Third gender or third sex is a concept in which individuals are categorized, either by themselves or by society, as neither man nor woman. It is also a social category present in societies that recognize three or more genders. The term third is usually understood to mean "other"; some anthropologists and sociologists have described fourth,[1] fifth,[2] and "some"[3] genders.
Biology determines whether a human's chromosomal and anatomical sex is male, female, or one of the uncommon variations on this sexual dimorphism that can create a degree of ambiguity known as intersex.[4][5] However, the state of personally identifying as, or being identified by society as, a man, a woman, or other, is usually also defined by the individual's gender identity and gender role in the particular culture in which they live. Not all cultures have strictly defined gender roles.[6][7][8]
In different cultures, a third or fourth gender may represent very different things. To the Indigenous Māhū of Hawaii, it is an intermediate state between man and woman, or to be a "person of indeterminate gender".[9] The traditional Dineh of the Southwestern US acknowledge four genders: feminine woman, masculine woman, feminine man, masculine man.[10] The term "third gender" has also been used to describe hijras of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan[11] who have gained legal identity, fa'afafine of Polynesia, and sworn virgins of the Balkans.[12]
While found in a number of non-Western cultures, concepts of "third", "fourth", and "some" gender roles are still somewhat new to mainstream western culture and conceptual thought.[13] The concept is most likely to be embraced in the modern LGBT or queer subcultures, or in ethnic minority cultures that exist within larger Western communities such as the North American Indigenous cultures that have roles for Two Spirit people.[10][14] While mainstream western scholars, notably anthropologists who have tried to write about Native American and South Asian "gender variant" people, have often sought to understand the term "third gender" solely in the language of the modern LGBT community, other scholars especially Indigenous scholars, stress that their lack of cultural understanding and context has led to widespread misrepresentation of third gender people.[14][15][16][17]
Sex and gender
Since at least the 1970s, anthropologists have described gender categories in some cultures which they could not adequately explain using a two-gender framework.[3] At the same time, feminists began to draw a distinction between (biological) sex and (social/psychological) gender. Contemporary gender theorists usually argue that a two-gender system is neither innate nor universal. A sex/gender system which recognizes only the following two social norms has been labeled "heteronormative".
Anthropologist Michael G. Peletz believes our notions of different types of genders (including the attitudes toward the third gender) deeply affect our lives and reflects our values in society. In Peletz' book, "Gender, Sexuality, and Body Politics in Modern Asia", he describes:[18]
For our purposes, the term "gender" designates the cultural categories, symbols, meanings, practices, and institutionalized arrangements bearing on at least five sets of phenomena: (1) females and femininity; (2) males and masculinity; (3) Androgynes, who are partly male and partly female in appearance or of indeterminate sex/gender, as well as intersexed individuals, also known as hermaphrodites, who to one or another degree may have both male and female sexual organs or characteristics; (4) the transgendered, who engage in practices that transgress or transcend normative boundaries and are thus by definition "transgressively gendered"; and (5) neutered or unsexed/ungendered individuals such as eunuchs.
Intersex people are born with sex characteristics, such as chromosomes, gonads, or genitals that, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies".[19] A sex and gender distinction is not universal, and Peletz's description of gender as designating biological variations as well as cultural practices is not unique. In a study of arguments that intersex people fit into a third gender classification, intersex scholar Morgan Holmes argues that much analysis of a third sex or third gender is simplistic:[20]
much of the existing work on cultural systems that incorporate a 'third sex' portray simplistic visions in which societies with more than two sex/gender categories are cast as superior to those that divide the world into just two. I argue that to understand whether a system is more or less oppressive than another we have to understand how it treats its various members, not only its 'thirds'.
Like non-intersex people, some intersex individuals may not identify themselves as either exclusively female or exclusively male, but most appear to be men or women.[4][5][21] A clinical review suggests that between 8.5-20% of persons with intersex conditions may experience gender dysphoria,[22] while sociological research in Australia, a country with a third 'X' sex classification, shows that 19% of people born with atypical sex characteristics selected an "X" or "other" option, while 52% are women, 23% men and 6% unsure.[23][24]Alex MacFarlane is believed to be the first person in Australia to obtain a birth certificate recording sex as indeterminate, and the first Australian passport with an 'X' sex marker in 2003.[25]
To register intersex children as females or males, with the awareness that, like all people, they may grow up to identify with a different sex or gender.
To ensure that sex or gender classifications are amendable through a simple administrative procedure at the request of the individuals concerned. All adults and capable minors should be able to choose between female (F), male (M), non-binary or multiple options. In the future, as with race or religion, sex or gender should not be a category on birth certificates or identification documents for anybody.
The Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions states that the legal recognition of intersex people is firstly about access to the same rights as other men and women, when assigned male or female; secondly it is about access to administrative corrections to legal documents when an original sex assignment is not appropriate; and thirdly it is not about the creation of a third sex or gender classification for intersex people as a population but it is, instead, about self-determination.[35]
In March 2017, an Australian and Aotearoa/New Zealand community statement called for an end to legal classification of sex, stating that legal third classifications, like binary classifications, were based on structural violence and failed to respect diversity and a "right to self-determination". It also called for the criminalization of deferrable intersex medical interventions.[36][37]
Transgender people and third gender
Gender may be organized differently in different cultures. In some non-Western cultures, gender is not binary and one can cross freely between male and female. This is seen as a mediation between the spirit and mundane worlds.[38] It is seen as a positive and is almost revered in most Eastern cultures, whereas in Western cultures, people who don’t conform to heteronormative ideals are often seen as sick, disordered, or insufficiently formed.[38]
To the Indigenous Māhū of Hawaii, it is an intermediate state between man and woman, or to be a "person of indeterminate gender";[9] While the traditional Dineh of the Southwestern US acknowledge four genders: feminine woman, masculine woman, feminine man, masculine man.[10] The term "third gender" has also been used to describe hijras of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan[11] who have gained legal identity, fa'afafine of Polynesia, and sworn virgins of the Balkans.[12]
In Africa, a woman can be recognized as a “female husband” who enjoys all of the privileges of men and is recognized as such, but whose femaleness, while not openly acknowledged, is not forgotten either.[39] The hijras, of India, are one of the most recognized and socially accepted groups of third genders. This may be a result of the notion of reincarnation, which reduces not only gender categorization but also sex and species, allowing for more fluid and mutable categorization. There are countless other cultures in which the third gender is seen as an intermediate being rather than as a movement from one conventional sex to the other, either male to female or vice versa.[40]
In a study of people in the United States who thought themselves to be members of a third gender, Ingrid M. Sell found that they typically felt different from the age of 5.[41] Because of both peer and parental pressure, those growing up with the most ambiguous appearances had the most troubled childhoods and difficulties later in life. Sell also discovered similarities between the third genders of the East and those of the West. Nearly half of those interviewed were healers or in the medical profession. A majority of them, again like their Eastern counterparts, were artistic enough to make a living from their abilities. The capacity to mediate between men and women was a common skill, and third genders were oftentimes thought to possess an unusually wide perspective and the ability to understand both sides.[41] A notable result of Sell's study is that 93% of the third genders interviewed appeared, again like their Eastern counterparts, to possess “paranormal”-type abilities.[42]
In recent years, some Western societies have begun to recognize genderqueer or non-binary identities. Some years after Alex MacFarlane, Australian Norrie May-Welby was recognized as having unspecified status.[43][44] In 2016, an Oregon circuit court ruled that a resident, Jamie Shupe, could legally change gender to non-binary.[45]
The Open Society Foundations published a report, License to Be Yourself in May 2014, documenting "some of the world's most progressive and rights-based laws and policies that enable trans people to change their gender identity on official documents".[46] The report comments on the recognition of third classifications, stating:
From a rights-based perspective, third sex / gender options should be voluntary, providing trans people with a third choice about how to define their gender identity. Those identifying as a third sex / gender should have the same rights as those identifying as male or female.
People tend to identify a third sex with freedom from the gender binary, but that is not necessarily the case. If only trans and/or intersex people can access that third category, or if they are compulsively assigned to a third sex, then the gender binary gets stronger, not weaker.
The report concludes that two or three options are insufficient: "A more inclusive approach would be to increase options for people to self-define their sex and gender identity."[46]
One such term, Uranian, was used in the 19th century to a person of a third sex—originally, someone with "a female psyche in a male body" who is sexually attracted to men. Its definition was later extended to cover homosexualgender variant females and a number of other sexual types. It is believed to be an English adaptation of the German word Urning, which was first published by activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–95) in a series of five booklets (1864–65) that were collected under the title Forschungen über das Räthsel der mannmännlichen Liebe ("Research into the Riddle of Man-Male Love"). Ulrich developed his terminology before the first public use of the term "homosexual", which appeared in 1869 in a pamphlet published anonymously by Karl-Maria Kertbeny (1824–82). The word Uranian (Urning) was derived by Ulrichs from the Greek goddessAphrodite Urania, who was created out of the god Uranus' testicles; it stood for homosexuality, while Aphrodite Dionea (Dioning) represented heterosexuality.[53] Lesbian activist Anna Rueling used the term in a 1904 speech, "What Interest Does the Women's Movement Have in Solving the Homosexual Problem?"[54]
According to some scholars, the West is trying to reinterpret and redefine ancient third-gender identities to fit the Western concept of sexual orientation. In Redefining Fa'afafine: Western Discourses and the Construction of Transgenderism in Samoa, Johanna Schmidt argues that the Western attempts to reinterpret fa'afafine, the third gender in Samoan culture, make it have more to do with sexual orientation than gender. She also argues that this is actually changing the nature of fa'afafine itself, and making it more "homosexual".[55]
A Samoan fa'afafine said, "But I would like to pursue a master's degree with a paper on homosexuality from a Samoan perspective that would be written for educational purposes, because I believe some of the stuff that has been written about us is quite wrong."[56]
In How to become a Berdache: Toward a unified analysis of gender diversity, Will Roscoe writes that "this pattern can be traced from the earliest accounts of the Spaniards to present-day ethnographies. What has been written about berdaches reflects more the influence of existing Western discourses on gender, sexuality and the Other than what observers actually witnessed."[57]
According to Towle and Morgan:
Ethnographic examples [of ‘third genders’] can come from distinct societies located in Thailand, Polynesia, Melanesia, Native America, western Africa, and elsewhere and from any point in history, from Ancient Greece, to sixteenth century England to contemporary North America. Popular authors routinely simplify their descriptions, ignoring...or conflating dimensions that seem to them extraneous, incomprehensible, or ill suited to the images they want to convey (484).[58]
Western scholars often do not make a distinction between people of the third gender and males; they are often lumped together. The scholars usually use gender roles as a way to explain sexual relations between the third gender and males. For example, when analyzing the non-normative sex gender categories in Theravada Buddhism, Peter A. Jackson says it appears that within early Buddhist communities, men who engaged in receptive anal sex were seen as feminized and were thought to be hermaphrodites. In contrast, men who engaged in oral sex were not seen as crossing sex/gender boundaries, but rather as engaging in abnormal sexual practices without threatening their masculine gendered existence.[59]
Some writers suggest that a third gender emerged around 1700 AD in England: the male sodomite.[60] According to these writers, this was marked by the emergence of a subculture of effeminate males and their meeting places (molly houses), as well as a marked increase in hostility towards effeminate or homosexual males. People described themselves as members of a third sex in Europe from at least the 1860s with the writings of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs[61] and continuing in the late nineteenth century with Magnus Hirschfeld,[47]John Addington Symonds,[48]Edward Carpenter,[49] Aimée Duc[50] and others. These writers described themselves and those like them as being of an "inverted" or "intermediate" sex and experiencing homosexual desire, and their writing argued for social acceptance of such sexual intermediates.[62] Many cited precedents from classical Greek and Sanskrit literature (see below).
Throughout much of the twentieth century, the term "third sex" was a common descriptor for homosexuals and gender nonconformists, but after the gay liberation movements of the 1970s and a growing separation of the concepts of sexual orientation and gender identity, the term fell out of favor among LGBT communities and the wider public. With the renewed exploration of gender that feminism, the modern transgender movement and queer theory has fostered, some in the contemporary West have begun to describe themselves as a third sex again.[63] Other modern identities that cover similar ground include pangender, bigender, genderqueer, androgyne, intergender, "other gender" and "differently gendered".
Third gender and feminism
In Wilhelmine Germany, the terms drittes Geschlecht ("third sex") and Mannweib ("man-woman") were also used to describe feminists – both by their opponents[64] and sometimes by feminists themselves. In the 1899 novel Das dritte Geschlecht (The Third Sex) by Ernst Ludwig von Wolzogen, feminists are portrayed as "neuters" with external female characteristics accompanied by a crippled male psyche.
In 2012 and under then president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina passed its Gender Identity Law (Spanish: Ley de identidad de género), which allows transgender people to identify with their chosen gender on official documents without first having to receive hormone therapy, gender reassignment surgery or psychiatric counseling.[65] As such, transgender rights in Argentina have been lauded by many as some of the world's most progressive.[66]
In November 2018, two non-binary people from Mendoza Province became the first to obtain an ID and birth certificate without indication of sex.[67] In early 2019, trans activist Lara María Bertolini was allowed to change their official sex to the transfeminine non-binary label "travesti femininity" (Spanish: femeninidad travesti) through a judicial ruling that was considered a landmark for the travesti movement. Judge Myriam Cataldi ruled that the Gender Identity Law applied to Bertolini's case, citing the law's definition of "gender identity" as: "the internal and individual experience of gender as each person feels it, which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned at birth, including the personal experience of the body."[68]
On 20 July 2021, President Alberto Fernández signed a decree (Decreto 476/2021) mandating the National Registry of Persons (RENAPER) to allow a third gender option on all national identity cards and passports, marked as an "X". The measure applies to non-citizen permanent residents who possess Argentine identity cards as well.[69] In compliance with the 2012 Gender Identity Law, this made Argentina the first country in South America to legally recognize non-binary gender on all official documentation, freely and upon the person's request.[70][71][72]
Austria
After the decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) of 9 November 2017, Austrian media report that a similar case is also pending at the Constitutional Court (Verfassungsgerichtshof) in Austria. Two lower judicial instances already decided against the possibility of a "third gender". Each year at least 35 children in Austria are reported to be born with ambiguous sex characteristics. Surgical interventions on intersex children, to make them fit one of the binary sex characteristics, are criticized by Verein Intergeschlechtliche Menschen Österreich (VIMÖ), an Austrian association fighting for the rights of intersex people. They demand that children should be free to decide on these matters when they are grown up.
Johannes Wahala, president of the Austrian Society For Sexologies and head of Beratungsstelle Courage advice center in Graz condemns these operations and wishes for the introduction of a third gender.[73]
On 15 June 2018, the Austrian Constitutional Court reached a decision, published in a news release on 29 June, that Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees recognition of gender identity beyond the binary male or female, and that people with a variation in gender development other than male or female must be allowed to leave a gender entry empty and must be allowed to have a positive other entry implemented. They also found that current law is not in contradiction to these requirements, and can be interpreted in a way that is conformant to the constitutional right of recognition of gender identity via Article 8 of the ECHR. The Court ruled that the national interests listed in Article 8.1 ECHR do not outweigh the very sensible interest of an individual to recognition of their personal life, including gender identity, and that other laws can be adapted if needed. The Court indicate that administrative bodies may require proof of the adequacy of a change to an entry and the relation to a person's actual social life, and that Article 8.1 ECHR does not establish a right to arbitrarily named entries. They have not decided on a specific name a third gender option should have, but cite recommendations as "divers", "inter", "offen".
[74]Alex Jürgen, an intersex activist, fought for their right to have a non-binary option in their passport and was the first person in Austria to receive it.
Options besides male and female are only available for intersex people, who are required to provide medical records to prove their sex.[75][76]
First reported in January 2003, Australians can choose "X" as their gender or sex. Alex MacFarlane is believed to be the first person in Australia to obtain a birth certificate recording sex as indeterminate, and the first Australian passport with an 'X' sex marker in 2003.[25][77][78][79][80] This was stated by the West Australian newspaper to be on the basis of a challenge by MacFarlane, using an indeterminate birth certificate issued by the State of Victoria. Other individuals known to have similar early options include Tony Briffa of Organisation Intersex International Australia and former mayor of City of Hobsons Bay, Victoria, previously acknowledged as the world's first openly intersex public official and mayor.[81][82][83]
Government policy between 2003 and 2011 was to issue passports with an 'X' marker to persons who could "present a birth certificate that notes their sex as indeterminate".[80][84] In 2011, the Australian Passport Office introduced new guidelines for issuing of passports with a new gender, and broadened availability of an X descriptor to all individuals with documented "indeterminate" sex.[85][86] The revised policy stated that "sex reassignment surgery is not a prerequisite to issue a passport in a new gender. Birth or citizenship certificates do not need to be amended."[87]
Australian Commonwealth guidelines on the recognition of sex and gender, published in June 2013, extended the use of an 'X' gender marker to any adult who chooses that option, in all dealings with the Commonwealth government and its agencies. The option is being introduced over a three-year period. The guidelines also clarify that the federal government collects data on gender, rather than sex.[88] In March 2014, the Australian Capital Territory introduced an 'X' classification for birth certificates.[89]
Norrie May-Welby is popularly – but erroneously – often regarded as the first person in the world to obtain officially indeterminate, unspecified or "genderless" status.[43][44][90] May-Welby became the first transgender person in Australia to pursue a legal status of neither a man nor a woman, in 2010.[43][44][91] In April 2014, the High Court of Australia ruled that NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages must record in the register that the sex of May-Welby is "non-specific".[92] The Court found that sex affirmation "surgery did not resolve her [sic] sexual ambiguity".[93]
In March 2017, an Australian and Aotearoa/New Zealand community statement called for an end to legal classification of sex, stating that legal third classifications, like binary classifications, were based on structural violence and failed to respect diversity and a "right to self-determination".[36][37]
In April 2019, Tasmania became the first state or territory in Australia to make sex or gender identifiers in birth certificates optional and providing for official definitions for 'sex' and 'gender' (only 'sex' was defined before the reforms).[95][96] The reform was legislated by a non-government coalition of MPs and adopted an 'opt-in' model for sex identification on birth certificates. However, a binary classification of sex (male or female, with no intersex/unspecified option) is still collected for medical purposes. Children born with ambiguous genitalia are given an additional 60 days to choose a sex for registration. The child's sex will be displayed on the birth certificate only if the parents choose to opt-in. The same reforms also allowed persons over the age of 16 to change their gender identity on official documentation – without a sex reassignment surgery or hormone replacement therapy – by providing a gender declaration.
In June 2019, the Constitutional Court of Belgium struck down certain parts of the country's 2017 transgender law. The proceedings against the law were initiated by LGBT rights organizations, who argued that the law still discriminated against people with a non-binary or genderfluid identity, because it still only allowed people to register as either "male" or "female". The Constitutional Court agreed with the action brought against the law, and found the contested provisions to be discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional. Though the Court suggested a few ways in which to remedy the unconstitutional aspects, such as "the creation of one or more additional categories" or "the possibility to remove the registration of sex or gender as an element of a person's civil status", it also stressed that the responsibility to remediate the law's shortcomings remained with the legislature.[97][98][99]
The De Croo Government, Belgium's federal government which took office in October 2020, announced plans to introduce the possibility to register under the gender identifier "X", in order to address the judgment of the Constitutional Court. This was expressed by the new minister of Justice in the De Croo Government, Vincent Van Quickenborne, in November 2020.[100][101] This proposition was rejected in favor of erasing any mention of gender on identity cards (which appeared in 2003[102]), while the National Registry will still mention the assigned gender at birth. The law will be effective in 2022.[103][104]
Federative units that legally recognize a non-binary gender (September 2023)
Recognized by provision
Recognition through judicial action
No legal recognition
There is no recognition of a third gender option nationwide, but since 2020 non-binary and intersex people have been getting court authorizations to register their sex as "unspecified", "non-identified", "intersex",[105] or "non-binary" in the civil registry.[106][107][108][109] For the purpose of filling out and printing the Identity Card, the gender field must follow the ICAO standardization, with 1 character, M, F or X (for non-binary people). Since January 11, 2024, issuing bodies in the States and the Federal District have been obliged to adopt these Identity Card standards established by the Federal Government. The information in the gender field can be self-determined and self-declared by the person when filling in the data, at the Identification Institutes. In the current context, of the 3,502,816 IDs issued, there are 192 National Identity Cards, that is, 0.01% defined in the gender field as "X".[110][111]
While requesting a new passport, Brazilians are able to select an unspecified sex. According to the Federal Police, the body responsible for issuing Brazilian passports, in response to the requirement for access to registered information, the "not specified" option, in these terms, was implemented in the application form passport application in 2007, with the advent of the "New Passport", popularly known as the "blue cape model". Before that, however, the option already existed, and was declared on printed and typed forms in the old "cover model" notebooks green". Following the international standard, the "unspecified" option is represented in the passport with the letter X, instead of the letters M or F, for male or female, respectively. The gender option contained in the passport must reflect the information expressed in the birth certificate or other official identification document. I.e, whenever the information expressed on the certificate is different from "male" or "female", the alternative will be used. The use of option X, or "not specified", comes from the international standard ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization), which specifies the printing of the "Gender of the holder" by "use of the initial letter commonly used in the country of origin", being "capital letter F for feminine, M for masculine, or X for unspecified". Following ICAO standards, among others, is precisely what confers recognition of a passport by other countries.[112][113]
The state of Rio de Janeiro, thanks to the work of the State Public Defender's Office, has been allowing non-binary people to register their birth certificates and identity cards with the "non-binary" gender in gender-neutral language.[118][119]
On April 22, 2022, Rio Grande do Sul Justice assured non-binary people to change their first name and sex in their birth record, according to their self-perceived identity, regardless of judicial authorization, allowing include the expression "non-binary" in the sex field upon a request made by the interested party to a notary's office.[120][121]
On May 9, 2022, Bahia Justice publishes provision allowing the inclusion of “non-binary” gender in the Civil Registry.[122][123]
In 2023, Paraíba, Paraná, Tocantins, and Federal District recognized non-binary gender markers.[124][125][126][127] However, in October 2023, the National Justice Council, at the request of the TJES, issued a document precluding "non-binary" as a gender marker. The document quotes Luiz Fux, who claimed that “(…) There is no third gender, nor is this the claim”.[128][129] In November 2023, TJPR revoked non-binary recognition, establishing that the right to administrative replacement of first name and sex in civil registration does not cover the possibility of expanding genders, limited to “male” and “female”.[130] TJRS, in December 2023, also revoked the provision that recognized non-binary rectification in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.[131]
In January 2024, a public civil action by the Federal Court of Paraná determined that the Federal Revenue must include the options "unspecified", "non-binary" and "intersex" in the sex field of the CPF, guaranteeing the right to rectification to those who interest.[132]
In June 2016, the government of the province of Ontario announced changes to the way gender will be displayed on health cards and driver's licenses. Starting June 13, the Ontario health card no longer displays a sex designation. In early 2017, Ontario drivers will have the option to display "X" as a gender identifier on their driver's licenses.[133]
In April 2017, a baby born in British Columbia, Searyl Atli Doty, became the first in the world known to be issued a health card with a gender-neutral "U" sex marker. The parent, Kori Doty, who is non-binarytransgender, wanted to give the child the opportunity to discover their own gender identity.[134][135] The province has refused to issue a birth certificate to the child without specifying a gender; Doty has filed a legal challenge.[135][136] Doty and seven other transgender and intersex people have filed a human rights complaint against the province, alleging that publishing gender markers on birth certificates is discriminatory.[136]
In July 2017, the Northwest Territories began allowing "X" as a non-binary option on birth certificates.[137]
On August 31, 2017, the federal government began allowing an observation to be added to passports requesting that the holder's gender should be read as "X", indicating that it is unspecified, though a gender of "M" or "F" had to be added as a gender for an undefined period to comply with legal requirements of other countries.[138][139][140] In June 2019, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada announced that non-binary people may also apply to have an "X" gender marker.[141]
A ruling of the Third Family Court of Santiago, issued on April 25, 2022, ordered the Civil Registry and Identification Service to register a 17-year-old adolescent with non-binary gender on the birth certificate, being the first judicial resolution of its kind in the country.[142] On May 25, 2022, the First Civil Court of Santiago issued a ruling recognizing an adult person as non-binary and ordering the Civil Registry to rectify the birth certificate, in which the marker "X" will appear instead of " female or male."[143][144] On October 14, 2022, the Civil Registry officially issued to Shane Cienfuegos the first non-binary identity card with the marker "X" in the country. In July 2022, the Thirteenth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals had ruled in favor of the request to rectify the birth certificate to recognize non-binary gender identity.[145][146]
In February 2022, the Constitutional Court of Colombia ruled that a non-binary person was entitled to a birth certificate from the Ninth Notary of Medellín and citizen's identity card from the National Civil Registry with the marker "no binario" or "NB" in the sex field on both. The court also ordered the Colombian government to facilitate the inclusion of such a marker on identity documents and ordered the Congress to amend laws as needed to facilitate legal recognition of non-binary individuals' rights.[147][148]
According to comment by Transgender Europe, Danish citizens (including Greenlandic- and Faroese nationals) have been issued passport with option 'X' upon application, without medical requirements.[149] However, it follows from the Danish Passport Regulations [4][150][151][152] that persons with even personal identification numbers receive the gender marker "F" and persons with odd personal identification numbers the gender marker "M" (§ 4(4)), with the only exception that persons who have not (yet) had an official gender change but to whom the National Hospital's Sexological Clinic has certified that they are transsexual can obtain the gender marker "X" (§ 4(5)). Accordingly, legal gender remains binary in Denmark (including Greenland and the Faroe Islands) and only transsexual people without a legal gender change can obtain an X marker in their passport.
October 13, 2018: Protest in support of third gender in front of the BundeskanzleramtPassport with gender marker "X"
Germany is thought to be the first European country that recognizes "indeterminate" sex on birth certificates, which is materialized by the absence of any gender marker, from November 2013. A report by the German Ethics Council stated that the law was passed because "Many people who were subjected to a 'normalizing' operation in their childhood have later felt it to have been a mutilation and would never have agreed to it as adults."[153] Deutsche Welle reported that an "indeterminate" 'option' was made available for the birth certificates of intersex infants with ambiguous genitalia on 1 November 2013.[153] The move is controversial with many intersex advocates in Germany and elsewhere suggesting that it might encourage surgical interventions, or simply fails to address the key health concerns of intersex people.[153][154][155][156] On 21 January 2015, the CelleCourt of Appeals confirmed in a judgment[157] that intersex people cannot obtain a gender marker other than "female" or "male" in their birth certificate, but only the absence of any such marker. The court held at the same time that even an adult intersex person who was registered with a gender marker at birth can obtain the deletion of that gender marker. This judgment was sent for review by the Federal Court of Justice.[158]
On 8 November 2017, the Federal Constitutional Court released a press statement about its ruling from 10 October 2017, which is in favour of a positive third gender option instead of no entry.[159] On 15 August 2018, the German government approved a draft law allowing a third gender option on birth certificates for babies who are not distinctly male or female.[160] On 22 December 2018, the adopted third gender law entered into force, allowing the choice for intersex people (both at birth and at a later age) between "female", "male", "diverse" and no gender marker at all. In case of a change later in life, first names can also be changed.[161] To change the marker and/or names according to this law, a doctor's note is required, but it is not specified what kind of "variance of gender development" is required for the law.[162] As such, non-intersex non-binary people have made use of this law to change their markers and names as personally trusted doctors approve and give out such a required note nevertheless. In the meantime, an appeals court had held that a nonbinary status must also be open to non-intersex non-binary people; the adopted act does not address this category of people and their situation therefore first remained unclear pending additional case-law.[163] On 22 April 2020, the Federal Court of Justice ruled that in order to obtain nonbinary status, these persons must follow the procedure set out in the legislation on transsexuality which applies by analogy, after which they can also choose between "diverse" and no gender marker at all.[164]
On April 12, 2024, the Bundestag passed the Self-Determination Act, which permits a German citizen who is transgender, nonbinary and/or intersex to change their gender on government documents through self-determination before a judge and a subsequent three-month waiting period. The law comes into force in November 2024, repealing the Transsexual Law and amending the Third Gender Law to allow the legal recognition of non-intersex non-binary people as "diverse". Persons aged 14 to 18 years can change their gender on government documents in the presence of their parents. If the parents do not approve a change, the child can go in front of a family court. For individuals under the age of 14, parental guardians are authorized to modify their child's gender designation. This requires the child's consent from the age of 5 onwards.[165]
In June 2019, the Icelandic Parliament voted 45–0 on a bill to implement a progressive "self-determination gender change model law", similar to numerous European and South American countries. The bill includes a third gender option known as "X" on official documents.[166][167][168][169] The law went into effect on 1 January 2020.[170]
Aravanis—the Hijra "brides" of Aravan—mourn his death
The Hijra of India are probably the most well known and populous third sex type in the modern world – Mumbai-based community health organization The Humsafar Trust estimates there are between 5 and 6 million hijras in India. In different areas they are known as Aravani/Aruvani or Jogappa. Often (somewhat misleadingly) called eunuchs in English, they may be born intersex or apparently male, dress in feminine clothes and generally see themselves as neither men nor women. Only eight percent of hijras visiting Humsafar clinics are nirwaan (castrated). Indian photographer Dayanita Singh writes about her friendship with a Hijra, Mona Ahmed, and their two different societies' beliefs about gender: "When I once asked her if she would like to go to Singapore for a sex change operation, she told me, 'You really do not understand. I am the third sex, not a man trying to be a woman. It is your society's problem that you only recognize two sexes.'"[171] Hijra social movements have campaigned for recognition as a third sex,[172] and in 2005, Indian passport application forms were updated with three gender options: M, F, and E (for male, female, and eunuch, respectively).[173] Some Indian languages such as Sanskrit have three gender 'options'— specifically masculine, feminine and neuter forms of nouns.
In November 2009, India agreed to list eunuchs and transgender people as "others", distinct from males and females, in voting rolls and voter identity cards.[174] On April 15, 2014, the Supreme Court of India recognized a third gender that is neither male nor female, and as a class entitled to reservation in education and jobs, stating "Recognition of transgenders as a third gender is not a social or medical issue but a human rights issue." This verdict made India one of the few countries to give this landmark judgment.[175][176]
In addition to the feminine role of hijras, which is widespread across the subcontinent, a few occurrences of institutionalized "female masculinity" have been noted in modern India. Among the Gaddhi in the foothills of the Himalayas, some girls adopt a role as a sadhin, renouncing marriage, and dressing and working as men, but retaining female names and pronouns.[177] A late-nineteenth century anthropologist noted the existence of a similar role in Madras, that of the basivi.[178] However, historian Walter Penrose concludes that in both cases "their status is perhaps more 'transgendered' than 'third-gendered.'"[179]
Seldom, our society realizes or cares to realize the trauma, agony and pain which the members of Transgender community undergo, nor appreciates the innate feelings of the members of the Transgender community, especially of those whose mind and body disown their biological sex. Our society often ridicules and abuses the Transgender community and in public places like railway stations, bus stands, schools, workplaces, malls, theatres, hospitals, they are sidelined and treated as untouchables, forgetting the fact that the moral failure lies in the society's unwillingness to contain or embrace different gender identities and expressions, a mindset which we have to change.
Justice Radhakrishnan said that transgender people should be treated consistently with other minorities under the law, enabling them to access jobs, healthcare and education.[184] He framed the issue as one of human rights, saying that, "These TGs, even though insignificant in numbers, are still human beings and therefore they have every right to enjoy their human rights", concluding by declaring that:
Hijras, Eunuchs, apart from binary gender, be treated as "third gender" for the purpose of safeguarding their rights under Part III of our Constitution and the laws made by the Parliament and the State Legislature.
Transgender persons' right to decide their self-identified gender is also upheld and the Centre and State Governments are directed to grant legal recognition of their gender identity such as male, female or as third gender.[183]
The Netherlands
In May 2018, Leonne Zeegers was the first Dutch citizen to receive the "X" marked gender on the passport instead of "male" or "female" (see photo of the person's passport here). Leonne, then 57, was born intersex and raised male, before having gender reassignment surgery and become female, but still identifies as an intersex person. Leonne won a court case which meant that preventing someone from registering officially as gender neutral is a "violation of private life, self-determination and personal autonomy". It will, however, still be the decision of the court on whether the "X" will be issued on anyone's passport in the future. The ruling opened doors for Dutch LGBT groups to ask the government for anyone to be able to identify as gender neutral in the future.[185]
On 27 December 2007, the Supreme Court of Nepal issued a decision mandating that the government scrap all laws that discriminated based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity and establish a committee to study same-sex marriage policy.[186] The court also established a third-gender category.[186]Nepalese official documents afford citizens three gender options: male, female, and "others".[186] This may include people who present or perform as a gender that is different from the one that was assigned to them at birth.[186] Nepal's 2011 census was the first national census in the world to allow people to register as a gender other than male or female.[186] However, it was reported that "logistical problems, discrimination on the part of census-takers, and fear among some third genders" were interfering with the process, and eventually the census was published only listing male and female, leaving non-binary people outside or forcing them in a gender that was not their own.[187] The 2007 supreme court decision ordered the government to issue citizenship ID cards that allowed "third-gender" or "other" to be listed.[186] The court also ordered that the only requirements to identify as third-gender would be the person's own self-identification.
"Legal provisions should be made to provide for gender identity to the people of transgender or third gender, under which female third gender, male third gender and intersexual are grouped, as per the concerned person's self-feeling"[188]
More recent material indicates that this third option is not available to intersex persons.[189]
Birth certificates are available at birth showing "indeterminate" sex if it is not possible to assign a sex. The New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs states, "A person's sex can be recorded as indeterminate at the time of birth if it cannot be ascertained that the person is either male or female, and there are a number of people so recorded."[190]
Passports are available from December 2012 with an 'X' sex descriptor, where "X" means "indeterminate/unspecified".[191][192] These were originally introduced for people transitioning gender.[193]
On 17 July 2015, Statistics New Zealand introduced the first version of a gender identity classification standard for statistical purposes.[194][195] The current version of the standard was introduced in April 2021 with the option of three categories (male, female, or another gender) or five categories (cisgender male, cisgender female, transgender male, transgender female, or another gender).[196]
In March 2017, an Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australian community statement called for an end to legal classification of sex, stating that legal third classifications, like binary classifications, were based on structural violence and failed to respect diversity and a "right to self-determination".[36][37]
In Pakistan, the polite term is khwaja sara or "khwaja sira" (Urdu: خواجه سرا), as hijra and khusra are considered derogatory by the khawaja sara community and human rights activists in Pakistan.[197][198] As most of Pakistan's official government and business documents are in English, the term "third gender" has been chosen to represent individuals (either male or female, neither, and/or both) that identify themselves as, transsexual, transgender person, cross-dresser (zenana in Urdu), transvestite, and eunuchs (narnbans in Urdu).[199][200]
In June 2009, the Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered a census of khawaja sara, who number between 80,000[201] and 300,000 in Pakistan.[202] In December 2009, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the Chief Justice of Pakistan, ordered that the National Database and Registration Authority[201] issue national identity cards to members of the community showing their distinct gender.[202][203] "It's the first time in the 62-year history of Pakistan that such steps are being taken for our welfare", Almas Bobby, a khawaja sara association's president, said to Reuters, "It's a major step towards giving us respect and identity in society. We are slowly getting respect in society. Now people recognize that we are also human beings."[202]
The government of Prime Minister Imran Khan has started issuing national identity cards to khawaja Sara (trans) population in Pakistan. This is the first time in countries history, and a major change.
Also commonly referred to as a third sex are the kathoeys (or "ladyboys") of Thailand.[206] These are people whose assigned sex was male who identify and live as female. A significant number of Thais perceive kathoeys as belonging to a third gender, including many kathoeys themselves; others see them as second category women.[207] Thai persons assigned male at birth undergoing sex-change operations are not uncommon occurrences, but they are still regarded as men on their identification documents. Despite this, Thai society remains one of the world's most tolerant towards kathoeys or the third gender.[208] Researcher Sam Winter writes:
We asked our 190 [kathoeys] to say whether they thought of themselves as men, women, sao praphet song ["a second kind of woman"] or kathoey. None thought of themselves as male, and only 11 percent saw themselves as kathoey (i.e. 'non-male'). By contrast 45 percent thought of themselves as women, with another 36 percent as sao praphet song... Unfortunately we did not include the category phet tee sam (third sex/gender); conceivably if we had done so there may have been many respondents who would have chosen that term... Around 50 percent [of non-transgender Thais] see them as males with the mistaken minds, but the other half see them as either women born into the wrong body (around 15 percent) or as a third sex/gender (35 percent).[207]
In 2004, the Chiang Mai Technology School allocated a separate lavatory for kathoeys, with an intertwined male and female symbol on the door. The 15 kathoey students are required to wear male clothing at school but are allowed to sport feminine hairdos. The restroom features four stalls, but no urinals.[209]
Although Kathoeys are still not fully respected, they are gradually gaining acceptance and have made themselves a very distinct part of the Thai society. This is especially true in the entertainment, business, and fashion industries in Thailand, where the Kathoeys play significant roles in leadership and management positions. In addition, Kathoeys or second-category-women are very sought after when businesses are hiring salespeople. In many job posts, it is common to see companies state that second-category-women are preferred as their sales force because they are generally seen as more charismatic and expressive individuals.[210]
The title "Mx." is widely accepted in the United Kingdom by government organisations and businesses as an alternative for non-binary people[211] while the HESA allows the use of non-binary gender markers for students in higher education.[212] In 2015 early day motion EDM660 was registered with Parliament.[213] EDM660 calls for citizens to be permitted access to the X marker on passports. When the text of EDM660 came to light in 2016 a formal petition was launched through the Parliamentary Petitions Service calling for EDM660 to be passed into law.[214][215]
In September 2015 the Ministry of Justice responded to a petition calling for self-determination of legal gender, saying that they were not aware of "any specific detriment" experienced by nonbinary people unable to have their genders legally recognised.[216] In January 2016 the Trans Inquiry Report by the Women and Equalities Committee called for nonbinary people to be protected from discrimination under the Equality Act, for the X gender marker to be added to passports, and for a wholesale review into the needs of nonbinary people by the government within six months.[217] This did not happen. In June 2018 the British High Court ruled against a bid for passports to have an X marker.[218]
The Scottish Government undertook a public consultation on Reforms to the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA) from 9 November 2017 to 1 March 2018.[219] The 2004 GRA sets out the legal process by which someone can change their legally recognised gender. The consultation analysis explains that 60% of those answering the question, agreed with the proposal to introduce a self-declaratory system for legal gender recognition. Point 66 in the analysis document reads "A majority of respondents, 62% of those answering the question, thought that Scotland should take action to recognise non-binary people. Of the remaining respondents, 33% did not think Scotland should take action and 4% did not know."[220] A draft bill for reforming the 2004 GRA is to be proposed by the end of 2019. However, in their factsheet, the Scottish Government say they will not be extending legal gender-recognition to non-binary people. Instead they are intending to set up working group to consider what more could be done to further the inclusion of non-binary people in society.[221]
In March 2020, a judge ruled that the lack of nonbinary gender marker on UK-issued passports was lawful "for now", but noted that "if the international trend towards more widespread official recognition of "non-binary" identity continues, then at some future date, denial could constitute a breach of human rights."[222]
On 14 July 2020, International Nonbinary Day,[223] MP Christine Jardine brought a private member's bill backed by LGBT charity Stonewall UK to the House of Commons, calling for the option of an X gender marker on UK-issued passports for nonbinary people.[224] Its second reading was due to take place in January 2021,[225][226] however the bill failed to complete its passage through that parliamentary session and will therefore make no further progress.[227]
On 14 September 2020 an employment tribunal ruled that a non-binary employee was protected under the gender reassignment characteristic of the Equality Act 2010, the first legal confirmation that non-binary people are protected by the Act.[228][229]
In May 2021, the UK government rejected a petition calling for the legal recognition of non-binary as a gender identity.[230] Over 130,000 people signed the petition,[231] which stated allowing non-binary as a gender identity would ease gender dysphoria and protect non-binary people from transphobic hate crimes.[230] Despite 58% of respondents agreeing that a non-binary identity should be recognised in a 2018 consultation on the GRA,[232] the government stated in their response that there were no plans to extend the GRA, saying that to do so would have "complex practical consequences".[233]
In December 2021, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom issued its judgment, ruling against recognition of non-binary gender. The court's judgment ruled that the European Convention on Human Rights did not require states to issue an "X" option for passports and that there was "no legislation in the United Kingdom which recognises a non-gendered category of individuals." The appellant, Elan-Cane, pledged to appeal the ruling to the European Court of Human Rights.[234]
In January 2024, judges at the High Court in London ruled that, "We have decided that whenever the Gender Recognition Act refers to ‘gender’ it refers to a binary concept – that is, to male, or to female gender. The GRP [Gender Recognition Panel] accordingly, had and has no power to issue a gender recognition certificate to the claimant which says that they are ‘non-binary’."[235]
Jurisdictions that legally recognize a non-binary gender (November 2021)
Recognition via statute or policy
Recognition via court order only
No legal recognition
A number of U.S. jurisdictions allow nonbinary gender markers on identification documents.[236]
Federal
On Intersex Awareness Day, October 26, 2015, LGBT civil rights organization Lambda Legal filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the United States Department of State for denying navy veteran Dana Zzyym, associate director of Intersex Campaign for Equality, a passport because they are, and identify as, neither male nor female, but intersex.[237] On November 22, 2016, the District Court for the District of Colorado ruled in favor of Zzyym, stating that the State Department violated federal law.[238] The ruling stated that the court found "no evidence that the Department followed a rational decision-making process in deciding to implement its binary-only gender passport policy," and ordered the U.S. Passport Agency to reconsider its earlier decision.[239] On September 19, 2018, a federal judge ruled a second time in favor of Zzyym, deciding that the U.S. State Department refusal to give a passport exceeded its authority.[240]
On February 25, 2020, Rep. Ro Khanna introduced legislation in the United States House of Representatives (H. R. 5962) that would add a third gender designation to U.S. passport applications.[241][242] On June 30, 2021, the State Department announced that they had begun an effort to add a third gender marker on U.S. passports, and it is expected to be implemented by the end of 2021.[243][244] On October 27, 2021, the very first US X passport was issued to Dana Zzyym. As stated by Lambda Legal, Zzyym's legal representatives in their lawsuit, the X is a "sex/gender" marker, issued to Zzyym because they were able to demonstrate to the courts that they are not male or female in sex, but intersex, and also representing that Zzyym is non-binary in their gender identity.[245]
On April 11, 2022, the "X" gender marker became available in passports for all U.S. citizens.[246] No medical documentation is required for the issuance of a passport with an "X" marker and the gender on the applicant's identity documents is not required to match the requested passport gender.[247][248]
District of Columbia
In June 2017, Washington, D.C., announced that a non-binary "X" gender marker for district-issued ID cards and driver's licenses would become available later in June, with no medical certification required.[249] The D.C. policy change went into effect on June 27, making the district the first place in the U.S. to offer gender-neutral driver's licenses and ID cards.[250]
Arkansas
Since at least 2010, Arkansas had issued driver's licenses with an "X" gender marker upon request. Arkansas had historically operated without a clear public policy for changing gender markers on IDs. However, in December 2010 former Assistant Commissioner of Operations and Administration Mike Munns announced that Arkansas's official policy would be to "allow a licensee to change their gender as requested, no questions asked, no documentation required."[251][252]
As of March 2024, Arkansas no longer permits non-binary (X) gender markers on driver's licenses or state identification cards. The state established this through an "emergency rule." The state governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said in a news release of the rule: "As long as I’m governor, Arkansas state government will not endorse nonsense."[253]
California
On September 26, 2016, intersex California resident Sara Kelly Keenan became the second person in the United States to legally change her gender to non-binary. Keenan, who uses she/her pronouns and identifies as intersex "both as my medical reality and as my gender identification", cited Shupe's case as inspiration for her petition.[254]
In December 2016, Keenan became the first American recipient of a birth certificate with "intersex" listed under the category of "sex".[255]
In September 2017, California passed legislation implementing a third, non-binary gender marker on California birth certificates, drivers' licenses, and identity cards. The bill, SB 179, also removes the requirements for a physician's statement and mandatory court hearing for gender change petitions.[256][257] The new designation has been available on California driver's licenses since January 1, 2019.[258] As of 2021, 8,855 people had California driver's licenses with a non-binary gender designation.[259] By November 2022, the number had increased to 15,904 residents, with 10,340 of the total being aged 16 to 29, and more than 14,000 of the total being aged under 40; only seven were aged over 80.[260]
Colorado
On November 30, 2018, Colorado began allowing people who do not identify as male or female to mark X as the gender identifier on their driver's license.[261] Applicants who want to use the X on their driver's licenses complete a form during the license application process and are not required to be undergoing any hormonal treatment or surgeries.
[262]
Connecticut
On January 27, 2020, Governor Ned Lamont announced that Connecticut residents could select "X" as a gender identification on licenses and ID cards.[263] As of 2023, Connecticut has issued at least 521 driver's licenses with an X gender marker.[264]
Motor Vehicle Department employees shall not request additional gender-related information beyond that required on the applicable forms or otherwise inquire about the applicant's private medical history or records.[265]
Hawaii
Effective July 1, 2020, X gender markers are available on Hawaiian state issue IDs.[266]
Illinois
In August 2019, Illinois passed legislation to allow gender-neutral markers on all state forms including driver's licenses and ID cards. The changes may take several years to implement, however, due to Illinois' existing six-year contract with IDEMIA to provide ID card services.[267]
Indiana
In March 2019, the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles began allowing gender-neutral markers on driver's licenses and identification cards.[268]
In April 2024, this decision was rescinded by an appeals court, ruling Indiana is no longer required to offer the 'X' option.
[269]
Maine
On June 11, 2018, Maine began allowing "X" gender markers on state IDs, using a temporary sticker until a 2019 system update.[270]
Maryland
A law offering an "X" gender marker on driver's licenses and state identification cards has also been passed in Maryland (effective October 1, 2019).[271]
Minnesota began allowing "X" gender markers on state IDs on October 1, 2018. The designation is considered self reported information and does not require documentation. A nonbinary person named MJ Zappa became the first to obtain the marker after a struggle with the state Department of Vehicle Services for over a year.[274]
New Hampshire
In July 2019, the New Hampshire legislature passed a bill allowing individuals to indicate their sex on IDs as male, female, or other.[275]
New Jersey
The passage of Assembly Bill A1718 amended state law to allow the State Registrar, effective February 1, 2019, to issue an amended birth certificate with a third designation of "Undesignated/non-binary" to a person upon request.
In 2021, New Jersey added an 'X' gender identifier option to be displayed on drivers' licenses instead of 'F' or 'M'.[276]
New Mexico
Obverse of a New Mexico driver identification card showing the 'X' gender designator
The passage of Senate Bill 20 into law in the 2019 session of the New Mexico Legislature amended the Vital Records Act to allow for a third designator on the state's identification documents (in both Real ID Act compliant and non-compliant forms), 'X', to be selected instead of 'F' or 'M' and required only a doctor's signature on the designator change request form instead of a court order as prior. The Motor Vehicle Division of the New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department began issuing such licenses later that year, although by Q1 2020 the forms for license renewal had not yet been reprinted with the third option shown, instead allowing manual amendment.
New York
New York City and New York State have separate departments handling birth certificates. In April 2017, the second intersex birth certificate (in which the recipient's "sex" is listed as intersex) in the United States was issued to non-binary intersex writer and activist Hida Viloria in New York City.[277] As of September 2018, no documentation or surgery is needed to change a gender marker on NYC birth certificates, and birth certificates may be amended to use an "X" gender marker.[278]
As of January 2023,[279] New York State birth certificates may be corrected to show an "X" gender designation. Parents may do this on behalf of a child under 16. The only documentation needed is a notarized affidavit.[280]
In June 2017, legislation was introduced in New York City to offer an "X" gender marker for residents' ID cards.[249] The IDNYC municipal identification card may be issued with male, female, or "X" gender markers, or with the gender marker left blank; no documentation is needed for initial or updated gender markers.[281]
On June 24, 2021, the Gender Recognition Act was signed into law, allowing New Yorkers to display an "X" gender marker on their ID,[282] and IDs with the "X" marker were officially available as of May 27, 2022.[283][284]
Ohio
In 2012, an intersex person successfully petitioned to have their Ohio birth certificate revised to list "hermaphrodite" as their sex.[285] However, "male" and "female" remain the only options available on state-issued IDs.[286]
In late 2016, Elisa Rae Shupe became the first person to receive legal recognition of a non-binary gender in the United States, based on a state court ruling.
On June 10, 2016, a state judge in a Multnomah County, Oregon, circuit court ruled that a resident, Elisa Rae Shupe, could obtain a non-binary gender designation.[290]
Shupe was represented by civil rights lawyer Lake Perriguey.[291] The Transgender Law Center believes this to be "the first ruling of its kind in the U.S."[290]
On June 15, 2017, Oregon became the first state in the U.S. to announce it will allow a non-binary "X" gender marker on state IDs and driver's licenses, beginning July 1 with no doctor's note required.[292]
As of 2019, in the state of Oregon any person may choose a gender marking of their choosing ("F", "X", or "M" being the options, the field being listed as "sex") on their driver's license or identification card without any requirements of proof of gender.
Oregon also allows a person to amend their birth certificate to include non-binary "X" gender marker as of January 1, 2018.[293][294]
Pennsylvania
On July 30, 2019, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation announced that they would introduce an official process to request an X gender designation on state driver's licenses in 2020.[295] According to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation website, the new process was rolled out in January 2020.[296]
Utah
Since 2017 and 2018 respectively, Utah has issued X gender markers on birth certificates and driver's licenses although to do so requires a court order.[297]
Virginia
Virginia has a non-binary option for drivers licenses and state issued ID cards.[298]
Washington
In December 2017, Washington state filed an adopted rule to allow a third, non-binary "X" gender marker on amended birth certificates, although certificates will still be initially issued with male or female designations; the rule went into effect on January 27, 2018.[299][300] The Washington Department of Licensing began offering "Sex: X" driver's licenses and state ID cards on November 13, 2019.[301][302]
Uruguay
Since 19 October 2018, a new law in Uruguay allows people to change their gender/sex entry on a self-determined basis without requiring any medical documents. The law also provides a basis for social protection, anti-discrimination efforts, quotas and reparations.[303][304]
Modern societies without legal recognition
The following gender categories have also been described as a third gender:
Indonesia: Waria is a traditional third gender role found in modern Indonesia.[311] Additionally, the Bugis culture of Sulawesi has been described as having three sexes (male, female and intersex) as well as five genders with distinct social roles.[2]
In Japan, X-gender is a third gender or genderqueer identity known as Xジェンダー. X-gender is a gender identity for people who are not expressly male or female.[312]
In the Philippines, a number of local sex/gender identities are commonly referred to as a 'third sex' in popular discourse, as well as by some academic studies. Local terms for these identities (which are considered derogatory by some) include baklâ and binabae (Tagalog), bayot (Cebuano), agi (Ilonggo), bantut (Tausug), badíng – all of which refer to 'gay' men or trans women. Gender variant females may be called lakin-on or tomboy.[313]
Europe
The Balkans: Sworn virgins,[12] females who work and dress as men and inhabit some men-only spaces, but do not marry.
Southern Mexico: Muxe, In many Zapotece communities, third gender roles are often apparent[316] The muxe are described as a third gender; biologically male but with feminine characteristics.[316] They are not considered to be homosexuals, but rather just another gender[316] Some will marry women and have families, others will form relationships with men[316] Although it is recognized[by whom?] that these individuals have the bodies of men, they perform gender in a different manner than men, it is not a masculine persona but neither is it a feminine persona that they perform but, in general, a combination of the two[316] Lynn Stephen quotes Jeffrey Rubin, "Prominent men who [were] rumoured to be homosexual and did not adopt the muxe identity were spoken of pejoratively", suggesting that muxe gender role was more acceptable in the community.[316]
Biza'ah, In Teotitlán, they have their own version of the muxe that they call biza'ah. According to Stephen, there were only 7 individuals in that community considered to be biza'ah in comparison to the muxe, of which there were many.[316] Like the muxe they were well liked and accepted in the community.[316] Their way of walking, talking and the work that they perform are markers of recognizing biza'ah.[316]
Travestis of Latin America have been described as a third gender, although not all see themselves this way. Don Kulick described the gendered world of travestis in urban Brazil as having has two categories: "men" and "not men", with women, homosexuals and travestis belonging to the latter category.[317]
Two Spirit is a modern umbrella term used by some indigenous North Americans to describe certain spiritual people[10][14] - gay, lesbian, bisexual and gender-variant individuals - in their communities.[319][320][321] Two Spirit differs from most western, mainstream definitions of sexuality and gender identity in that it is not so much about who one sleeps with, or how one personally identifies; rather, it is a sacred, spiritual and ceremonial role that is recognized and confirmed by the Elders of the Two Spirit's ceremonial community.[10][14] While some have found the term a useful tool for intertribal organizing, not all Native cultures conceptualize gender or sexuality this way, and most tribes use names in their own languages.[322][323] While pan-Indian terms are not always appropriate or welcome, the term has generally received more acceptance and use than the term it replaced.[322]
Third and fourth gender roles traditionally embodied by two-spirit people include performing work and wearing clothingassociated with both men and women. Not all tribes/nations have rigid gender roles, but, among those that do, some consider there to be at least four genders: feminine woman, masculine woman, feminine man, masculine man.[10]
History
Mesopotamia
Stone tablet from 2nd millennium BC Sumer containing a myth about the creation of a type of human who is neither man nor woman.
In Mesopotamian mythology, among the earliest written records of humanity, there are references to types of people who are not men and not women. In a Sumeriancreation myth found on a stone tablet from the second millennium BC, the goddess Ninmah fashions a being "with no male organ and no female organ", for whom Enki finds a position in society: "to stand before the king". In the Akkadian myth of Atra-Hasis (ca. 1700 BC), Enki instructs Nintu, the goddess of birth, to establish a “third category among the people” in addition to men and women, that includes demons who steal infants, women who are unable to give birth, and priestesses who are prohibited from bearing children.[324] In Babylonia, Sumer and Assyria, certain types of individuals who performed religious duties in the service of Inanna/Ishtar have been described as a third gender.[325] They worked as sacred prostitutes or Hierodules, performed ecstatic dance, music and plays, wore masks and had gender characteristics of both women and men.[326] In Sumer, they were given the cuneiform names of ur.sal ("dog/man-woman") and kur.gar.ra (also described as a man-woman).[327] Modern scholars, struggling to describe them using contemporary sex/gender categories, have variously described them as "living as women", or used descriptors such as hermaphrodites, eunuchs, homosexuals, transvestites, effeminate males and a range of other terms and phrases.[328]
Egypt
Inscribed pottery shards from the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (2000–1800 BCE), found near ancient Thebes (now Luxor, Egypt), list three human genders: tai (male), sḫt ("sekhet") and hmt (female).[329]Sḫt is often translated as "eunuch", although there is little evidence that such individuals were castrated.[330]
Indic culture
The Hindu god Shiva is often represented as Ardhanarisvara, with a dual male and female nature. Typically, Ardhanarisvara's right side is male and left side female. This sculpture is from the Elephanta Caves near Mumbai.
References to a third sex can be found throughout the texts of India's three ancient spiritual traditions – Hinduism,[331][self-published source]Jainism[332] and Buddhism[333] – and it can be inferred that Vedic culture recognised three genders. The Vedas (c. 1500 BC–500 BC) describe individuals as belonging to one of three categories, according to one's nature or prakrti. These are also spelled out in the Kama Sutra (c. 4th century AD) and elsewhere as pums-prakrti (male-nature), stri-prakrti (female-nature), and tritiya-prakrti (third-nature).[334] Texts suggest that third sex individuals were well known in premodern India and included male-bodied or female-bodied[335] people as well as intersexuals, and that they can often be recognised from childhood.
A third sex is discussed in ancient Hindu law, medicine, linguistics and astrology. The foundational work of Hindu law, the Manu Smriti (c. 200 BC–200 AD) explains the biological origins of the three sexes:
A male child is produced by a greater quantity of male seed, a female child by the prevalence of the female; if both are equal, a third-sex child or boy and girl twins are produced; if either are weak or deficient in quantity, a failure of conception results.[336]
Indian linguist Patañjali's[337] work on Sanskrit grammar, the Mahābhāṣya (c. 200 BC), states that Sanskrit's three grammatical genders are derived from three natural genders. The earliest Tamil grammar, the Tolkappiyam (3rd century BC) refers to hermaphrodites as a third "neuter" gender (in addition to a feminine category of unmasculine males). In Vedic astrology, the nine planets are each assigned to one of the three genders; the third gender, tritiya-prakrti, is associated with Mercury, Saturn and (in particular) Ketu. In the Puranas, there are references to three kinds of devas of music and dance: apsaras (female), gandharvas (male) and kinnars (neuter).
The two great Sanskritepic poems, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata,[338] indicate the existence of a third gender in ancient Indic society. Some versions of Ramayana tell that in one part of the story, the hero Rama heads into exile in the forest. Halfway there, he discovers that most of the people of his home town Ayodhya were following him. He told them, "Men and women, turn back", and with that, those who were "neither men nor women" did not know what to do, so they stayed there. When Rama returned to from exile years later, he discovered them still there and blessed them, saying that there will be a day when they, too, will have a share in ruling the world.
In the Buddhist Vinaya, codified in its present form around the 2nd century BC and said to be handed down by oral tradition from Buddha himself, there are four main sex/gender categories: males, females, ubhatobyañjanaka (people of a dual sexual nature) and paṇḍaka (people of non-normative sexual natures, perhaps originally denoting a deficiency in male sexual capacity).[333] As the Vinaya tradition developed, the term paṇḍaka came to refer to a broad third sex category which encompassed intersex, male and female bodied people with physical or behavioural attributes that were considered inconsistent with the natural characteristics of man and woman.[339]
Contrary to what is often portrayed in the West, sex with male (specifically receptive oral and anal sex) was the gender role of the third gender, not their defining feature. Thus, in ancient India, as in present-day India, the society made a distinction between a third gender having sex with a man, and a man having sex with a man. The latter may have been viewed negatively, but he would be seen very much as a man (in modern western context, as 'straight'), not a third gender (in modern western context 'gay').[340]
Mediterranean culture
2nd century Roman copy of a Greek sculpture. The figure is Hermaphroditus, from which the word hermaphrodite is derived.
In Plato's Symposium, written around the 4th century BC, Aristophanes relates a creation myth involving three original sexes: female, male and androgynous. They are split in half by Zeus, producing four different contemporary sex/gender types which seek to be reunited with their lost other half; in this account, the modern heterosexual man and woman descend from the original androgynous sex. The myth of Hermaphroditus involves heterosexual lovers merging into their primordial androgynous sex.[341][non-primary source needed]
Other creation myths around the world share a belief in three original sexes, such as those from northern Thailand.[342]
Many have interpreted the "eunuchs" of the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean world as a third gender that inhabited a liminal space between women and men, understood in their societies as somehow neither or both.[343] In the Historia Augusta, the eunuch body is described as a tertium genus hominum (a third human gender),[344] and in 77 BC, a eunuch named Genucius was prevented from claiming goods left to him in a will, on the grounds that he had voluntarily mutilated himself (amputatis sui ipsius) and was neither a woman or a man (neque virorum neque mulierum numero).[345] Several scholars have argued that the eunuchs in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament were understood in their time to belong to a third gender, rather than the more recent interpretations of a kind of emasculated man, or a metaphor for chastity.[346] The early Christian theologian, Tertullian, wrote that Jesus himself was a eunuch (c. 200 AD).[347] Tertullian also noted the existence of a third sex (tertium sexus) among heathens: "a third race in sex... made of male and female in one."[348] He may have been referring to the Galli, "eunuch" devotees of the Phrygian goddess Cybele, who were described as belonging to a third sex by several Roman writers.[349]
Israel
In old Israel there were:
Zachar: male
Nekeva: female
Androgynos: both male and female genitalia (eternal doubt of legal gender)
Tumtum: genitalia concealed by skin (unknown gender, unless skin removed)
Aylonit: Barren female. Female genitalia, barren.
Saris: castrated or naturally infertile male (often translated as "eunuch")[350][351]
The Americas
Mesoamerica
The ancient Maya civilization may have recognised a third gender, according to historian Matthew Looper. Looper notes the androgynous Maize Deity and masculine Moon goddess of Maya mythology, and iconography and inscriptions where rulers embody or impersonate these deities. He suggests that the third gender could also include two-spirit individuals with special roles such as healers or diviners.[352]
Anthropologist and archaeologist Miranda Stockett notes that several writers have felt the need to move beyond a two-gender framework when discussing prehispanic cultures across mesoamerica,[353] and concludes that the Olmec, Aztec and Maya peoples understood "more than two kinds of bodies and more than two kinds of gender." Anthropologist Rosemary Joyce agrees, writing that "gender was a fluid potential, not a fixed category, before the Spaniards came to Mesoamerica. Childhood training and ritual shaped, but did not set, adult gender, which could encompass third genders and alternative sexualities as well as "male" and "female." At the height of the Classic period, Maya rulers presented themselves as embodying the entire range of gender possibilities, from male through female, by wearing blended costumes and playing male and female roles in state ceremonies." Joyce notes that many figures of mesoamerican art are depicted with male genitalia and female breasts, while she suggests that other figures in which chests and waists are exposed but no sexual characteristics (primary or secondary) are marked may represent a third sex, ambiguous gender or androgyny.[354]
Inca
Andean Studies scholar Michael Horswell writes that third-gendered ritual attendants to chuqui chinchay, a jaguar deity in Incan mythology, were "vital actors in Andean ceremonies" prior to Spanish colonisation. Horswell elaborates: "These quariwarmi (men-women) shamans mediated between the symmetrically dualistic spheres of Andean cosmology and daily life by performing rituals that at times required same-sex erotic practices. Their transvested attire served as a visible sign of a third space that negotiated between the masculine and the feminine, the present and the past, the living and the dead. Their shamanic presence invoked the androgynous creative force often represented in Andean mythology."[355]Richard Trexler gives an early Spanish account of religious 'third gender' figures from the Inca empire in his 1995 book "Sex and Conquest":
And in each important temple or house of worship, they have a man or two, or more, depending on the idol, who go dressed in women's attire from the time they are children, and speak like them, and in manner, dress, and everything else they imitate women. With them especially the chiefs and headmen have carnal, foul intercourse on feast days and holidays, almost like a religious rite and ceremony.[356]
Illiniwek
Historically, the Indigenous people of Illinois have decided the gender of their members based on their childhood behavior. If a male child used tools considered to be "women's tools", such as a spade or ax instead of a bow, they were considered to be third gender, feminine men. The modern, pan-Indian term for this role is "Two-Spirit".[357]
In David Lindsay's 1920 novel A Voyage to Arcturus there is a type of being called phaen, a third gender which is attracted neither to men nor women but to "Faceny" (their name for Shaping or Crystalman, the Demiurge). The appropriate pronouns are ae and aer.[358]
Mikaël, a 1924 film directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, was also released as Chained: The Story of the Third Sex in the USA.[359]
Literary critic Michael Maiwald identifies a "third-sex ideal" in one of the first African-American bestsellers, Claude McKay's Home to Harlem (1928).[360]
In Hinduism, Shiva is still worshipped as an Ardhnarishwara, i.e. half-male and half-female form.[362] Shiva's symbol, which is today known as Shivalinga, actually comprises a combination of a 'Yoni' (vagina) and a 'Ling' (phallus).
The third genders have been ascribed spiritual powers by most indigenous societies.[363][364]
For example, on the Indian subcontinent the Hijras are supposed to have supernatural powers, through which they can bless people or curse them. This gives Hijras a unique place in society, and traditional Indians still invite Hijras to seek their blessings on important occasions such as marriage.[365]
At the time of the birth of Christ, cults of men devoted to a goddess flourished throughout the broad region extending from the Mediterranean to south Asia. While galli were missionizing the Roman Empire, kalû, kurgarrû, and assinnu continued to carry out ancient rites in the temples of Mesopotamia, and the third-gender predecessors of the hijra were clearly evident. To complete the picture we should also mention the eunuch priests of Artemis at Ephesus; the western Semitic qedeshim, the male “temple prostitutes” known from the Hebrew Bible and Ugaritic texts of the late second millennium; and the keleb, priests of Astarte at Kition and elsewhere. Beyond India, modern ethnographic literature documents gender variant shaman-priests throughout southeast Asia, Borneo, and Sulawesi. All these roles share the traits of devotion to a goddess, gender transgression and receptive anal sex, ecstatic ritual techniques (for healing, in the case of galli and Mesopotamian priests, and fertility in the case of hijra), and actual (or symbolic) castration. Most, at some point in their history, were based in temples and, therefore, part of the religious-economic administration of their respective city-states.[366]
^Roscoe, Will (2000). Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America. Palgrave Macmillan (June 17, 2000) ISBN0-312-22479-6 See also: Trumbach, Randolph (1994). London’s Sapphists: From Three Sexes to Four Genders in the Making of Modern Culture. In Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, edited by Gilbert Herdt, 111-36. New York: Zone (MIT). ISBN978-0-942299-82-3
^ abMartin, M. Kay; Voorhies, Barbara (1975). "4. Supernumerary Sexes". Female of the Species. New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press. ISBN9780231038751. OCLC1094960.
^ abMoney, John; Ehrhardt, Anke A. (1972). Man & Woman Boy & Girl. Differentiation and dimorphism of gender identity from conception to maturity. USA: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN0-8018-1405-7.
^ abDomurat Dreger, Alice (2001). Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex. USA: Harvard University Press. ISBN0-674-00189-3.
^LeBow, Diana, Rethinking Matriliny Among the Hopi, p.8.
^Schlegel, Alice, Hopi Gender Ideology of Female Superiority, in Quarterly Journal of Ideology: "A Critique of the Conventional Wisdom", vol. VIII, no. 4, 1984, pp.44–52
^100 Native Americans Who Shaped American History, Juettner, 2007.
^ abAgrawal, A. (1997). "Gendered Bodies: The Case of the 'Third Gender' in India". Contributions to Indian Sociology. 31 (2): 273–297. doi:10.1177/006996697031002005.
^ abcYoung, Antonia (2000). Women Who Become Men: Albanian Sworn Virgins.ISBN1-85973-335-2
^McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms 2011 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York, McGraw Hill.
^ abcd"A Spirit of Belonging, Inside and Out". The New York Times. 8 Oct 2006. Retrieved 28 July 2016. "'The elders will tell you the difference between a gay Indian and a Two-Spirit,' [Criddle] said, underscoring the idea that simply being gay and Indian does not make someone a Two-Spirit."
^Pember, Mary Annette (Oct 13, 2016). "'Two Spirit' Tradition Far From Ubiquitous Among Tribes". Rewire. Retrieved Oct 17, 2016. Unfortunately, depending on an oral tradition to impart our ways to future generations opened the floodgates for early non-Native explorers, missionaries, and anthropologists to write books describing Native peoples and therefore bolstering their own role as experts. These writings were and still are entrenched in the perspective of the authors who were and are mostly white men.
^Peletz, Michael G. (2007). Gender, Sexuality, and Body Politics in Modern Asia. Michigan: Association for Asian Studies. ISBN9780924304507.
^Marañón, Gregorio (1929). Los estados intersexuales en la especie humana. Madrid: Morata.
^Furtado P. S.; et al. (2012). "Gender dysphoria associated with disorders of sex development". Nat. Rev. Urol. 9: 620–627. doi:10.1038/nrurol.2012.182. PMID23045263.
^Jones, Tiffany; Hart, Bonnie; Carpenter, Morgan; Ansara, Gavi; Leonard, William; Lucke, Jayne (February 2016). Intersex: Stories and Statistics from Australia(PDF). Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers. ISBN978-1-78374-208-0. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2016-09-14. Retrieved 2016-02-02. ((cite book)): Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^Organisation Intersex International Australia (July 28, 2016), Demographics, retrieved 2016-09-30
^ abSell, Ingrid M. "Third gender: A qualitative study of the experience of individuals who identify as being neither man nor woman." The Psychotherapy Patient. 13.1/2 (2004): p.132
^Sell, Ingrid M. "Third gender: A qualitative study of the experience of individuals who identify as being neither man nor woman." The Psychotherapy Patient. 13.1/2 (2004): p.135
^Hines, Sally, and Tam Sanger. Transgender Identities: Towards a Social Analysis of Gender Diversity. New York: Routledge, 2010. Print. p.244
^ abSell, Ingrid M. "Third gender: A qualitative study of the experience of individuals who identify as being neither man nor woman." The Psychotherapy Patient. 13.1/2 (2004): p.139
^Sell, Ingrid M. "Third gender: A qualitative study of the experience of individuals who identify as being neither man nor woman." The Psychotherapy Patient. 13.1/2 (2004): p.141
^Redefining Fa'afafine: Western Discourses and the Construction of Transgenderism in Samoa Johanna Schmidt; Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context; Issue 6, August 2001 Quote: In this article, I argue that fa'afafine are both viewed through the lens of and influenced by Western understandings of sexuality. This argument is based on the analysis of various representations of fa'afafine and discusses the impact of Western discourses of gender and sexuality have had on fa'afafine identities.[6]
^ abTrumbach, Randolph. (1998) Sex and the Gender Revolution. Volume 1: Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1998. (Chicago Series on Sexuality, History & Society)
^Kennedy, Hubert (1981). "The "Third Sex" Theory of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs". Journal of Homosexuality. 6 (1–2): 103–111. doi:10.1300/J082v06n01_10. PMID7042820.
^Jones, James W. (1990). "We of the third sex” : homo Representations of Homosexuality in Wilhelmine Germany. (German Life and Civilization v. 7) New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1990. ISBN0-8204-1209-0
^Sell, Ingrid (2001). "Not man, not woman: Psychospiritual characteristics of a Western third gender". Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. 33 (1): 16–36. (Complete doctoral dissertation: Sell, Ingrid. (2001). Third gender: A qualitative study of the experience of individuals who identify as being neither man nor woman. (Doctoral Dissertation, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology). UMI No. 3011299.)
^"X Marks the Spot for Intersex Alex"(PDF). Newsletter of the Sociology of Sexualities Section of the American Sociological Association. 6 (1). American Sociological Association Sexualities News: 7. 2003. Retrieved May 16, 2021.
^Verbergt, Matthias (2021-11-30). "Vivaldi knipt geslacht van identiteitskaart" [Vivaldi government (i.e. Belgian government) removes gender from identity card]. De Standaard (in Flemish). Retrieved 2022-01-24.
^Phillimore, P. (1991). "Unmarried Women of the Dhaula Dhar: Celibacy and Social Control in Northwest India". Journal of Anthropological Research. 47 (3): 331–350. doi:10.1086/jar.47.3.3630617. JSTOR3630617. S2CID164121187.
^Fawcett, Fred (1891). On Basivis: Women Who, through Dedication to a Deity, Assume Masculine Privileges. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay (July). Bombay: Education Society's Press; London: Treubner.
^Penrose, Walter (2001). "Hidden in History: Female Homoeroticism and Women of a "Third Nature" in the South Asian Past". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 10: 3–39. doi:10.1353/sex.2001.0018. S2CID142955490.
^Abdullah, M; Basharat, Zeeshan (2012). "Awareness about sexually transmitted infections among Hijra sex workers of Rawalpindi/Islamabad". Pakistan Journal of Public Health. 2: 40–45. S2CID54134786.
^Totman, Richard, (2004). The Third Sex: Kathoey: Thailand's Ladyboys, Souvenir Press. ISBN0-285-63668-5
^ abWinter, Sam (2003). Research and discussion paper: Language and identity in transgender: gender wars and the case of the Thai kathoey. Paper presented at the Hawaii conference on Social Sciences, Waikiki, June 2003. Article onlineArchived 2014-11-17 at the Wayback Machine.
^Beech, Hannah (July 7, 2008). "Where The 'Ladyboys' Are". Time World. Archived from the original on July 8, 2008. Retrieved 10 April 2013.Research and discussion paper: Language and identity in transgender: gender wars and the case of the Thai kathoey. Paper presented at the Hawaii conference on Social Sciences, Waikiki, June 2003. Article onlineArchived 2014-11-17 at the Wayback Machine.
^Transvestites Get Their Own School Bathroom, Associated Press, June 22, 2004.
^Towles, Joseph A. (1993). Nkumbi initiation: Ritual and structure among the Mbo of Zaire, Musée royal de l'Afrique Centrale (Tervuren, Belgique)
^Ka'opua, L. S. I.; Cassel, K.; Shiramizu, B.; Stotzer, R. L.; Robles, A.; Kapua, C.; Orton, M.; Milne, C.; Sesepasara, M. (2015). "Addressing Risk and Reluctance at the Nexus of HIV and Anal Cancer Screening". Health Promotion Practice. 17 (1): 21–30. doi:10.1177/1524839915615611. ISSN1524-8399.
^Sua'aIi'i, Tamasailau, "Samoans and Gender: Some Reflections on Male, Female and Fa'afafine Gender Identities", in: Tangata O Te Moana Nui: The Evolving Identities of Pacific Peoples in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Palmerston North (NZ): Dunmore Press, 2001, ISBN0-86469-369-9
^National fono for Pacific "third sex" communities, media release from New Zealand Aids Foundation, August 5, 2005. Article online[permanent dead link].
^Oostvogels, Robert (1995). The Waria of Indonesia: A Traditional Third Gender Role, in Herdt (ed.), op cit.
^ abcdefghiLynn Stephen. Sexualities and Genders in Zapotec Oaxaca. Latin American Perspectives. 29(2)41-59
^Kulick, Don (1998). Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998)
^Wikan, Unni (1991). The Xanith: a third gender role? in Behind the veil in Arabia: women in Oman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
^Medicine, Beatrice (August 2002). "Directions in Gender Research in American Indian Societies: Two Spirits and Other Categories". Online Readings in Psychology and Culture. 3 (1). International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology: 7. doi:10.9707/2307-0919.1024. ISSN2307-0919. Archived from the original on 2012-12-08. Retrieved 2016-06-25. At the Wenner Gren conference on gender held in Chicago, May, 1994... the gay American Indian and Alaska Native males agreed to use the term "Two Spirit" to replace the controversial "berdache" term. The stated objective was to purge the older term from anthropological literature as it was seen as demeaning and not reflective of Native categories. Unfortunately, the term "berdache" has also been incorporated in the psychology and women studies domains, so the task for the affected group to purge the term looms large and may be formidable.
^Pember, Mary Annette (Oct 13, 2016). "'Two Spirit' Tradition Far From Ubiquitous Among Tribes". Rewire. Retrieved Oct 17, 2016. Non-Native anthropologist Will Roscoe gets much of the public credit for coining the term two spirit. However, according to Kristopher Kohl Miner of the Ho-Chunk Nation, Native people such as anthropologist Dr. Wesley Thomas of the Dine or Navajo tribe also contributed to its creation. (Thomas is a professor in the School of Dine and Law Studies.)
^ ab"Two Spirit 101[permanent dead link]" at NativeOut: "The Two Spirit term was adopted in 1990 at an Indigenous lesbian and gay international gathering to encourage the replacement of the term berdache, which means, 'passive partner in sodomy, boy prostitute.'" Accessed 23 Sep 2015
^Nissinen, Martti (1998). Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, Translated by Kirsi Stjedna. Fortress Press (November 1998) p. 30. ISBN0-8006-2985-X See also: Maul, S. M. (1992). Kurgarrû und assinnu und ihr Stand in der babylonischen Gesellschaft. Pp. 159–71 in Aussenseiter und Randgruppen. Konstanze Althistorische Vorträge und Forschungern 32. Edited by V. Haas. Konstanz: Universitätsverlag.
^Leick, Gwendolyn (1994). Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature. Routledge. New York. *Leick's account: Sumerian: sag-ur-sag, pilpili and kurgarra; and Assyrian: assinnu. Leick describes them as "hermaphrodites, homosexual transvestites, and other, castrated individuals". Burns, John Barclay (2000). "Devotee or Deviate: The "Dog" (keleb) in Ancient Israel as a Symbol of Male Passivity and Perversion". Journal of Religion & Society. 2. ISSN1522-5658. Retrieved 2 April 2011. *Burns defines the assinnu as "a member of Ishtar’s cultic staff with whom, it seems, a man might have intercourse, whose masculinity had become femininity" and who "lacked libido, either from a natural defect or castration". He described the kulu'u as effeminate and the kurgarru as transvestite. In addition, he defines another kind of gender-variant prostitute, sinnisānu, as (literally) "woman-like".
^Sethe, Kurt, (1926), Die Aechtung feindlicher Fürsten, Völker und Dinge auf altägyptischen Tongefäßscherben des mittleren Reiches, in: Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, 1926, p. 61.
^Wilhelm, Amara Das (2004). Tritiya Prakriti (People of the Third Sex): Understanding Homosexuality, Transgender Identity and Intersex Conditions through Hinduism (XLibris Corporation, 2004).
^Zwilling, L; Sweet, MJ (1996). ""Like a city ablaze": The third sex and the creation of sexuality in Jain religious literature". Journal of the history of sexuality. 6 (3): 359–84. JSTOR4629615. PMID11609126.
^ abJackson, Peter A. (April 1996). "Non-normative Sex/Gender Categories in the Theravada Buddhist Scriptures". Australian Humanities Review. hdl:1885/41884.
^Penrose, Walter (2001). "Hidden in History: Female Homoeroticism and Women of a "Third Nature" in the South Asian Past". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 10: 3–39 [4]. doi:10.1353/sex.2001.0018. distinct social and economic roles once existed for women thought to belong to a third gender. Hidden in history, these women dressed in men's clothing, served as porters and personal bodyguards to kings and queens, and even took an active role in sex with women.
^Lord Arjuna takes a "vow of eunuchism" to live as the third sex for a year: "O lord of the Earth, I will declare myself as one of the neuter sex. O monarch, it is, indeed difficult to hide the marks of the bowstring on my arms. I will, however, cover both my cicatrized arms with bangles. Wearing brilliant rings on my ears and conch-bangles on my wrists and causing a braid to hang down from my head, I shall, O king, appear as one of the third sex, Vrihannala by name. And living as a female I shall (always) entertain the king and the inmates of the inner apartments by reciting stories. And, O king, I shall also instruct the women of Virata's palace in singing and delightful modes of dancing and in musical instruments of diverse kinds. And I shall also recite the various excellent acts of men..." Mahabharata (Virata-parva), Translated by Ganguli, Kisari Mohan. Project Gutenberg.
^Non-normative Sex/Gender Categories in the Theravada Buddhist Scriptures, compiled by Peter A. Jackson; quote: "it appears that among the early Buddhist communities men who engaged in receptive anal sex were seen as feminized and thought to be hermaphrodites. In contrast, men who engaged in oral sex were not seen as crossing sex/gender boundaries, but rather as engaging in abnormal sexual practices without threatening their masculine gendered existence."
^Jackson, Peter A. (1995) Kathoey: The third sex. In Jackson, P., "Dear Uncle Go: Male homosexuality in Thailand." Bangkok, Thailand: Bua Luang Books See also: Peltier, Anatole-Roger (1991). Pathamamulamuli: The Origin of the World in the Lan Na Tradition. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books. The Yuan creation myth in the book is from Pathamamulamuli, an antique Buddhist palmleaf manuscript. Its translator, Anatole-Roger Peltier, believes that this story is based on an oral tradition which is over five hundred years old. Text online.
^S. Tougher, ed., (2001) Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond (London: Duckworth Publishing, 2001). Ringrose, Kathryn M. (2003). The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2003.
^Note: There is some controversy in this statement as in context, spado, which in most cases means eunuch, is generally translated as virgin as in here and a fuller explanation can be found here [1]. Tertullian, On Monogamy, 3: "...He stands before you, if you are willing to copy him, as a voluntary spado (eunuch) in the flesh." And elsewhere: "The Lord Himself opened the kingdom of heaven to eunuchs and He Himself lived as a eunuch. The apostle [Paul] also, following His example, made himself a eunuch..."
^e.g. "Both sexes are displeasing to her holiness, so [the gallus] keeps a middle gender (medium genus) between the others." Prudentius, Peristephanon, 10.1071-3
^Looper, Matthew G. (2001). Ancient Maya Women-Men (and Men-Women): Classic Rulers and the Third Gender, In: "Ancient Maya Women", ed. Traci Ardren. Walnut Creek, California: Alta Mira, 2001.
^Stockett, M. K. (2005). "On the Importance of Difference: Re-Envisioning Sex and Gender in Ancient Mesoamerica". World Archaeology. 37 (4): 566–578. doi:10.1080/00438240500404375. JSTOR40025092. In addition to Looper (above) and Joyce (below), Stockett cites: Geller, P. (2004). Skeletal analysis and theoretical complications. Paper presented at Que(e)rying Archaeology: The Fifteenth Anniversary Gender Conference, Chacmool Archaeology Conference, University of Calgary, Calgary. Joyce, R. A. (1998). "Performing the Body in Pre-Hispanic Central America". RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics (33): 147–165. JSTOR20167006.
Lopez-Austin, A. (1988). The Human Body and Ideology: Concepts of Ancient Nahuas (trans T.O. de Montellano and B.O. de Montellano). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
^Joyce, Rosemary A. (2000). Gender and Power in Prehispanic Mesoamerica. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. ISBN978-0-292-74065-5
^Horswell, Michael J. (2006). Transculturating Tropes of Sexuality, Tinkuy, and Third Gender in the Andes, introduction to "Decolonizing the Sodomite: Queer Tropes of Sexuality in Colonial Andean Culture". ISBN0-292-71267-7. Article online.
^Trexler, Richard C. (1995). Sex and Conquest. Cornell University Press: Ithaca. p. 107
^Rosemary Joyce. 2000. Gender and Power in Prehispanic Mesosamerica. University of Texas Press.
^Caroline McCracken-Flesher (26 October 2011). Scotland as Science Fiction. Bucknell University Press. p. 52. ISBN978-1-61148-375-8. There he encounters Leehallfae the phaen, a being "neither man nor woman nor anything between the two, but ... unmistakably of a third positive sex"— necessitating the grammatical coinage of a new pronoun "ae" (Arcturus, 205).
^Maiwald, Michael (2002). "Race, Capitalism, and the Third-Sex Ideal: Claude McKay's Home to Harlem and the Legacy of Edward Carpenter". Modern Fiction Studies. 48 (4): 825–857. doi:10.1353/mfs.2002.0077.
^Vonnegut, Kurt. (1999). Slaughterhouse-five. New York: The Dial Press, p145–146.
^Paths to The Divine: Ancient and Indian By George McLean, Vensus A. George, Quote: Siva: The Hermaphrodite
The Lord Shiva is the underlying neutral and changeless reality, the undifferentiated absolute Consciousness, who is the foundation of every change and becoming. The hermaphrodite reality is one which is independent of all distinctions of male and female, the phenomenal and the non-phenomenal, and yet forms the basis of all such distinctions. The Puranas speak of Lord Shiva as the Hermaphrodite reality, though distinctionless within Himself, letting the distinctions of the manifold world spring up from Him. The Puranic thinkers interpreted and represented this hermaphrodite aspect of the Lord Siva in various ways. One such symbol expression is the figure of His Sakti. Another such symbol is the Phallus *(the male reproductive part) and the Yoni (the female reproductive part). A third, a more anthropomorphic metaphor, is that of the union between Siva and His many consorts, such as, Parvati, Uma and others. All these symbolisms express the truth that the variety of this universe stems from the lord Siva through his Sakti. To explain this point very picturesquely, the Puranas apply the mythological story of creation by way of the sexual union between Prajaapati and his daughter to Siva who, by His eternal union with His Sakti creates the world. The Puraanas also use another more sacrificial symbollism to expound the hermaphrodite characteristic of Shiva, according to which the male principle is represented as Fire, the devourer of the offering, and the female principle is the Soma, the devoured offering. In this symbolism, the hermaphrodite is the embodiment of the cosmic sacrifice, through which the universe emerges from the Lord Siva.
^Hijras of Muslim India and Pakistan etransgender.com; Quote: In North India and in Pakistan Hindus and Muslims alike believe in the powers of hijras to bless or curse others. To Hindus and Hindu hijras this is connected to the worship of Bahuchara Mata. Hindus believe that the powers of this feminine aspect of the divine flows in an almost shamanic way through the "eunuchs". In Pakistan and in traditional Indian Muslim families the mukhannath´ power to curse is called "bad du`a". This implies the faith that every supplicational prayer ("du`a") done by a faithful hijra will be fulfilled because she is specially blessed as a compensation for the fact that she is denied to have children and a "normal" family life as a born woman.
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