Intersex newborns and people with nonbinary gender identity: The beginning of legal recognition
Intersex newborns and people with nonbinary gender identity: The beginning of legal recognition

Summary/Abstract: Intersex newborns cannot be qualified as male or female at the level of their biological traits. People with nonbinary gender identity are those who do not identify as a man or a woman (at the level of gender identity). In most countries both groups, intersex people and nonbinary people, are in legal limbo. The existence of congenital eunuchs/hermaphrodites is confirmed in the Bible. Recently, a process has begun to introduce third sex/gender options in documents. I discuss the legal recognition in Germany, where since 2019 there have been used three sex/gender categories: male, female, and diverse (divers). Finally, I present a nonbinary and multilayered conceptualization of sex/gender that goes beyond the system of male/female categorization. It includes a third category in addition to male/female and allows us to describe the clash of layers.

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