http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57610467/germany-to-allow-third-gender-designation-on-birth-certificates/
This is pretty awesome!!! As of November 1st Germany became the first European country to legally recognize a third gender. German legislators have said that they hope this helps parents born with intersex children feel less pressured about making a rash decision regarding infant sex reassignment surgery. I think this is just absolutely wonderful. I'm in Anthropology of Sex and Gender right now and we've spent a lot of the semester thus far talking about intersex issues. It's pretty crazy to think that naturally children simply are not born with just male or female sex and instead of recognizing that we immediately perform surgery on infants to fit them into our guidelines. I think that adding an option for a third gender does take some of the pressure off of parents to immediately perform surgery on their children in order to declare them male of female.
As a side note to the topic of sex, gender, and babies... I also read a comment about this from someone who was really saddened by most soon to be parents who get soooo excited to find out the sex of their baby. My mind is still pretty blown thinking about how normal that seems yet how odd it actually is that we make such a big deal about finding out if the baby is a boy or a girl, like that's basically the most important and defining feature your baby will ever possess.
Wow, this is super cool! I definitely never thought about the being so excited about the baby being a certain gender though. I know before my nieces and nephew were born, there was always excited speculation about the gender. I never thought about it in that we seem to put the most importance on the gender, instead of anything else. That's definitely something to think about. Thanks for the post!
ReplyDeleteI just saw this recently too! I think this is such a huge step forward. Hopefully more countries (including ours) will head in that same direction also.
ReplyDeleteI've had recent realizations about the importance we give gender before birth, as well. My cousin is pregnant now, and when my sister asked if they knew if it's a boy or a girl, she said "yes." As in, it's one of the two. I applaud her decision to take away some of the obsession that people have with this question, but also kind of irked me in that it totally reinforced the gender binary, or the assumption that there are only two genders. That makes me love this post even more!
ReplyDeleteThis is really cool. I hope that this is only the first step in breaking down the limiting binary gender system. SIde note: I wonder why they picked 'X' to be the option name.
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