After Connecticut’s neighbor New York rolled out a proposal for a “Gender X” option on residents’ birth certificates, some Central Connecticut leaders are now calling on their state to do the same.

Proposed over the summer, New York officials said that New York City’s City Council will soon sign the legislation that would not only make it easier for resident transgender people to change their sex but would allow for people to simply not identify with a specific gender. In other words, those who check off the option “X” would consider themselves gender neutral.

“I think that’s beautiful and needed,” University Assistant for CCSU’s LGBT Center Nichol McCarter said. “I would love to see that happen [here].”

New York City’s decision to bring forth the option comes shortly after a portion of the West Coast installed the non-binary option.

For CCSU Biology Professor Sadie Marjani, new legislation has the ability to bring a world of good.

“Biologically, that’s perfectly valid,” Marjani said. “Sometimes things don’t always match up.”

According to Marjani, New York’s decision to create a “Gender X” option most likely comes as a result of a person identifying as “intersex.”

“Individuals that we consider intersex have sex characteristics that don’t fit specific notions of what we have for male and female,” Marjani explained. “The chromosomal pattern may be male, but the person may look outwardly female.”

Because of this, Marjani said that the non-binary option could be beneficial to one to two percent of the population.

McCarter also advocated for this, saying that, based off of a person’s hormones at birth and their genitalia, they are often put on a scale of whether or not they should be considered male or female.

“There are some people who don’t fit on that societal standard [of male or female],” she stated. “They are sometimes given surgery without consent to conform to societal standards, which is heartbreaking.”  

Despite the fact that Connecticut does not have the non-binary option, Governor Dannel Malloy’s Press Secretary Leigh R.J. Appleby said that Malloy has been a strong and consistent advocate for the rights of transgender individuals.

According to Appleby, one of the things Malloy has accomplished in office includes signing a law making it easier for transgender individuals to receive corrected birth certificates.

With this, Appleby said that Malloy also made Connecticut the fifteenth state in America to prohibit gender identity and expression discrimination regarding employment, housing and public accommodation.

“He has [also] steadfastly stood up against President [Donald] Trump’s cruel and discriminatory attacks on LGBTQ people,” she stated. “There is certainly more work to be done, but Connecticut has made major strides toward equality under this governor.”

Though non-binary birth certificate options are coming to light around some parts of the country, so are unwanted obstacles that come along with them; for instance, the need to check off either “M” or “F” at the doctors.

“In general, things are going to more personalized with healthcare. There’s personalized treatment care for that person based on what those characteristics are,” Marjani said in terms of helping combat the problem. “Height or weight is biologically based, but if the child is intersex, doctors would be looking at where the differences are.”

However, when it comes to CCSU, McCarter said that the university and the LGBT center are working hard toward meeting the needs of transgender and non-binary students as much as possible.

“We have a whole binder here on transitioning [and] we have support groups as well,” she said. “We’re constantly working on gender-neutral bathrooms and housing.”

McCarter also said that it is a simple process for students to change their name if they wish to do so.

Above the complications and ongoing process for non-binary birth certificates, McCarter and Marjani agreed that New York City is headed in the right direction, and would like to see Connecticut do the same.

As of now, there is no word for legislation in motion to allow state residents to identify as non-binary on paper.