Australia’s Top Court Recognizes ‘Non-Specific’ Sex Category
Australia’s highest court on Wednesday ruled that a person can be legally recognised as gender neutral, or non-specific, as opposed to male or female.
“The High Court… recognises that a person may be neither male nor female, and so permits the registration of a person’s sex as ‘non‑specific’,” it said in a unanimous judgement that dismissed a New South Wales state appeal to recognise only men or women.
The case centred on a person called Norrie, who does not identify as either male or female, who launched a legal bid to introduce a new gender-neutral category.
Norrie, who uses only a single name, was born as a male and underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1989 to become a woman.
However, the surgery failed to resolve Scotland-born Norrie’s ambiguity about sexual identity, prompting the push for recognition of a new, non-traditional gender.
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