This Army vet just became the first in the US to legally change to ‘nonbinary’
A US Army veteran has become the first person in the US to legally change their gender to ‘nonbinary’.
The Oregon circuit court on Friday made a ruling that Jamie Shupe could legally change their gender.
“Male and female are the traditional categories, but they fail to properly categorise people like me. So I challenged that,” Shupe told the Daily Dot.
A petition was filed by Shupe for the “sex change”, as the court referred to it, on 27 April.
They were aided by Portland attorney Lake James Perriguey, and took to court with two letters stating that their gender should be classed as nonbinary.
The army vet prefers to use ‘Mx’, and began to transition in 2013, at the age of 49.
It is believed that it is the first time a US court has ruled to recognise nonbinary as a legal gender.
“As far as we know, this may be the first ruling of its kind in the U.S.,” said Transgender Law Center’s Legal Director Ilona Turner to the Daily Dot.
“This is an important step toward ensuring that nonbinary members of our community have access to identity documents that reflect who they are, just like everyone else.”
A non-binary transgender person earlier this year came out to President Obama during a live Q&A session in London.
Britons don’t want to be boxed in by gender stereotypes, says a leading Feminist Charity.
Almost half (44%) of the UK population now believe that gender is non-binary, but can be expressed as a range of identities.
Maria Miller, the chair of Parliament’s Women and Equalities Committee, earlier this year called for radical reforms as she launched a landmark report on trans issues.
The report claims the NHS is ‘breaking the law’ due to current poorly ran trans services and strongly rebukes the government for failing to make progress.
