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

  • Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works
    English
    313·
    8 months ago

    Studies have shown it’s likely. All I’m saying is, if you had the choice of being normal or trans I think most people would choose to be normal. Aside from the social issues it causes there’s lots of work that needs to be done in life to just feel normal. The suicide rate for trans individuals is really high.

    Not sure why you brought race into it, but I’m sure I’ve heard many people who’ve had a hard time in life claiming not to want to bring a child into the world to suffer like they have. Even climate activists claiming they won’t because of the coming uncertainty in the climate.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      102·
      8 months ago

      Just dig deeper into all those definitions you’re using there without having even wondered about them.

      For example, what is “normality” in a person? If your think it through, it’s really just being close to the norm which is, guess what, the central point in a Normal distribution of behaviours, i.e. what most people do.

      So saying “most people will want to do what is normal” is circular logic: it quite literally translates to “most people will want to do what most people do” (yeah, well, duh!)

      Maybe trying to force ALL people to behave the same as MOST people isn’t exactly wise, certainly it’s not at all respecting of each person’s individuality and freedom to do what they want with what is theirs (namelly, with their own body).

      (And I’m quite certainly it would even affect you: there are A LOT of different elements in human behaviour and pretty much everybody in some of those acts in ways which are unlike most people. Why should be gender be treated any different than, say, liking a different sport than most people around were you live? Woukd being outside the norm really justify mandatory psychological support and sterilization for people who like Golf rather than Footaball?)

      And this is before we even go into how “normal” is not fixed but actually at many levels a societal construct: for example men sodomizing other men was “normal” in Ancient Greece but in present day Greece is not “normal” but rather it’s unusual.

      Consider the possibility that your thinking is bound by walls you don’t even know are there.

      • Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works
        English
        49·
        8 months ago

        Normal being the ability to exist comfortably without the need to put large amounts of effort into feeling good about yourself.

        • Aceticon@lemmy.worldEnglish
          51·
          8 months ago

          I suggest you go check a dictionary for the actual definition of the word, which is most definitelly not that.

          Further your definition of “normal” would make almost every human being out there not be normal: the number of people who have the self-confidence and strength of character to feel good about themselves in all ways “without the need to put large amounts of effort into feeling good about yourself” is ridiculously small: most people out there put lots of effort into fitting into the social environment they’re in, and trying to adjust to what one thinks others expect from you is quite the opposite of “feeling good about yourself”.

          Mind you, it actually makes sense that people who are submissive to what they think the society around them expects them to be, will actually explain to themselves their submission as actually no such thing (as “submissiveness” is generally considered a negative personality trait) but rather as a “normal” (and hence good) thing. Probably explains why some are so extraordinarilly threatenned by people who don’t just comply as they do in domains generally deemed more important, such as gender identity, when logically the gender identity of others is not really important for oneself outside specific domains such as sex.

          Normality is quite the big box of surprises if one really starts thinking about it.

          • Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works
            English
            34·
            8 months ago

            Feeling good about themselves. Means not wanting to kill themselves just for looking in the mirror.

    • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.worldEnglish
      22·
      8 months ago

      Even climate activists claiming they won’t because of the coming uncertainty in the climate.

      So… You would support legally-required sterilizations for climate activists? What is the point of this statement?

      • Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works
        English
        21·
        8 months ago

        I made a deliberately extreme point about genetic disorders that we treat by abortion. All that was meant to do was show that sometimes we do treat things that will make people suffer if they are born in such a way that they are not born. That’s it. I’m surprised there’s so many people that don’t understand that. People that seem to be on the same side as the conservatives on the abortion issue. The initial point was that if transgenderism is in fact genetic and somebody who is transgender understands the difficulties they have gone through in life due to it, would they choose to put somebody else through the same pain? It’s not directly comparable because one is an extreme example for a reason. Merely a thought experiment.