Argentina has become the first country in Latin America to allow gender-nonconforming citizens to use the gender-neutral “X” marker on their passports and national ID documents. The cards will feature an ?X? in place of the traditional ?M? or ?F? gender descriptors.
Argentine President Alberto Fernández spoke at a ceremony on Wednesday where the first nonbinary ID cards were issued. President Alberto Fernández said that “We have the need to open our heads to realize there are other ways to love and be loved, and there are other identities apart from the identity of a man or a woman, and they should be respected. And they’ve always existed, only that in other times they were hidden.”
Argentina’s Gender Identity Law was passed in 2012 and allowed citizens to change their gender without first undergoing psychiatric evaluation or physical transition. It also allowed them to identify as a non-binary third gender, though official documents such as ID cards, passports, and tax forms still required them to choose from male or female.
Argentina will be the first country in the region to issue such gender-neutral travel documents, though other countries around the world have done so for some time already. Certain US states allow non-binary people to identify as “X” on driver’s licenses or other forms of ID, and several European countries record the rare percentage of intersex births as the third category on birth certificates.
The Netherlands issued its first gender-neutral passport in 2018 to a woman who was born intersex, raised male, and eventually transitioned to female, but still identified as intersex.
