Norrie, also known by the pseudonym Norrie May-Welby, is a Scottish-Australian transgender person who pursued the legal status of being neither a man nor a woman, between 2010 and 2014. The High Court of Australia ruled in April 2014 that it was in the power of the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages to record in the register that the sex of Norrie was "non-specific".
Norrie was born in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland. Norrie moved to Perth, Western Australia at the age of seven. Norrie underwent sex reassignment surgery on 3 April 1989, but later found that being a woman was not what they felt like either. Norrie describes their gender as androgynous.
Norrie moved to Sydney, New South Wales in the early 1990s, after a highly publicised court case in Perth. Doctors stated in January 2010 that Norrie was a neuter, with a self-image that was neither male nor female, and no sex organs.
Norrie publicly uses gender-neutral third-person pronouns, such as singular they, but does not object to being referred to by feminine pronouns "as long as there are no imposed assumptions about reproductive biology coming along with them".
In 2019, Norrie published the autobiographical book Ultrasex (Beyond Division).
NSW Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages v Norrie
Norrie was featured on the first episode of Hatch, Match & Dispatch, where Norrie was seeking to obtain a marriage licence. Norrie could not do so due to being legally genderless, and the Australian marriage law at the time stated that marriage was defined as being between a man and a woman. Norrie planned to protest this to the UN. Though Norrie declined to do so, Norrie was told that they would be able to get married if they agreed to change their legal gender to "female".
O'Keefe, Tracie and Fox, Katrina (eds.) (2003) Finding the Real Me: true tales of sex and gender diversity San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ISBN 0787965472
A Brief History of X: The Long Legal Battle for Sex: Not-Specified
Appeals Court Recognises 'Sex Non-Specific' for Birth Certificates