
42 MPs have now signed an Early Day Motion to allow intersex, genderqueer and other nonbinary gendered people to have accurate and honest passports.
At present they are obliged to have passports marked F or M for female or male; the motion, tabled by Cambridge MP Julian Huppert, would allow an X passport.
It’s been blocked by the civil service on account of causing problems at immigration – implausible given other countries already have the facility. If our border control can cope with foreign X passports, they can surely cope with British X passports too.
Check if your MP has signed here. Remember ministers can’t sign EDMs.
The full text reads:
That this House recognises the issues faced by those in the UK who identify themselves as non-gender, bi-gender or intersex; believes that many of those who are non-gendered or bi-gendered feel compromised and diminished as a result of inappropriate gender references on their personal identity information; acknowledges that all passports issued by HM Passport Office are currently gender-specific and it is therefore not possible to obtain a passport that contains no reference to gendered identity; understands that, alongside F (Female) and M (Male), the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s Document 9303 already contains X (unspecified) as a permitted character for three permitted characters under the mandatory sex element for machine-readable travel documents; notes that in Australia and New Zealand citizens are able to obtain a non-gender specific X passport and that India, Nepal and Pakistan also recognise the legitimacy of X as a preferred option when M and F are not appropriate; further believes that allowing this possibility in the UK would go a long way to amend this discriminatory policy which denies non-gendered and bi-gendered people a legitimate identity; and therefore urges the Government and HM Passport Office to make non-gender-specific X passports available to those UK passport holders who do not identify with a particular gender.