Planning to come in April, U.S. citizens can now select “X” as their gender for their official passport instead of choosing between female or male in the wake of a Biden administration pushing forward earlier in the year for the overall integration of gender ideology into official documentation for international travel.
The U.S. special diplomatic envoy for LGBTQ rights, Jessica Stern, claimed that humans “do not always fit within a male or female category around the world,” as part of her recent announcement in regards to the new rollout of this “X” addition.
“The addition of a third gender marker propels the U.S. forward toward ensuring that our administrative systems account for the diversity of gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics among U.S. citizens,” she claimed.
Stern went on to claim that this change would end up helping recognize the “true identity of the passport holder.”
This choice to start creating “gender-neutral” passports was first brought to light back in June of 2021 by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. At that time he stated that the State Department would just stick another “gender marker” and let people have the option to choose whether they were marked male or female despite medical documentation.
“Most immediately, we will be updating our procedures to allow applicants to self-select their gender as ‘M’ or ‘F’ and will no longer require medical certification if an applicant’s self-selected gender does not match the gender on their other citizenship or identity documents,” Blinken stated.
The Transportation Security Administration is slated to implement a series of policy changes to move its protocols more in line with this addition of the new “X” option for passports.
These changes currently include the “current, gender-based system” for patdowns and various other screening, along with removing “gender considerations when validating a traveler’s ID at airport security checkpoints,” as reported by Axios.
The Biden Administration’s overall integration of transgender ideology throughout international travel comes to light just as Biden starts to recognize “Transgender Day of Visibility” on Thursday, which highlighted a special focus on transgender children.
In a release, Biden promised that his administration would continue to provide support and “resources for transgender kids and their families.”
This included the backing of “gender-affirming care” for the “mental health” of children. He went on to explain that he called on the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health to create a resource in order to explain the importance of “gender-affirming care.”
This aforementioned gender-affirming care would include things such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgeries for children and adolescents. These “surgeries,” which include “creat[ing] male typical chest shape” for females and “surgery” for male and female genitalia and reproductive organs, are to be utilized in a “case-by-case in adolescence,” stated the administration’s release.