Why I had the gender on my birth certificate changed to non-binary

When I opened the letter from Vital Records and saw the change for the first time, I didn't react how people might expect

The state of California allows amendments to birth certificates and driving licences to reflect a person's preferred gender (Rex)

What would you consider to be the most important aspect of your identity? For some, it's their heritage or religion. For others, it can be their career, hobby or whichever fandoms they belong to. For the record, I’m black American, I’m a theist with no religious affiliation, I’m a writer, I enjoy DC comics and the Marvel Cinematic Universe and I stan Janet Jackson like no other. But however you define yourself, it's usually informed by your gender. Gender impacts how we see the world and how the world in turn treats us.

If you asked me “Are you a man or a woman?” I could take a few days to answer that question because the answer isn’t either/or. People look at me and assume I’m a man. I’m not. I was assigned male at birth, yes, but I define myself as a woman. Moreover, gender has always been more of a complicated question for me. For cisgender individuals, manhood and womanhood are pretty straightforward. However, for transgender and intersex people who experience a discontinuity between their sex assignment, anatomy and sense of self, being asked to define one’s gender can lead to an existential crisis.

As a child, recognizing myself as a boy was disconcerting at best. The prospect of developing into a man was utterly horrifying. Were it possible to choose your gender like an RPG, I would have chosen “girl” easily. Although being recognized as a girl would have significantly eased my dysphoria, it wouldn’t have given me a straight answer to “What is your gender?” either. Cis or trans, most women are confident defining their womanhood exclusively as such. But my gender has always been in a state of flux.

Having that fact recognized, not only in a social context but a legal one, has been a struggle for those like me. In a story for the Daily Beast, Samantha Allen covered the uphill battle Dana Zzyym fought to have their gender maker on their US passport displayed as X to indicate non-binary. For intersex people like Zzyym, or people like me who are not intersex but have a non-binary gender identity (and for those who are intersex and transgender), the X gender marker provides social and legal recognition of something that exists beyond male or female. A Colorado federal court has ruled that Zzyym must be issued a passport with a non-binary gender marker, a landmark ruling despite the US State Department’s decision to appeal.

I recently submitted an affidavit to the California Department of Public Health to amend the sex on my birth certificate from male to non-binary. I’ve also been to the DMV to change the gender markers on my driver’s license and state ID card from M to X. California is one of only a handful of states that allow gender markers on identification documents to reflect non-binary gender and one of the only states to allow change of gender without proof of medical intervention, treatment or surgery.

Despite my anticipation over the last few weeks, I didn’t know how I’d actually feel once I received the amended birth certificate. When I opened the letter from Vital Records and saw it for the first time, I was rather stoic. The same is true when I received my ID cards from the DMV. Major life events don’t often come with the fanfare of a Hollywood drama. Instead, they come and go as the dawn, noteworthy yet mundane.

Nothing has changed in the day to day function of my life. I still regularly have the impulse to sear my own flesh down to the bone due to my dysphoria. I continue to work a 9-5 that exacerbates my anxiety disorder and I still struggle with suicide ideation.

However, legal recognition of my gender is an irrefutable sign of my right to exist in this world and bolsters my resolve to remain in it. With every government-issued identification document that displays a non-binary or X gender marker, we as a society move closer to permanently unravelling pseudoscientific constructs of sex, anatomy and gender. It may not be the singular path to utopia, but it nonetheless inches us closer to creating a safe environment for all people.