There used to be just two known genders—male and female. Then homosexual and lesbian were added. From those two terms sprang LGBT—lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.
The LGBT tree then blossomed with numerous different names too many to mention. And it keeps on growing.
Among the new names are genderqueer, gender nonconforming and nonbinary.
On Friday, a court in the United States stamped its approval on a person who sought to change his gender to nonbinary.
It was considered a historic move since it was the first time a court in the U.S. has ruled that nonbinary is a legal gender, according to the Daily Dot.
Jamie Shupe, a resident of Portland, Oregon, earlier petitioned the Oregon circuit court to approve his gender identity change.
"Male and female are the traditional categories, but they fail to properly categorise people like me. So I challenged that," Shupe told the Daily Dot.
Shupe filed his petition for sex change, as the court calls it, on April 27. Attached to his petition were two letters from primary care doctors stating that his gender should be classified as nonbinary.
Although he is biologically a male, Shupe prefers not to use gender pronouns and uses the honorific "Mx."
Shupe said he is an Army vet who began a gender transition in 2013 at age 49. He initially petitioned to change his gender from male to female, then from female to nonbinary.
In 2014, over 64,000 people signed a petition asking the White House to legally recognise nonbinary genders—but the petition was not acted upon, according to Daily Dot.
Hence, the action taken by the Oregon circuit court is considered as the "first ruling of its kind in the U.S."
"This is an important step toward ensuring that nonbinary members of our community have access to identity documents that reflect who they are, just like everyone else," Transgender Law Center's Legal Director Ilona Turner told the Daily Dot.
Other countries—including Australia, Denmark, Nepal, and New Zealand—already recognise genders other than male and female, according to the website Nonbinary.org.
Shupe was "literally tearful" when the court issued its ruling.
"This is incredibly humbling to be the first person to accomplish this," Shupe said. "I hope the impact will be that it opened the legal doorway for all that choose to do so to follow me through. We don't deserve to be classified improperly against our will."
