A SCOT has been officially recorded as neither male nor female in what is believed to be a world first.
Paisley-born Norrie May-Welby has won the right to have a birth certificate that specifies “Sex Not Specified.”
The 48 year-old – who was born a man and had a sex change operation 20 years ago – now lives in Australia and last week convinced authorities to create a genderless option on all official documents.
Doctors recently declared they were unable to determine whether Norrie’s body was a man or a woman, according to the ex-pat.
Writing from Sydney, New South Wales, Norrie told how government agencies pledged accept the “no-gender” breakthrough.
Battle for acceptance
Norrie said: “Those concepts, man or woman, just don’t fit me, they are not my actual reality, and, if applied to me, they are fiction.
“At 48 years of age, I’m less inclined to just humour other people’s delusions about gender and try and conform to one of their expected options.
“I’ve never felt completely male or female, except for a brief period in early transition, when I first identified as a transsexual because I thought there were only two gender options and male was wrong and female felt better.”
As well as fighting a public battle for acceptance, Norrie’s campaign was motivated by a need to make practical life easier when checking into airports or filling out forms.
“They told me it couldn’t be done”
Norrie added: “If I need to show identity documents, I certainly don’t want details that are false, for this will only cause trouble when officials realise I don’t match my documents.
“If my passport states that I am female, I may be detained when travelling if the local jurisdiction classes me based on the gender assigned at birth, or my physically noticeable masculine aspects.
“If the passport states male, again there is a dissonance with my physical form, castration having had a feminising effect, and I am usually moving and talking in a feminine manner.
“The solution is simply to not have any sex identification on my legal documentation.
“They first told me it couldn’t possibly be done.”
But the New South Wales government confirmed they had issued the first non-gender specific certificate last week.
The gender pioneer’s legal result was welcomed by the UK’s Gender Trust.
Spokesman Rory Smith said: “It is unusual, but there are many people here who like the idea of being genderless and will welcome this news.”
