Motorists who do not want to disclose their gender will be able to place an “X” on their driver’s licenses, rather than be forced to identify themselves as male or female, by mid-2020, a state Department of Transportation spokeswoman said.

Thirteen other states — including Maryland and, most recently, New Hampshire — have rolled out plans to give residents a gender-neutral option on driver’s licenses, according to media reports.

The Associated Press reported Pennsylvania’s Department of Transportation believes it can make the change without action by the General Assembly.

Officials at PennDOT “plan to deploy a systematic process to make available the use of an ‘X’ indicator for gender before this time next year,” PennDOT spokeswoman Erin Waters-Trasatt told the Daily Item in Sunbury, Pa.

She said the section of the vehicle code that dictates which information should be included on driver’s licenses gives the agency the authority to offer the gender-neutral option.

Residents from Butler and nearby counties mostly thought the option was a positive addition.

“Whoever wants to choose it can, and if you don’t want to, you don’t have to,” East Brady resident Lorie Hicks said.

Butler resident Alma Heller questioned why the issue would matter to people who do not need the option.

“I think people should be free to be whatever they want to be,” she said. “All this going on in the world is upsetting.”

However, some lawmakers said they were concerned about the repercussions of the change.

“It is my understanding that the state vehicle code provides authority for PennDOT to make this change, so legislative action was not needed,” state Rep. Marci Mustello, R-11th, said. “It is unfortunate that this change was made without current discussions to evaluate the potential ramifications of how genderless driver’s licenses may affect an individual’s ability to prove his or her identity.”

But Emily Keener, a Slippery Rock University associate professor of psychology, said she thought the change was a good thing.

“I think it’s great,” said Keener, who is an advocate for de-emphasizing gender. “It’s important to think about when we need to know someone’s gender.”

Keener is conducting a study on the effects of gender inclusive language, and how it relates to how people process and remember information.

When a person uses a pronoun that does not match their identity, they have less memory of the information because it is not relevant to them, she said.

The study builds on her previous research that shows gender pronouns matter, she said.

The driver’s license option would de-emphasize gender, she said, adding that it is often overemphasized because it is present on every form, and people are treated differently based on their gender.

It also gives people who do not identify as male or female and live outside the gender binary of masculine and feminine an option for their license, she said.

“Having an option to say neither is important to represent that lived experience,” she said.

As a cisgender woman, Keener said she would choose the option because not everyone needs to know a person’s gender. Cisgender is defined as a person whose gender identity matches the sex that they were at birth.

One concern Keener has heard from the LGBTQ community is that the option would identify them as a person of a marginalized community to anyone who would look at the identification card, she said.

Having the option available to every person normalizes the choice, she said.

Keener said she wants the university to follow recommendations from the National Center for Transgender Equality for its own security when students choose the identification card with a gender neutral marker.