Oregon driver's licenses will get a third non-binary gender option
A new option is coming to driver's licenses and ID cards in Oregon.
The Pacific Northwest state is the first in the country to offer a third non-binary gender option on ID cards.
A note on the official Oregon DMV website says starting in July you can select "X," or "M" or "F" as the sex identifier on forms for official identification.
One Oregonian led the way for a non-gender option on state IDs when Jamie Shupe fought in court to be recognized as a non-binary gender. Last year's ruling on the case that a transgender person can legally change their sex to something other than male or female paved the way for the option to make it onto official documents like licenses.
The decision came from the state's Transportation Commission Thursday evening.
One commissioner said, "I hope those who will use 'X' as an identifier will feel an element of comfort moving forward." The commissioner went on, "It's something we're not only doing because legally our hand is forced. It's something we should do because it's the right thing to do."
"It's something we should do because it's the right thing to do"
While reading letters of support for the "X" identifier, DMV Administrator Tom McClellan got emotional. One anecdote about a genderqueer experience with the TSA choked him up.
A person wrote about when going through airport security, the TSA agent didn't know whether to choose male or female on the X-ray machine and was so thankful when the person finally whispered to just pick female. But they told the TSA agent they've been grappling with the "male or female" thing themselves for their whole life.
The news was met with excitement and happiness online -- especially with the approval to add "X" coming in the middle of Pride Month.
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In California, a similar bill is going through legislation to add a genderqueer option to ID cards.
Topics LGBTQ Social Good
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
