While Oregon and Washington D.C. have undergone steps to make it easier for citizens to legally identify as non-binary, California is the first to legally recognize the third gender.
On Monday, the California governor, Jerry Brown, signed legislation that enables California residents to select a third, non-binary gender category on state-issued IDs, birth certificates, and driver’s licenses. The full title of the legislation is the Gender Recognition Act, or Senate Bill 179. The act makes it easier for individuals to change their gender on legal documents by no longer requiring a signed legal document from a physician explaining that they’ve undergone “clinical treatment,” the Huffington Post reports.
Many California politicians supported and backed up the legislation, including Democratic state Senators Toni Atkins and Scott Wiener, who took to Twitter to express their support. “Society forces people into boxes & tells us who we’re supposed to be,” Wiener tweeted. “SB 179 helps people of all gender identities be their authentic selves.” Atkins vocalizes her approval by saying “It’s an emotionally wonderful thing. It’s like marriage equality when there was a feeling your government and community acknowledge who you are. You have the right to be who you are. This is that same feeling.”
However, the bill was still met with backlash from critics. In an article by SFGate, the conservative California Family Council expressed opposition, saying the legislation “advances a lie; that being male or female, or no gender at all, is a choice each person has a right to make.”
Those affected by the law have also shown their appreciation. Kris Hayashi, the executive director of the Transgender Law Center said that the law will make a profound and positive impact on the lives of non-binary and transgender people. In that same SFGate article mentioned above, Hayashi explains that “We are always being asked to show our identification at the airport, at banks and for non-binary people and transgender people to go through life without identification that reflects who we are can be truly dangerous.” Also, Sara Kelly Keenan, an intersex rights activist who became the first person to be issued an intersex birth certificate back in December 2016, explains that this bill being signed is “an important moment in history,” and that “We as a society need to learn that biological sex and gender identification, which are very different from each other, occur along a spectrum.”
Keeping Keenan’s words about society realizing biological sex and gender identification are different, will the actions of California and Governor Brown spark action in society and push other states towards recognizing this third gender?