- 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The current case before the grand chamber of the Supreme Court asks the justices to eliminate the outdated and abusive sterilization requirement.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
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.
This one.
There is no proof that dysphoria is genetic.
And even if it was, there are a lot of tools to treat it, be it through simple therapy, or transitioning.
The condition itself isn’t a handicap, the problem is acceptance. If being black was seen as badly as transidentity, the result would be the same. Should black people refrain from having children in such a scenario?
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.
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.
Normal being the ability to exist comfortably without the need to put large amounts of effort into feeling good about yourself.
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.
Feeling good about themselves. Means not wanting to kill themselves just for looking in the mirror.
So… You would support legally-required sterilizations for climate activists? What is the point of this statement?
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.
That sounds like eugenics.
And? Eugenics isn’t just something the Nazis did. It can also be beneficial to the human race and anyone born so that they don’t have to suffer with severe mental removedation and disabilities that will majorly impact their enjoyment of life or cut their life short very quickly. Did you check the link I posted? Do you think that child should have been born? A toddler requiring a tracheotomy.
Not really. If it was that important we’d still be leaving babies in the woods to be eaten by wolves. We’re not neolithic barbarians anymore.
We have safe abortions now. If you think about it, it’s basically the same thing but without the suffering of the infant.
By your justification, the world would benefit from sterilizing conservatives.
Having a viewpoint that is different to you is massively different to having to suffer excruciating mental or physical pain until you die because of a choice your parents made.
Got it. So, we should sterilize conservatives.
How the fuck does anyone write this and post it on a forum without realizing they’re reaching comedic levels of evil?
Did you not read anything past that point? Are you just illiterate?
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.
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.
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…).