Japan - this seems harsh

[IcakethereforeIam]

I didn't know this about Japan, article from the Guardian. Tw who had children with female partner using sperm preserved from before transition refused permission to be recognised as childrens' parent. Also Japan doesn't recognise same sex marriage.

www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/19/japan-transgender-woman-parent-child-tokyo-high-court

They should be registered accurately as the father.

Yup, MN has been a bit hairtriggery, didn't want to get deleted. I don't think that's an option, though it's not entirely clear.

That is unfair. They ought to be allowed to be registered as the father.

I wonder what the rule is for children born to an unmarried couple? (As it seems it might be relevant that same-sex marriage isn't legal there)

Or for children born using a sperm donor?

The article doesn't actually say they can't be registered as the father. I think you need to be either father or mother, don't you?

It sounds like a situation where the admin hasn't kept up with allowing people to lie on legal documents. I'm assuming that one parent is listed as father, and that fathers have to be male. It doesn't sound ideological, just an oversight.

On a side note, I do hate the way that having a post-surgical definition of TW, who could then be legally female, is being presented as TW being forced to have surgery and sterilised. It's as if the documentation is the end goal and always has been, so weird.

Japan is a conservative country. Homophobia, sexism and racism are rife. There is still an expectation for women to give up work once they marry.

Although I am sure it is distressing for the parents I am sure it won't be a surprise to them.

It's really important in Japan for family records to be kept, they're incredibly careful to make sure they're accurate. They track all people so won't make any changes that night cause confusion. I don't think they'd let this person be registered as you need either a mother and/or father, there's no parent option. They can't be the mother as there is already a mother, and they can't be the father because their legal sex is now female and females can't be fathers.

What do the couple want the birth certificate to say. Because the article says they can't be recognised as the child's parent.
Do they want to be recognised as mother and the law won't allow this - which would be the same as this country I believe, for TW parents?

Do they want to be recognised as "parent" but this isn't an option on the birth certificate?

Are they able to be recognised as father, but they don't want that? Or is that not possible either because of a "computer says no" issue of not being able to have someone legally female be registered as a father?

Or is the law literally saying that trans people cannot be on birth certificates, as an ideological thing?

I can't believe Japan doesn't recognise same sex marriage though!!

Well - this makes zero sense. He should be acknowledged as the father. Is he trying to masquerade as a mother is that the problem?

Do they pretend transwomen have actually changed sex, is this where the confusion lies? So they say he's a woman, but he can't be on the birth cert as it requires a father and they now won't acknowledge his biological link to the children.

Absolute insanity. All round.

I did know this about Japan.

I think it's absolutely barbaric to force people to have their sexual organs removed for whatever reason. I find that disturbing.

My best understanding is that, in Japan, no, you can't be a 'parent' on a birth certificate - you must register the biological mother or father. It's a different kind of document from the UK equivalent, which has never been terribly fussed about biology (in the UK, for centuries, the husband of a married woman has always been assumed to be the father unless someone troubles to take formal action otherwise; this would even be the case if a married woman were a surrogate for her sister and her sister's husband, all parties knowing full well who was who in terms of biology).

Nobody was forced to have their genitals removed in this situation, it's not like Iran. That is TRA hyperbole that starts from the position that people MUST be allowed to have whatever they want on their documents.

It isn't that strange for a country playing catch up with social trends to have restricted legal sex changes to post op TW. The original rhetoric was that people were so uncomfortable in their own skin they had such drastic surgery and the paperwork simply represented that. It's relatively recent that this has been flipped around and the main aim is to change your paperwork, but surgery doesn't matter.

Could you explain why it's about documents? I'm not familiar with a Japanese rhetoric about surgery followed by paperwork, but I'm sure you're right.

(Sorry, I realised reading back that sounded really snide, which wasn't my intention. What I guess I'm thinking is: Surely, given genital surgery is a pretty difficult fix at the moment, by any stretch of the imagination, surely it is good if people feel able to opt for something else? I'm not sure this should have to be linked to documentation.)

These problems only arise because a legal fiction has been allowed. Rather than try to fix the consequences of this legal fiction they need to undo the legal fiction

I meant that this issue didn't start because people changed documents. It started with people hating their bodies and surgically altering them. Until about 5 years ago, most people would assume a trans woman was someone who had felt dysphoric enough that they needed to have surgery.

Then the issue arose that people who had had surgery weren't exactly male anymore, often wanted to marry male partners and were worried about having M on their driving licence but presenting female. So countries said "people in this situation can change their documents." Often this was easier than allowing same sex marriage, which is totally messed up, but here we are.

Now we have a situation where it's all about the documents, it's all about how other people see you, pushing legal boundaries and not at all about changing your body or even being dysphoric (it can be, but not always, the recognition is now the main aim).

It's disingenuous for reporters to pretend the conversation started with "so some people want to change the M/F on their birth certificate, what hoops will we force them to jump through?" It was the other way round "some people are altering their bodies, will we recognise this on their documents."

See, that's not my perception of it. I have friends who are trans, and much longer than 5 years ago, people were aware that surgery was a very difficult, not necessarily successful option. I think especially with male-to-female transitions, people have known for decades that there's not a good surgical option.

I do know that there's been a popular perception that changing sex is something really easy, and a sense that you just have a simple surgery and there you are, done. And I agree with you that all of this has often been tangled up with legislation on same-sex marriage.

But none of this makes me think it's ok for Japan to insist people must have their surgical organs removed in order to transition. I think that's a terrible response to a complex situation.

@SarahAndQuack you meant female to male there, didn't you?

I could see that it might be a bit of both. The option of changing your legal documents only came about because of very dysphoric "transsexuals" (as they would have been known then) who wanted surgery.
But there may well have been a homophobic, eugenics element of "If you are this different, we don't want you to reproduce." So they required sterilisation.

So nowadays, there might be just a database problem where someone registered as female can't be listed as the father. (As other posters have alluded to, the system is much more joined up in Japan; it isn't just a birth certificate registered to only the baby)
But there might well also be resistance to solving this problem, from people who say "Well if you want to change legal sex, you're supposed to get sterilised, so we aren't going to make it possible for you to be registered as a parent, as we don't think you should be allowed to have children."

Which is inhumane, and is not fair on the child.

Yes, sorry! Though I don't think it's ideal the other way either.

It's interesting to see how they think about this. As I understand it, the way Japenese culture thinks about the body is more different than western culture in ways we don't always expect - this is why for example they don't tend to do many organ transplants. I wonder if this doesn't affect the way they think about sex transition too?

It makes perfect, logical, sense.

Person says they are a woman, and not a man, and wants to be legally recognized as a legal woman. So that happens.
We all know that women can't be fathers. So, if you want to be a woman, you can't also be a father. You don't be the mother, because you are not, in fact, the mother.
So, you can't be the parent of a child if you are a woman but not the mother.

Is it fair? I don't know. But does it make perfect sense? Yes, it absolutely does.

You don't have it both ways. You can't be a woman and a father. That's biological reality.

If this person provided sperm to make a baby they should be registered as the father. That is what they are. No legal or social fiction can change that fact.

We don't let males declare themselves a child's mother here either. Which is entirely correct, not harsh at all. You have to be female to be a child's mother, and you don't get to change the child's birth certificate to suit yourself.

You don't have it both ways. You can't be a woman and a father. That's biological reality

But the error isn't with them being a father. It's that they're not actually a woman.

It's quite inconsistent to be willing to pretend that they are a woman, but not willing to pretend that they are a mother.

(I don't think we should be pretending either that they are a woman or that they are a mother. )

Is it really harsh / unreasonable for the Japanese state to insist that those who want to be officially recognised as having changed gender don't in fact still have the genitalia of the sex class that they are disavowing? It avoids the illogical "woman with a penis" nonsense and sets out an expectation of lifelong commitment to the change that the individual concerned claims to want.

We've had same-sex marriage here in the UK for less than a decade, so I don't see how we can claim to be astonished and shocked that Japan doesn't yet.