Japan Court Rules Against Mandatory Transgender Sterilization
Japan Court Rules Against Mandatory Transgender Sterilization
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.
I’m glad this ruling happened. Why was there this law in the first place? The lengths that people go to twist the law to be cruel to other people is awful.
Japan is extremely conservative in certain ways, usually because of their focus on conformance to social norms.
I encountered gay men not-infrequently while I lived there, and Japanese people are (for the most part) fine with them even if uncomfortable, but from a legal standpoint, Japan mostly prefers to pretend the LGBT+ community doesn't exist, and can be very hostile towards it when it's forced to acknowledge them (such as in medical contexts).
Why was there this law in the first place?
In Europe at least, it was often explained as "same-sex marriage and parenthood are not allowed, and a legal gender change cannot be a loophole to that". But it appears to be a post-hoc rationalisation since the forced sterilisation programmes have many more targets in the past until it was progressively abandoned for more and more groups. It was also becoming untenable since more and more countries were legalising same-sex parenthood.
So, if we are being more honest, it's eugenics.
I love Japan, but sometimes I really really hate their judicial and justicial systems, and the xenophobia and conformism that often underpins them.
TIL Japan forced trans people to be sterilized, jesus christ. (i mean, its very good that theyre stopping but holy crap.)
So did Finland up until earlier this year
WOW! A big step forward for Japan!!! (A long way to go I know but still)
I'm sorry, but WHAT?! A large majority of us already fucking self-sterilize with HRT, why would they even bother?
Never underestimate the desire of imperial powers to exercise reproductive control over marginalized groups, I guess.
I saw a video explaining why Japan is seemingly more okay with transgender people than other queer people and basically it boiled down to conforming to society is very important in Japanese culture, and so being a straight transgender person is seen as conforming to the norm. If you're a straight trans-woman then you're just like the average cis-woman, and vice versa for the guys.
It keeps surprising me what kind of strange processes exist for transgender people in various countries. Like either accept them or don't but what's with all this in between nonsense.