Slate.com – By Kenji Yoshino
Sex and the CityNew York City bungles transgender equality.
Posted Monday, Dec. 11, 2006, at 2:43 PM ET
Last week, New York City’s Board of Health scuttled a proposal that would have given people more freedom to change the sex on their birth certificate. The proposed plan would have been the first in the country to permit individuals to declare a gender without making any anatomical changes. But before it could get off the ground, the plan spawned a furor. In failing to anticipate that backlash, the board did a significant disservice to the transgender community.
Under a New York City Health Code provision enacted in 1971, individuals are entitled to a new birth certificate if they change their names and undergo “convertive surgery”?sex-reassignment surgery. The law entitles people to have their original sex erased, not changed; the “M” does not flip to an “F” in the “Sex” box, it is just deleted. From the perspective of transgender activists, this is not ideal, as it leaves individuals without any gender, rather than recognizing their post-transition status. Nonetheless, when the city enacted the statute, it was a frontrunner in the movement for transgender equality.