Chile Has Issued Its First Gender Neutral ID To This Nonbinary Trans Activist And Author
Chile has issued its first gender-neutral ID to Shane Cienfuegos, a 29-year-old nonbinary transgender activist and writer.
![Chile Has Issued Its First Gender Neutral ID To This Nonbinary Trans Activist And Author](/content/images/size/w1200/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/chile-first-gender-neutral-id-shane-cienfuegos.jpg)
Chile has issued its first gender-neutral ID to Shane Cienfuegos, a 29-year-old nonbinary transgender activist and writer.
They received an ID at a civil registry in Santiago on Friday Oct. 14 with the gender designation of X instead of “M” for male or “F” for “female”.
Cienfuegos describes themselves as transgender and nonbinary, going by the gender-neutral Spanish pronoun “elle” (they).
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They won a landmark nine-year lawsuit in July to be recognized as non-binary in the majority Catholic country.
“I’ve had to fight for my life on the street I don’t know how many times,” they told AFP. “I have survived. I have made myself tough to survive a cruel, dehumanizing system.”
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Chile passed a law in 2018 to allow people to undergo sex reassignment surgery from the age of 14.
In December last year, it legalized same-sex marriage.
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However, the country still does not legally recognize genders other than male or female, and anyone hoping to receive an ID with “X” gender will also have to go through a legal process, according to AFP.
In July last year, Argentina became the first country in Latin America to introduce gender-neutral IDs for nonbinary people, joining countries Canada, Australia, India, Pakistan and New Zealand.