- 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The current case before the grand chamber of the Supreme Court asks the justices to eliminate the outdated and abusive sterilization requirement.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
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.
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 retardation 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…).
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.
The problem with your statement is that it is incorrect in every possible way: Historically, culturally, psychologically, biologically, just to name the easy ones.
Let’s do a thought experiment: Are left-handed people a fad because there was a period of time (up to, and including, now) where parents, teachers, guardians, priests, etc. would force children to use their right hand instead of their left hand when they picked things up? Left-handed people increased in large numbers when we stopped discriminating against them (as much), and let them use the hand that they wanted to use. What possibly caused that dramatic increase???
Kids like the attention they get for being different. It’s always been that way. I can guarantee there’s a lot of kids out there claiming to be transgender who are doing it for the attention.
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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.
Just asking questions, huh
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.
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.