- 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The current case before the grand chamber of the Supreme Court asks the justices to eliminate the outdated and abusive sterilization requirement.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
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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.
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.
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.
I meant transphobic nutjobs but yeah.
Yep that was my first thought.
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.
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?
“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.
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.
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.
Surgery 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.
Assuming you’re asking in good faith, the short answer is no.
The long answer is nooooooo.
And the full answer is “No. What the fuck is wrong with you that you think forced sterilization is ever a good idea, ever, for any reason, ever?” That isn’t even an issue limited to trans people. It’s something that’s been forced on indigenous populations, “lesser” peoples (like… you know… Jews and Blacks and Mexicans and Malagasy and literally everyone but “us” and the mentally challenged and also ‘hysterical’ women, among many others), and anyone else that a particular group wants to genocide without wanting to deal directly with corpse disposal.
Beyond that, this speaks to bodily autonomy. No one person or group of people should fucking EVER have the right to tell you what you can and cannot do with your own body. End of story.
First, 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.
Wouldn’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.
I think they’d prevent that from happening by preventing that from happening.
Unless you know of someone so addicted to procreation, they can’t help themselves in anyway, and want government intervention to save them, thus making it not a eugenics thing…
Whew! Gymnastics is exhausting.
Being trangender is not a huge problem from a medical perspective. You can simply transition. The struggle that trans people have to deal with is bigoted shitheads that suggest evil garbage like legislation that would force them to be sterilized. If anyone should be sterilized, it’s them.
Bad troll is bad.
Then what? Do we sterilize autistic people? Blind people?little people? Asmathics? People with ADHD? Alergies? Other races? Less than average IQ?
I am not even discussing the outraging comment you made, even if you accept that, where do you stop then? Where you think it is acceptable enough? “Wait a second! Not people with allergies, I have allergies!”
We don’t have to prevent people with dysphoria from being born, we need to create a society in which people born with dysphoria can feel comfortable at every moment (not just when they “don’t look like trans”) and can have easy and free access to anything they need (therapy , hormones, surgery…).
IIRC most trans folks don’t have bottom surgery
For some it’s a choice, for others it’s just down to money. I can’t even begin to guess what the percentage split would be on that.
Wouldn’t it be pretty triggering of dysphoria to have the wrong genitals staring at you all the time?
Depends what your gender means to you. no such thing as wrong in that sense.
Literally being transgender means you feel like you’re actually the opposite gender. If you don’t feel that you’re something else.
I don’t think it’s that black and white… Not every transgender person feels the same way (the same as everyone on earth has different feelings). I think the end goal is more for them to feel comfortable in their own skin. To whatever degree of transitioning that is.
That’s not correct. It just means you’re not the gender assigned to you at birth. You’re not the “opposite gender” because there are ranges in gender identity and expression. Non-binary, for example, is trans and that is identifying as neither male nor female.
But, surpising to no one, everyone is different. Some want surgical reassignment. Some don’t.
Nonbinary is another new fad that doesn’t mean anything. There is only Male and Female. Anything else is just made up to be different. Theres probably more transtrenders than actually trans people these days seeing how rare it actually is.
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No, they’re not just asking questions. They’re also making statements and seemingly implying that only people who fully transition are transgender and every trans person must also identify as male or female because non-binary is a “fad” that people made up and doesn’t really exist.
He’s not “just asking questions.” He’s regurgitating anti-trans rhetoric and making dishonest arguments. Someone who was “just asking questions” would accept the answers given to them, and make an honest effort to learn, instead of arguing against them by slinging right-wing propaganda.
They’re not “just asking questions”, they’re JAQing off
Some trans people don’t feel the need for bottom surgery, some do. Dysphoria is different for everyone.
Maybe. That’s up to the individual. Surgery is also a pretty big deal and comes with risks.
You don’t have to remove your penis to be a trans woman.
The 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.
