More than 7,000 Americans now have non-binary gender X on their IDs
A potential sample Washington driver’s license, which recently announced plans to offer the option. (Department of Licensing)
More than 7,000 US residents now have a non-binary X as their gender marker on their identification, according to records obtained by USA Today.
Currently the states of Arkansas, Oregon, Minnesota, Maine, Utah, Colorado, California, Indiana, Nevada, Vermont, as well as Washington DC and New York City, have the option of an X gender marker on IDs.
New Hampshire, Maryland, and Hawaii have passed gender marker changes which will soon go into effect, and Washington state and Pennsylvania have announced plans to do the same.
According to state records for nine states that offer the option obtained by USA Today, excluding Indiana which did not respond to the publication’s record requests, 7,251 gender X IDs have been issued so far.
Dana Zzyym, an intersex Navy veteran who sued the state department of Colorado to have a non-binary passport, told USA Today: “I’m really happy for all those people, but I’m not surprised there’s quite a few.
“I think the non-binary population will surprise a lot of people in this country.”
10 US states now offer the X gender option on IDs, plus Washington DC and New York City. (Drew Angerer/Getty)
Trans or non-binary people with incorrect gender markers on their IDs could be put in danger
Pennsylvania was the most recent state to implement the change on August 1, and Amanda Arbour, executive director of the LGBT Center of Central Pennsylvania said that a trans or non-binary person having the incorrect gender marker on their ID can be dangerous.
She said: “If a transgender person has a gender marker on their ID that doesn’t align with how they present to the world, then that can automatically outs them and put them at greater risk for harassment, for violence, for mistreatment.”
However Mari Wroblewski, who is intersex and non-binary, told USA Today that they and others may not make use of the X marker as they felt it might out them as “other” in the current political climate, although they did not rule it out in the future and called the fact that it was now possible “incredible.”
They said: “We give our IDs to so many people that have so much power over our lives.
“They have the power to decide if we can get a loan or if we can continue to drive and so many other things.
“These people don’t always outwardly express their bigotry toward people who are trans, intersex and non-binary, but they certainly can have views that are homophobic, transphobic and that are just essentially dangerous toward us.”
