In a potentially landmark decision, an Austrian regional court is set to rule on whether citizens identifying themselves as neither female nor male can be identified as intersex in their official documents. The court proceedings follow a complaint filed by Alex Jurgen, an Austrian who demanded that local authorities in the town of Steyr in the region of Upper Austria change his gender to ‘X’ or ‘Inter’ in the passport and on the birth certificate.
Jurgen, 39, was born an intersex person. From the medical point of view, his body was neither male nor female. He also feels or identifies as neither sex. For 10 years, he has openly lived as an intersex person. “Being neither a man nor a woman means for me that I only can live, hiding behind a mask of a man or a woman. I do it unwillingly, I actually have no other option because our society recognizes only these two norms,” Jurgen said, as quoted by the Oberoesterreichische Nachrichten daily. READ MORE
