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<h3 class="content__headline js-score"><span style="color:#825610;">Former army sergeant, 52, becomes first legally non-binary person in the US</span></h3>
<h3 class="content__headline js-score"><span style="color:#825610;">Oregon judge grants Jamie Shupe&#8217;s petition to identify as neither male nor female</span></h3>
<h3 class="content__headline js-score"><span style="color:#825610;">Married with one child, still with spouse of 3 decades<br />
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<h3 class="content__headline js-score"><span style="color:#825610;">Vet Shupe, joined army as a male, was discharged as female, says “I’m not a male. I’m not a female.”</span></h3>
<h3 class="content__headline js-score"><span style="color:#825610;">He had asked court to grant a non-binary sex classification</span><br />
<span style="color:#825610;">Historic decision completes Shupe’s gender transition from male to female, then &#8216;they&#8217;</span></h3>
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<h6><strong><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-35131" src="https://konniemoments.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/jamie-shupe-with-spouse-sandy-shupe.jpg" alt="Jamie Shupe with spouse Sandy Shupe" width="1920" height="1152" />Jamie Shupe and spouse Sandy Shupe</strong></h6>
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<p>An Oregon judge today declared Jamie Shupe could legally shed the designation of male or female, Shupe felt free.<br />
An elated Shupe said “I have my life back,” “I’m not a male. I’m not a female.” As a transgender person with male biology and distinctly feminine traits, I believe myself to be a unique variation of nature. I am not ashamed of who I am. I was not born into the wrong body. My genitals are not a birth defect. And I am not to be sterilized by psychiatry and a medical establishment that has run amok.</p>
<h6><strong><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-35144" src="https://konniemoments.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/jamie-shupe3.jpg" alt="jamie shupe3" width="640" height="640" /><br />
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<h6><strong>Army Sergeant Shupe, 49 years living as a man</strong></h6>
<p>After a historic court ruling, I am free. I am the first non-binary person in the United States to be officially recognized. I refused to be classified. And now, I’ve been vindicated.<br />
Shupe appears to be the first person in the United States who has successfully petitioned for a non-binary gender classification.<br />
“Classic gender markers don’t fit everybody,” Gorenberg said, calling the petition significant for helping people “exist without labels that don’t accurately describe them”.<br />
At a recent support group meeting in Portland, where Shupe lives, a young woman tearfully thanked Shupe for broadening the conversation about gender classifications. Shupe, a former army sergeant assigned male at birth and listed as female in discharge papers, told the woman, “I didn’t do this just for myself.”<br />
Shupe, who prefers the pronoun “they”, grew up in southern Maryland, in a family with eight children. Shupe recalls feeling like an outcast, being admonished for acting like a “sissy” and without any role models, struggling to articulate feelings of a gender mismatch.</p>
<h6><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-35143" src="https://konniemoments.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/jamie-shupe4.jpg" alt="jamie shupe4" width="2048" height="1536" /></h6>
<h6>Jamie Shupe, 3 years living as a woman</h6>
<p>At age 49, retired from the military, married to a woman and raising a daughter, Shupe began to unravel.<br />
“I felt like I was at a breaking point,” Shupe said, “like I was trapped.”<br />
With a supportive spouse, Shupe moved to a secluded cabin in the woods and began taking hormones.<br />
“I figured I was a transgender woman. My thinking was, well, I’m not a male,” Shupe said.<br />
Sandy Shupe said the transition was difficult at times.<br />
“This is the person I’ve spent most of my adult life with,” she said. “We have a child together. I have always said, old age and rocking chairs. That’s still my thought, old age and rocking chairs. When you love someone, you want them to be at peace with themselves.”</p>
<h6 id="img-2" class="element element-image img--landscape fig--narrow-caption fig--has-shares "><img class="alignnone wp-image-35133" src="https://konniemoments.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/jamie-shupe1.jpg" alt="jamie shupe1" width="673" height="404" />&#8216;They&#8217; Jamie Shupe: &#8220;I’m not male. I’m not female&#8221;</h6>
<p>Later, Shupe realized the female designation also didn’t feel right.<br />
“No amount of hormones is going to make me look like a female,” Shupe said, taking off a headscarf to reveal a bald head. Shupe doesn’t have plans or the desire to undergo surgery.<br />
“Now, I’m suddenly telling my spouse I’m the same thing she is? It didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t have the intricate knowledge like I do now that I could be other things.”<br />
Shupe wanted another option, a third classification, and found an ally in Portland lawyer Lake Perriguey.<br />
“I knew the law well enough to know there is no exclusion, it’s not a complicated statute,” Perriguey said. “It’s two lines. People change their names, the process to change your sex identity is the same as changing your name.”<br />
Perriguey said initially he didn’t realize the historic significance of the case.<br />
“Not being a person of transgender experience, I didn’t realize how confining the legal limit on your gender identity could be,” he said.</p>
<h6><strong><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-35142" src="https://konniemoments.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/jamie-shupe5.jpg" alt="jamie shupe5" width="806" height="1782" /></strong></h6>
<h6><strong>Jamie Shupe, happiest gender neutral</strong></h6>
<p>Shupe understood there are others with similar struggles and felt compelled to take the case to court, steeling for a long-drawn-out fight.<br />
Instead, the petition was granted swiftly.<br />
Multnomah County circuit court judge Amy Holmes Hehn granted the petition last week, writing: “The sex of Jamie Shupe is hereby changed from female to non-binary. Notice of this legal change shall be posted in a public place in Multnomah County as required by law.”<br />
Shupe’s legal tab was $1,056.<br />
Now, at 52 years old, Shupe said, the petition “gives me a place to exist”.</p>
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“Man, Woman, They”: Meet Jamie Shupe, the first legally gender-less person in the US
