New York Redefines Gender

As upset as rightist America gets about Gay Marriage, I can only imagine how this will get them worked up!

Clearly, as medical science advances, both in terms of gender reassignment therapy/surgery as well as the understanding of the human mind and the individual's gender self-identity, we will need to explore this realm more. Born a man, always a man may work for me and 95% or more of the other men on the planet, but there is still a small group for whom it doesn't and it is time to find room for them as well.

Of course the same applies to women as well, but there seems to be a bit more flexibility for women in how they wear their gender day-to-day. I have more that I wish to say on this subject but don't yet feel ready to begin to address the topic. However, I wanted to save article for future referance.

New York offers revolutionary gender option

SUMMARY: Gender essentially becomes personal choice as the city allows people to alter the sex on their birth certificate without reassignment surgery.

In a momentous move, New York City is about to revolutionize its approach to gender by "separating anatomy from what it means to be a man or a woman," according to the New York Times.

Gender, essentially, will become personal choice as New York's Board of Health will allow people to alter the sex on their birth certificate even if they have not had sex-reassignment surgery.

Those born in the city will be able to change their documented gender by providing affirmation from doctors and mental health professionals explaining why their patients should be considered members of the opposite sex.

The documents from the doctors must ensure that the change will be permanent. Applicants would have to change their name and show that they had lived as the adoptive gender for a minimum of two years.

The process to change gender identification on a birth certificate varies by state, and almost all 50 U.S. states make it a fairly easy process for people who've undergone a sex-reassignment surgery to obtain a new birth certificate.

However, only a handful of states allow the change to take place without a physiological change.

Although the move has been hailed by transgender advocates, some health experts have criticized a move which they consider to be rewriting history.

Dr Arthur Zitrin, a midtown psychiatrist who was on a panel of transgender experts at a hearing, criticized the move.

"They should not change the sex at birth, which is a factual record," Zitrin said.

"If they wanted to change the gender for all the compelling reasons that they've given, it should be done perhaps with an asterisk," he said.

Joann Prinzivalli, a lawyer for the New York Transgender Rights Organization, made a counterargument to the doctor's opinion and suggested that the Board of Health's move marks progress.

The decision "is based on an arbitrary distinction that says there are two and only two sexes," Prinzivalli said.

"In reality, the diversity of nature is such that there are more than just two, and people who seem to belong to one of the designated sexes may really belong to the other," she said. (Hassan Mirza,Gay.com U.K.)