New South Wales has become the second state in Australia to allow intersex people to change the sex on their birth certificates.
Organisation International for Intersex (OII Australia) president Gina Wilson said the changes will ease the burden around all identity issues, and could place pressure on other states to follow suit.
Previously in NSW the sex registered on a birth certificate could only be changed if it was deemed there had been a gross clerical error that was spotted within weeks of a child’s birth.
Following a landmark case in which a person who had been living as a man for 40 years successfully applied to have the sex on his passport changed from female, NSW Births Deaths and Marriages has adopted a new policy towards intersex customers.
Now people need only provide proof that they are intersex and are living in the gender they wish to change to for their official documents to be changed.
“They say that they are not the people who assign genders or sexes, they are the keeper of a record,” Wilson said.
“It makes everything else possible, passports, everything. It has even meant in [the first test case] that they’ve changed the details on the children’s birth certificates. It just fixes that whole hideous process of identity.
“It’s a major development and we would like to work our way through the registries state by state”
OII hopes to see the issue raised at the next Standing Committee of Attorneys-General to try and ensure nationwide consistency.
info: Visit www.oiiaustralia.com
Tags: Gina Wilson, OII, Organisation International for Intersex
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