On its website, the German Bundestag proclaims: “In the future it will be possible to leave the gender specification in the birth registry open for children who are born without a clear gender.”
This statement suggests that the Bundestag created a choice for parents of intersex children to leave the sex registry open. In fact, however, is the decision:
“(3) If the child can be assigned to neither the female nor the male sex, then the child is to be entered into the register of births without such a specification.”
- This means in plain language is that it is not a choice but a requirement.
- Who determines that a child “can be assigned to neither the female nor the male sex”? According to current practice: Only medicine. The power to define what sex is and who is assigned to which gender remains intact with the new regulation.
- At the same time, it is extremely unlikely that doctors would opt for such a certificate, unless the parents strongly pushing for it. The risk of stigmatization would indeed be very large. Therefore to the contrary, the new provisions could encourage the (potential) parents and doctors even more to avoid an “ambiguous” child at any cost (through abortion, prenatal “treatment” or so-called disambiguating surgical and / or hormonal interventions). If the motive of the new regulation is to reduce surgical-hormonal “disambiguations” of children, it is foreseeable that this goal will not be achieved.
- Instead of leaving sex registration open for all, and not just intersex children, once again special rules are created, which produce exclusions. The living conditions of the vast majority of intersex people will not improve as a result.
What we need is an end to the externally determined gender assignment, the practice of sexed standardization and mutilation, as well as medical authority of definition on sex.
The German original can be found here: http://www.intersexualite.de/index.php/pm-mogelpackung-fur-inter-offener-geschlechtseintrag-keine-option/
Thanks to Justus Eisfeld for the english translation!
edit: We improved the translation of the law extract, as the previous one wrongly gave the impression of non-assignment being optional (“should be”), where in fact it is not.
This post is also available in: German
