GERMANY RECOGNIZES THIRD GENDER

Germany has become the first European country to legally recognize a third sex—indeterminate. Parents there may now leave the gender box blank on their children’s birth certificates, a move aimed to meet the needs of those babies born with both male and female or ambiguous sex characteristics or genetics. Until now, parents of intersexchildren had to make rapid decisions not just about which gender to put down on the birth certificates but also whether to take surgical steps to match the infants‘ physical appearances to the selected gender. Experts now believe that this sort of sex assignment early in life can have negative psychological consequences down the line. More…