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Norway May Introduce A Third Gender Category

Ap proposes that those who neither feels like a man or woman should be allowed to define themselves in a third gender category- “hen”, according to NRK.

In a new draft party program for 2017-2021, Ap writes they should consider introducing a third gender category.

– Those people who neither define themselves as male or female will now have a legal opportunity to get a third gender, said the leader of the youth branch of the party, Mani Hussaini to NRK.

He suggests that all people should have the opportunity to live with their identity. When Liberal Party of norway (Venstre) proposed to introduce a third gender in April 2016 – only Socialist Left (SV) and Green Party (MDG) supported the proposal.

Swedish model

In Sweden, pronoun ‘hen’ can be used when the gender of a person is not known or when it is not desirable to specify them as either a “she” or “he”.

The word was first proposed in 1966, and again in 1994, with reference to the Finnish hän, a personal pronoun that is gender-neutral, since Finnish does not have grammatical genders. However, it did not receive widespread recognition until around 2010, when it began to be used in some books, magazines and newspapers, and provoked media debates and controversy over feminism, gender neutrality, and parenting. In July 2014 it was announced that hen would be included in Svenska Akademiens ordlista, the official glossary of the Swedish Academy.

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