The politics of gender divides America. But on April 11th, the State Department introduced a third-gender option on its passports. Besides “F” for “female” and “M” for “male”, citizens can now choose “X”. The State Department says the “X” stands for “unspecified or another gender identity”. Jessica Stern, America’s special diplomatic envoy for LGBTQI+ rights, hailed the decision as “momentous”.

Yet some countries took it almost a decade ago. Data gathered by The Economist show that 16 countries already have a third-gender option on their passports. In 2013 Germany became the first European country to make use of the “X” category on passports. Canada did so in 2017. Although many countries that offer gender-neutral passports are in Europe, some in other continents have followed suit. In South America, Argentina and Colombia have a third-gender option for passports, as do India, Nepal and Pakistan in Asia. No African country has yet taken this step.

The change in America follows a lengthy legal fight by Dana Zzyym, who was denied a passport after failing to choose either “male” or “female” as their gender. Last October Mx Zzyym, who is intersex (someone whose anatomy is not exclusively male or female), received the first American passport with an “X” gender marker. Until today, they were unique. However, partly in response to their case, since June 2021 passport applicants in America have been able to state a gender that is different from that of their birth without submitting medical proof. In other countries, including Austria, Germany and the Netherlands, such proof is required: either a psychotherapist’s assessment or, in some places, medical examinations.

Official data on the number of people who identify as neither male nor female are scant. That makes policymaking difficult. In 2013 America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention included sexual orientation in its national surveys. But data on the number of transgender, non-binary or intersex people are still not gathered at a national level. The Williams Institute, an LGBTQ+ think-tank at the University of California, Los Angeles, estimates that 1.2m Americans are non-binary. It reckons that about 16,700 of them could apply for passports with the new gender marker every year. ■

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