Legally Recognize Non-Binary Genders

Link to Article

On the White House website citizens can make an account and start exploring the many wonders the website has to offer.  One of these fantastic options users have is to start a petition.  In this case someone started a petition to legally recognize non-binary genders.  The article itself is just a petition, however, it does explain that on all legal documents American citizens are to identify as either female or male.  In other countries like New Zealand and Australia they allow citizens to choose "X" gender if they do not identify with male or female.  Also in the UK they recognize another gender, "Mx".  This article relates to APGoPo because it demonstrates other ways of participating in government.  We were recently talking about how voting is the number one way in the U.S. of participating in government, however, there are other ways to participate and this is one! Citizens can create their own petitions and by making an account you can sign the petition via computer.  As the number of signers grows so does the attention it gets by the federal government.

In my opinion I think this petition is super rad and I hope it receives enough signatures to get the governments attention (I made and account and signed it, you should too!).  I think it is important to have at lease one "other" option when identifying your gender.  When I found this petition, I asked myself what even is gender?  And through my pondering I realized I came up with two explanations.  I believe that gender is both physical and mental.  Mental gender to me is a perception of oneself, ones'  expressions, and the roles they feel they need to fulfill.  Physical gender to me is the persons behaviors, outward appearances, and the (as much as I hate to say it) cultural expectations of what is feminine or masculine.  When I think about gender I don't take a persons sex into consideration.  It is very possible to have a gender and sex that do not match.  Sex to me refers to genitalia in which case it is easy to identify as female (vagina) or male (penis).  However, it is not so easy when it comes to gender.  Someone may have the sex of male but mentally identify as female.  In which case, it becomes more important to have another option for identifying gender, besides the traditional male and female.  This is just one example but there are many others.  Personally, I'm not a fan of labels.  I know they help to organize and classify however, they make things difficult.  Which is another reason why I support this petition.  The petition helps us to realize that there are more genders than you may think.  I believe this petition getting enough signatures will be a fantastic start in changing the way society sees people and the world in general.