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'
Sarah Graham, intersex
woman and counsellor: "This pink and blue thing is a nonsense"
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.
Silvan Agius, ILGA-Europe:
"It does not address the surgeries... and that's not good."
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.
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