Finally, a new law in Germany creates a third sex category on birth records. It could seem like an obvious solution to some problems of intersex: if some babies are born with bodies that are neither clearly male nor female, then it seems there should be some category beside male or female. So, parents will be allowed to chose an X option instead of the typical M or F.

The legislation, which went into effect on Friday Nov. 1, 2013, was enacted in order to give parents and children more time before making life-changing sex reassignment decisions. Germany is the first European nation to offer the third gender designation.

In the past, by contrast, parents have generally relied on physicians to fix intersex children through the use of surgical and hormonal sex normalizations. Instead of individuals deciding for themselves at maturity, decisions concerning sex assignment were made in infancy by physicians and parents. Now, with the new category introduced by German law, the ambiguity presented by infants with atypical sex anatomies can be managed simply with a new label. A very good news.