Japan Court Rules Against Mandatory Transgender Sterilization
Japan Court Rules Against Mandatory Transgender Sterilization
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.
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?
131Wow I thought America was messed up. We are but wow.
71Many 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
68Japan is amazing to visit but I would never live there. There is an incredible amount of discrimination that is normalised in the society.
28
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?
68Wow, 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.
11Why 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
-30I’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.
6
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.
31FYI, 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.
-1
Well fuck me that’s good news but still somehow feels like bad news that this was even a question.
14They 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.
12Gee, dya think?
5Well I would hope so! They’re not America.
3Where 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.
9Good 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.
8
"Transgender man" ... "Surgery to remove the gonads"... surely if they have gonads and are transgender, they are a transgender woman, right?
-3Gonads are either testes or ovaries (at least for humans)
23Wait, ovaries can be gonads? Ok, I thought they meant "nuts" and were misgendering the person.
4
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.
11Surely sounds like unnecessary surgery is needed for reasons haha because you're so right haha because reasons haha
Seriously, learn to be less hateful.
-7
Isn't that kind of the end goal? You're usually sterilized if you remove your penis and testicles or womb and ovaries to replace with a vagina or penis.
-44Surgery is not the end goal for all trans people, and even if it were, requiring that it be completed before they can have their gender identity legally recognised is unnecessary and unhelpful.
50First, even if you were right about the medical part, "getting sterilized" is not the end goal of anyone transitioning, the end goal is feeling more comfortable on their own bodies, some of them might accept losing reproductive capabilities as a trade of, but not necessarily all.
Second, "trans" is applied to anyone that is not comfortable with their assigned gender at birth -not only to people that have gone through the full transition-, transgender people can fell comfortable enough at any point of the transition and many stop before the reassignment surgery (if you ever see a video of how it works, you might understand why). That means that many transgender people have full reproductive capabilities, and many want to have them, as reproducing is part of their goals/desires/dreams; same a many cisgender people, you see?
Last but not least, it is their fucking body, the government should not in any way be allowed to decide that one group of people should not reproduce, and force them to undergo medical treatment just due to pure bigotry, period.
25Wouldn't somebody suffering from dysphoria not want to bring somebody into the world who is more genetically predisposed to suffering the same fate? There's apparently data suggesting it's genetic.
And as far as the government telling you what you can and can't do with your body I kind of prefer that people like that girl with a genetic abnormality who had a child with the same condition despite warnings against it had been stopped.
-33
You don't have to remove your penis to be a trans woman.
5The trouble here assumes that the goal is the same for everyone which isn't the case. People look at the risks of every single given surgery independently. Top surgery is pretty common because it's low risk and goes a long way to changing the way one looks through their clothes everyday. Bottom surgery can be scary. It requires one to take months off work to heal and it has a higher chance of not working out and some people keep their pre-existing kit for other reasons. You could be discouraged by the choices of surgery available, you might have a partner you value more who quite frankly didn't sign on when you got together for that big a change or it might just seem unnecessary to your individual needs.
Sterilization by removal of gonads is more often an elective by trans women because it cuts down on required daily medications to block testosterone production and less so on the docket for trans men because removal of both ovaries tends to have life shortening effects. Between the two horomones estrogen is the most nessisary for systainable long term health so if you aren't already planning on taking estrogen medication it's a bad idea to remove the organs that produce that horomone.
Also temporary detransition to have kids is a thing for trans men. Some folk don't want to give up the option of having their own kids even if the pregnancy might be mental hell.
The important thing to realize is that transition is often an incredibly logical process where one's individual values come into play and get weighed against the neurological programming beyond one's control that effect one's wellbeing. People generally don't take medicine with side effects unless the problem to be solved is worse than the medicine.
3
