After four years of debate among health officials, New York City is about to become a trailblazer in redefining gender by “separating anatomy from what it means to be a man or a woman” and making it a personal choice:
“Under the rule being considered by the city's Board of Health, which is likely to be adopted soon, people born in the city would be able to change the documented sex on their birth certificates by providing affidavits from a doctor and a mental health professional laying out why their patients should be considered members of the opposite sex, and asserting that their proposed change would be permanent. Applicants would have to have changed their name and shown that they had lived in their adopted gender for at least two years, but there would be no explicit medical requirements. ‘Surgery versus nonsurgery can be arbitrary,' said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city's health commissioner. ‘Somebody with a beard may have had breast-implant surgery. It's the permanence of the transition that matters most.'”
The progressive measure will likely open the door to plenty of additional questions: “For example, would a man who becomes a woman be able to marry another man? (Probably.) Would an adoption agency be able to uncover the original sex of a proposed parent? (Not without a court order.) Would a woman who becomes a man be able to fight in combat, or play in the National Football League? (These areas have yet to be explored.)”
