The third gender option law that will begin in Germany on
November 1, 2013, is a revolutionary law since it gives parents the right not
to pin down the sex of their child as male or female on the baby’s birth
certificate but to choose “undetermined.”
The third gender option is crucial for children who are born
as intersex children meaning that their sex cannot be definitely determined at
birth.
Assigning the wrong sex to a baby has lifelong consequences
as the story of Scottish-Australian Norrie May-Welb shows.
Norrie May-Welb was designated to be “male” on her/his birth
certificate even though it was not clear to doctors whether the baby was a girl
or a boy.
Norrie May-Welb is not alone.
“An estimated 1 in 2,000 children born each year is neither
boy nor girl -- they are intersex, part of a group of about 60 conditions that
fall under the diagnosis of disorders of sexual development (DSD), an umbrella
term for those with atypical chromosomes, gonads (ovaries and/or testes), or
unusually developed genitalia.”
The causes of intersex babies being born can be due to
genetics, chromosomal or hormonal variations, or environmental influences.
Individuals who deliberately change their sexual characteristics because of
psychological influences are not considered intersex individuals.
The new third gender option law that gives parents the right
to wait until the child decides what he or she is meant to be is a
revolutionary law that will have a wider impact on marriage laws and other
European countries.
Most importantly, though, it will have a major impact on any
boy or girl that grows up to find out in his/her teen years that the parents
had it all wrong when they could only choose between male or female on a birth
certificate.
With the new third option law, intersex individuals will be
able to have a choice to find out for themselves on what they were meant to be – male, female, or neither.
