The High Court has today ruled in favour of recognising a third category of sex outside the male/female gender binary, in what will hopefully be the final chapter of a landmark legal ruling that sees state law finally catch-up with the options available on your Facebook ‘About’ page or Australian passport.
The decision comes at the end of a four year legal battle for tireless Sydney-based activist Norrie, pictured above, who identifies as neutral or gender non-specific, uses only a first name and whose initial ‘sex not specified’ status was four years ago declared invalid by the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages as part of ‘an error’.
Last year, the Court of Appeal found that existing laws could recognise additional gender options, a decision the registrar turned to the High Court to have overturned in an appeal that has today been unanimously dismissed by determining that “the law does recognise a person may be neither male nor female.”
According to the ABC, Norrie’s legal representation successfully argued that to force someone to identify as either male or female “when Norrie belonged in neither specification would maintain a fiction.”
In short, you do you today and every other day after, and don’t let a piece of paper tell you otherwise.
Photo: via The ABC, H/T The Guardian
