Birth certs will have ‘X’ gender ID
When she was a student at the College of Staten Island, Tanya Asapansa-Johnson Walker would slip her professors a piece of note at the start of each semester: her name and her gender pronouns.
“And I would sit at the back of the class, at the door because, I was afraid he was going to call my birth name and gender,” Walker, a transgender woman and activist who now lives in Harlem, said Tuesday.
It’s an experience familiar to many trans and nonbinary people whose gender identity doesn’t match what’s on official documents. But beginning in January, those born in New York City will be able to easily change the gender on their birth certificate — and they will have the option to choose neither male nor female, but X.“Having a document that shows a wrong identity is scary and stressful,” she said. “Imagine having to out yourself over and over and over again to people you don’t even know. It’s very — it causes lots and lots of anxiety.”
The new law, signed Tuesday by Mayor de Blasio and introduced by Council Speaker Corey Johnson, will allow adults born here to change the gender on their birth certificate without a medical professional’s approval — instead letting them “selfattest” their gender.
And it will provide the third option of X to people like Asia Kate Dillon, an actor on the popular show “Billions” who is nonbinary — identifying as neither male nor female and using the pronoun “they.”
But Dillon’s birth certificate lists them as female, with an F.
“The F marked me as she her miss ms even ma’am in a society socialized — all of us — socialized to use a person’s body, specifically what is between a baby’s legs at their birth, to determine their gender identity,” Dillon said.