World first as baby is granted ‘gender unknown’ legal status
AN eight-month-old Canadian baby is believed to be the first in the world to be given the legal status of ‘gender unknown’.
Parent Kori Doty, who does not identify as either male or female, wants to keep baby Searyl Atli’s gender off all official records.
Doty said Searyl is being raised ‘in such a way until they have the sense of self and command of vocabulary to tell me who they are’.
Doty added: ‘I’m recognising them as a baby and trying to give them all the love and support to be the most whole person that they can be outside of the restrictions that come with the boy box and the girl box.’
Doty, who is believed to describe themselves as a ‘ non-binary trans’ parent, has been attempting to force British Columbia to issue Searyl with a birth certificate without a gender marker since the child was born last November, Canadian broadcaster CBC said.
But the province has so far refused, despite sending Doty the child’s health card with a ‘U’ for gender on it last month.
The ‘U’ is presumed to mean ‘undetermined’ or ‘unassigned’.
According to Doty’s lawyer, the province’s birth certificates only accommodate a male or female gender designation. But there are some provinces which are reviewing their policies to include a third, non-binary gender option on official documents.
Doty and the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal have argued that the omission of the gender should apply to all government documents for everyone in British Columbia and Canada.
Doty and the human rights group argue that omitting any form of gender identification on government documents would reduce that stress of changing gender in later life, CBC reported. Doty, a ‘community educator’, said: ‘When I was born, doctors looked at my genitals and made assumptions about who I would be, and those assignments followed me and followed my identification throughout my life.
‘Those assumptions were incorrect, and I ended up having to do a lot of adjustments since then. I want my kid to have all of the space to be the most whole and complete person that they can be.’