LGBT Education
- Educational Resources
- Transgender Information
- FAQs on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation
- Gender Recognition Act
The Gender Recognition Act (California Senate Bill 179) went into effect January 1st, 2019. The text of the bill is available here: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB179 In brief, the bill changes the process for Californians to apply to change their gender markers, and creates a nonbinary gender category on California birth certificates, drivers’ licenses, identity cards, and gender-change court orders (the letter “x”). This enables many in our community, including transgender, intersex and nonbinary people, to have full recognition in the State of California. The law was authored by Sens. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) and Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and sponsored by Equality California and the Transgender Law Center.
Our campus is working to improve processes, practices, and policies in order to serve students, faculty, staff and patients who are transgender, intersex and nonbinary and to be more inclusive. Many parts of employment processes, housing, sports facilities, payroll systems and recreational areas are designated by gender in a binary way (men and women), and people around the campus are reviewing and working to update those systems. For example, we are striving to do the following:
Reach out to your supervisor. They may need to first assess places where your area uses gender in a binary way (i.e. male and female, or men and women). Then, they would need to determine what steps might need to be implemented in order to ensure inclusion of nonbinary people, and an “x” category into these systems. This might entail updating campus data systems, reformatting reports, including nonbinary people in surveys and assessments, and addressing physical spaces and facilities. This may also require training for frontline staff to ensure appropriate implementation of inclusive policies and customer service practices.
Transgender is an umbrella term used to describe people whose gender identity or gender expression do not match the gender they were assigned at birth. For example, some people who were assigned to be male at birth are female (trans women). Some people who were assigned to be female at birth are male (trans men). Some transgender people have medically transitioned, undergoing gender affirming surgeries and hormonal treatments, while other transgender people do not choose any form of medical transition. There is no uniform set of procedures that are sought by transgender people that pursue medical transition. Transgender people may identify as female, male, or nonbinary, may or may not have been born with intersex traits, may or may not use gender-neutral pronouns, and may or may not use more specific terms to describe their genders, such as agender, genderqueer, gender fluid, Two Spirit, bigender, pangender, gender nonconforming, or gender variant.
About the term nonbinary: Gender identity and expression may be thought of in binary terms: Male and female, men and women, masculine and feminine. Many transgender people fall on this binary. Trans women are women, trans men are men. Some transgender people do not fall on this binary. They identify as nonbinary, agender, gender fluid, gender non conforming, etc. Nonbinary people’s gender identity and expression may not conform to societal norms of masculinity or femininity. Nonbinary people may prefer the pronouns “they/them” in the singular, or their name. Some people use the term Gender Queer to describe this identity. Queer is a term that is offensive to some when used as a derogatory term. Others have reclaimed and self-defined the word as a form of empowerment.
About the term intersex: Intersex people are born with sex characteristics (including genitals, gonads and chromosome patterns) that do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies. Intersex is an umbrella term used to describe a wide range of natural bodily variations. In some cases, intersex traits are visible at birth while in others, they are not apparent until puberty. Some chromosomal intersex variations may not be physically apparent at all. For more information please see https://www.unfe.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/UNFE-Intersex.pdf
Yes. Oregon created a nonbinary gender option in 2017 through an administrative action applying to drivers’ licenses and identification cards. Similarly, the DMV for Washington, D.C. began offering an “X” in addition to “M” and “F” in June of 2017. Other countries like New Zealand have moved in a similar direction in 2016.
By UC policy, the conversion of all existing single-occupancy or single-stall restrooms in all UC-owned buildings from gender-specific to gender inclusive facilities has been complete. For more information, see http://blink.ucsd.edu/facilities/services/general/personal/restrooms.html for more information. However, access remains an issue, as some people must go from the top floor of a building, outside, across a street and into another building to access a single-occupancy or single-stall restroom. Conversion of some multi-stall restrooms into multi-stall gender inclusive restrooms, or remodeling facilities to add additional single-occupancy or single-stall restrooms, addresses this issue.
UC and UC San Diego do not tolerate discrimination based on
*These policies include but are not limited to Academic Personnel M015 – The University of California Policy on Faculty Conduct and the Administration of Discipline; The University of California Personnel Policies for Staff Members and UC San Diego Implementing Procedures, Appendix II – Personnel Policies for Senior Managers; the University of California, San Diego Student Conduct Code; UC San Diego House Officer Policy and Procedure Document; and applicable university collective bargaining agreements.
A quick and easy way to communicate you have some level of knowledge around our trans, nonbinary, gender queer and gender non conforming community is to share your pronouns in signature lines, business cards, name tags, and introductions.
For more information on gender neutral, inclusive pronouns, please see http://nonbinary.org/wiki/English_neutral_pronouns and https://mypronouns.org