- cross-posted to:
- lgbtq_plus@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- lgbtq_plus@beehaw.org
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The current case before the grand chamber of the Supreme Court asks the justices to eliminate the outdated and abusive sterilization requirement.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
You must log in or register to comment.
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?
You have been banned from c/Conservative.
… Did those nutjobs make it over to lemmy!?
Lol
The subscribers list shows only subscribers from your instance I believe. Like for me, the lemmy.world meta community has less than a thousand subscribers, but that’s only because I’m on lemmy.ml. Can’t imagine those nutjobs have too many subscribers anyway, though.
They’re entirely empty: they all have a handful of posts by 1 person that gave up 4 months ago.
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
Japan is amazing to visit but I would never live there. There is an incredible amount of discrimination that is normalised in the society.
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.
This isn’t true anymore in Switzerland. Since January 2023 you just go to your civil office state you want to change your gender and pay the administrative fee and you’re good.
You don’t even need a medical diagnostic.
Switzerland has since introduced a law that changed this to self determination.
Conservatives.
Conservatism is a global plague of oppression long overdue for a cure.
Crazy religious nutjobbies.
In Japan. One of the least religious nations on earth.
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.
deleted by creator
Yep that was my first thought.
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.
Again, I think I’ll go with how they identify themselves rather than how you say they should be identified.
Well fuck me that’s good news but still somehow feels like bad news that this was even a question.
They have ton of old people and not enough young people. They need babies, it makes sense to not have sterilizations from that point of view.
Gee, dya think?
Well I would hope so! They’re not America.
Where in America are you referring to? Central America? I’m curious if this horrific concept is real somewhere.
Ediy: I read the comments… It’s not America, it’s Europe. Fuck… I’m pretty disappointed now in humanity. People can be such fucking pieces of shit. Leave people alone, shitbags of the world. Let them live the way they want to live.
Good news, in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, being transgender is a protected class, you can change your gender legally by just going to the government identity office (nadra) and sex reassignment surgery is perfectly legal and practiced. This was put into law by the Transgender Person (Protection of Rights) Act 2018 but that was really just a codifying of a 2010 supreme court case. And even the Islamist opponents of the bill didn’t want it struck down but to add a medical board to disallow self-determination. Its one of the most liberal trans rights laws in the world, and by far the most I’m a Muslim country. It’s not all sunshine and roses though, there aren’t any criminal penalties in the law for example, so the enforcement relied on prosecutors filing civil cases or injured parties filing cases. The social acceptance is far behind the progressiveness of the law too. However, trans people are pretty decently represented in the media too, though there is definitely an exploitation film aspect to it.
Yeah but Pakistan also sucks, especially for non-muslims
“Transgender man” … “Surgery to remove the gonads”… surely if they have gonads and are transgender, they are a transgender woman, right?
Gonads are either testes or ovaries (at least for humans)
Wait, ovaries can be gonads? Ok, I thought they meant “nuts” and were misgendering the person.
Nope, everybody has gonads. Removing overies can have some nasty life shortening effects, not doing so also keeps the option of temporary detransition to have kids later so trans men often elect to keep them.
temporary detransition
That’s a very strange way to phrase it. I wish we could just recognize that sex and gender can be orthogonal properties of an organism.
It’s the technical term at present but the whole thing is compounded by the whole medical transition and social transition are two separate things. Medical temporary detransition often just means suspending the use of horomone medications to achieve a temporary aim like pregnancy. It doesn’t really take into consideration that in social matters the person in these circumstances does not socially detransition.
Surely sounds like unnecessary surgery is needed for reasons haha because you’re so right haha because reasons haha
Seriously, learn to be less hateful.
