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The current case before the grand chamber of the Supreme Court asks the justices to eliminate the outdated and abusive sterilization requirement.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
"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.
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.