A Portland, Oregon judge recently allowed a transgender person to become non-binary and now the same judge, Multnomah County Judge Amy Holmes Hehn, said another can be labeled genderless.
Patrick Abbatiello will be able to go from male to “agender”, a person who does not identify themselves as a man or a woman.
The 27-year old student formerly known as Patrick Abbatiello was also able to legally change his name to Patch, not Patrick Patch or Patch Abbatiello, but Patch.
Patch first heard the term agender six or seven years ago: “Prior to that I would just do my best to avoid the question of gender, and the discussion of my gender.”
“It’s not that I decided I was genderless – that’s just how it is,” Patch said. “I never felt like I fell within any part of the gender spectrum. None of the binary options, nothing in-between.
“I don’t consider myself non-binary because that’s an umbrella term for anything that isn’t binary, which is gender identity.”
“As a kid, probably starting around age six, gender didn’t make sense to me,” Patch told NBC News. “I was told ‘men were this, women were this.’ As a teen I learned about transgender people, and that didn’t seem like what I was. And then I learned about genderqueer, and that didn’t seem like what I was.”
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A handful of organizations serving transgender, gender-nonconforming and intersex people told NBC News that no U.S. court has ever granted a legally genderless status before.
“This is the first time that Sylvia Rivera Law Project has heard about this, and we applaud the court recognizing the person as they are,” attorney Kyle Rapiñan said. “We hope that other government agencies will help people self-determine their gender identity, which also includes the option to identify without a gender.”
Patch works at Portland Community College’s Queer Resource Center as a co-coordinator and is studying creative writing. A Facebook post for the center lauded the student for “blazing the way.”
Patch, the first genderless person in the country, also doesn’t use pronouns. “Even gender-neutral pronouns don’t feel as if they fit me. I feel no identity or closeness with any pronouns I’ve come across,” Patch explained. “What describes me is my name.”
But what bathroom does Patch go into?
Judge Allows Portland Resident ‘Patch’ To Be Genderless https://t.co/f8EFUBEqfd
— CBS Sacramento CBS13 (@CBSSacramento) March 24, 2017
Earlier this month, Daily Wire posted the story of Vinny Ohh, a 22-year-old makeup artist, who has dropped over $50,000 on 110-plus procedures to help transform himself into the “genderless alien” he believes he is. Any doctor performing this surgery should lose their license.
He wants his genitalia cut off and hopes to adopt children.
