gender at all.
Laurence Baskin, chief of pediatric urology at Benioff Children’s Hospital in San Francisco, said incidents in which surgeons guess wrong on a person’s ultimate sexual identity are rare, but they are not unheard-of.
“Physicians are human and not godly,” Dr. Baskin said. “They do the best they can.”
Some people view the trend toward greater recognition of intersex status with alarm. “I think providing any option other than male or female is dehumanizing and medically inaccurate,” said Rob Schwarzwalder, senior vice president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group.
Activists like Del LaGrace Volcano of Sweden, who lived as a female for 37 years but “came out” as intersex in 1995, reject such attitudes.
“If you’re not male or female, what are you? You’re an ‘it.’ You remain a monstrosity,” the activist said. “I overcame that.” But for most of society, “there’s a huge way to go.”
Write to Naftali Bendavid at naftali.bendavid@wsj.com
See more here: Countries Expand Recognition For Alternative ‘Intersex’ Gender
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