ISSUES
: Sexuality and Gender
Chapter 2: Gender identity
22
“Doctors still do not acknowledge that
I’m intersex”
Maya Posch has fought for almost a decade to be recognised as intersex. She tells
Channel 4 News why Germany’s change of law is a seminal moment.
M
aya Posch has fought
for nearly a decade to
be recognised in The
Netherlands as an intersex person.
In an interview with Channel 4
News, she explains the difficulties
she has encountered and why she
plans to move to Germany.
“Gender is a personal thing. With
transgenders we allow people to
change sex. So why the hell should
we force gender upon an infant? It
doesn’t make sense,” she says.
Each year, one in every 2,000
babies – or 0.05 per cent of the
world’s population – is born with
ambiguous sex organs. Often
that means being automatically
enrolled into a life that will only be
understood years later.
But with choices already made
– either by anxious parents or
the result of over-eager medical
judgments - the consequences
can be emotionally devastating.
Now Germany has become the
first European country to allow
new-born babies to be registered
as neither male nor female. They
will, in effect, be the ‘indeterminate
sex’, or the third sex.
Small change, big
difference
It is a small bureaucratic detail, but
intersex people, who are often left
to languish with no clear gender-
defining characteristic, it is a major
step towards change. Society’s
attitudes to those of intersex
can be alienating at best – or
psychologically torturous at worse.
In the words of one adult with no
clear gender-defining genitalia,
whose testimony contributed
towards the change of law in
Germany, “I am neither a man nor a
woman. I will remain the patchwork
created by doctors, bruised and
scarred”.
For Posch, she was lucky to have
parents that did not comply with
social or medical pressure – and
allowed her the freedom to decide
for herself.
“I never made a decision. I just
stayed between both emotionally
and I never chose anything.
But medical experts still don’t
understand that I’m intersex. I have
to go to Germany for that.”
Moving on
Germany’s new law, which follows
in the footsteps of Australia, allows
parents to select “blank” rather
than male and female – allowing the
child the option to choose later in
life.
Signed in a constitutional court, the
law is designed to ease pressure on
parents to make quick decisions on
sex assignment surgery. It decrees
that as long as a person “deeply
feels” he or she belongs to a certain
sex, theirs is the right to choose a
legal identity.
Few can predict what effect the
law might have. Yet emotionally its
ramifications can already be felt. For
Posch, who has fought for nearly a
decade to be recognised as a third
sex, the significance of the moment
cannot be overstated: “This [change
of law] is incredible,” she says.
“If more people were born and given
the third gender choice, it would
have made their lives so much better
and so much happier.”
1 November 2013
Ö
Ö
The above information has been
reprinted with kind permission
from Channel 4 News. Please
visit
for further information.
© Channel 4 2016
