Tick a box: male, female, unspecified

    * Katrina Fox
    * March 18, 2009

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/tick-a-box-male-female-unspecified-20090317-90x4.html?page=-1#

Are you male or female? For most of us, answering that question is no problem, although whether we want to is another matter. But for some people, these categories simply don't fit. They consider themselves neither male nor female - essentially, genderless.

Take Norrie May-Welby, an activist and performer in Sydney, who says: "Some of us have found it better to identify in non-gender-specific ways; it's not our life and those roles don't fit us."

May-Welby uses pronouns such as "zie" in place of "he" or "she", and "hir" in place of "him" and "her", and says: "Some people get angry with the idea that I'm not a man or woman. It's fair to say there's sexual anxiety underneath it: they're thinking, 'If I'm attracted to this person who is neither male nor female, they've shattered my idea of myself as straight or gay.' "