Surgery Requirement Held to be Unconstitutional
A Japanese family court has ruled that the country’s requirement that transgender people be surgically sterilized to change their legal gender is unconstitutional. The ruling is the first of its kind in Japan, and comes as the Supreme Court considers a separate case about the same issue.
In 2021, Gen Suzuki, a transgender man, filed a court request to have his legal gender recognized as male without undergoing sterilization surgery as prescribed by national law. This week the Shizuoka Family Court ruled in his favor, with the judge writing: “Surgery to remove the gonads has the serious and irreversible result of loss of reproductive function. I cannot help but question whether being forced to undergo such treatment lacks necessity or rationality, considering the level of social chaos it may cause and from a medical perspective.”
In Japan, transgender people who want to legally change their gender must appeal to a family court. Under the Gender Identity Disorder (GID) Special Cases Act, applicants must undergo a psychiatric evaluation and be surgically sterilized. They also must be single and without children younger than 18.
Momentum is growing in Japan to change the law, as legal, medical, and academic professionals are speaking out against it. United Nations experts and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health have both urged Japan to eliminate the law’s discriminatory elements and to treat trans people, as well as their families, the same as other citizens.
In 2019, Japan’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that stated the law did not violate Japan’s constitution. However, two of the justices recognized the need for reform. “The suffering that [transgender people] face in terms of gender is also of concern to society that is supposed to embrace diversity in gender identity,” they wrote. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a trans government employee using the restrooms in accordance with her gender identity. Her employer had barred her from using the women’s restrooms on her office floor because she had not undergone the surgical procedures and therefore had not changed her legal gender.
The current case before the grand chamber of the Supreme Court asks the justices to eliminate the outdated and abusive sterilization requirement.
link: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/16/japan-court-rules-against-mandatory-transgender-sterilization
archive link: https://archive.ph/4IRKj
Rationality wins out in the end. People are who they are. The less the government is involved, the better. What right does the state have to tell you who you are or who you should love?
Consenting adults should be allowed to live out their lives. Why is this even an issue? How does it hurt anyone to have someone live as the person they truly are so they can be happy?
Wow I thought America was messed up. We are but wow.
Many states in the U.S. have ‘proof of surgery’ requirements before they will legally recognize people’s trans people’s gender identity: https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/identity_document_laws
Wow, wtf is wrong with this comment section? People don’t realize how laws made in the past just stay around until someone steps up to change it? Or y’all don’t have the capacity to look at the world through a different mindset, even if you disagree with the mindset? As much as we all hope that people around the world are accepting, it doesn’t just happen, and you can’t just hope people who don’t understand your PoV will just realize something’s wrong waking up one day.
Either those, or y’all have either grown too cynical or are trying to be cynical just for the sake of it.
Can’t y’all just celebrate the fact that this is happening in Japan, an infamous nation that usually tries fervently to preserve their tradition and status quo?
Wow, wtf is wrong with this comment section? People don’t realize how laws made in the past just stay around until someone steps up to change it?
Exactly.
One example is a 2006 constitutional amendment in Colorado that enshrined marriage as between one man and one woman. Colorado has since then become vastly more progressive, but the law is still there and same-sex marriage would become illegal in Colorado if SCOTUS overturns Obergefell one day.
Why do you care so much? People are reacting to a wrong being righted.
Or y’all don’t have the capacity to look at the world through a different mindset, even if you disagree with the mindset?
No u
I’m probably replying to a troll, but I will do so anyways for the sake of those who need to read this.
If we aren’t in any way bothered to see such narrow-minded reactions to a wrong being righted, then humankind is definitely headed for a few horrible decades ahead, filled with unnecessary strife and conflict out of pure indifference to each other’s backgrounds and current understanding of the world. And I’d even imagine it’d be worse than what we’re already seeing this decade. I suggest you go back and rethink what really matters as humans, instead of focusing on just some narrow definition of what a win is.
What kind of fucked up people come up with this shit?
A surprisingly large number of countries: https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/09/01/why-transgender-people-are-being-sterilised-in-some-european-countries (paywall jumping archive link: https://archive.is/K336g)
Switzerland, Greece and 18 other, mostly eastern European, countries have a final hurdle: sterilisation.
The way transness interacts with Japanese culture is just different, not better. The level of individualism in the country that is considered socially tolerable is pretty low. Binary trans folk can find arguably way more tolerance but it demands that what that looks like is as full on adoption of the complete social role of the gender you transition to accompanied by a cookie cutter transition regime.
The precept of preservation of social harmony comes way before personal happiness or comfort. The nail who sticks up is hammered down. If you want a different box then you may have a different box but you cannot personalize the box.
Consequently being non-binary trans in Japan is really difficult as you are sort of labeled as a troublemaker.
I have a transwoman friend who I’ve been friends with long before she transitioned (we were friends in high school in the 90s). She has two kids with her wife and those kids couldn’t be more loved or well-cared for.
FYI, trans woman and woman are the same noun. Transwoman isn’t a word, and the reason people don’t want it to be a word is that making “trans woman” a different noun from “woman” implies they’re not the same thing. Trans women are women, and that’s why the noun is the same. Trans is an adjective.
I realize that, but sometimes you need to specify. Also, I think I’ll go with how she identifies herself and not how you tell me she should be identified.
Yes, you specify that someone is a trans woman by saying “trans woman”. You don’t say “transwoman”, because it’s not a word.
