Is this an extemely misleading way for the Guardian to describe Japan's requirements for legal gender change recognition?

[GoodOldEmmaNess]

I read the headline in this article ("Japan court rules mandatory sterilisation of people officially changing gender unconstitutional") and I thought 'What a barbaric requirement! Why on earth would the Japanese govt want to enforce sterilisation? Are they saying that trans people aren't fit to be parents?'
Then I realised that this might be the Guardian's polemical way of stating that a legal gender change in Japan exists in order to formalise the status of someone who has had gender reassignment surgery (of which the unindended byproduct is sterilisation) - and has therefore not been permissable without this surgery until the recent court case.

This seems like a ramped-up version of the same kind of distortion as that which is created when a woman's right not to be in a same-sex marriage without having first consented to it is spoken of as the 'spousal veto' on transition. Is this right, or am I missing something?

This was exactly my question too after listening to a similar BBC report. Does anybody know the exact requirements of the the Japanese legislation?

This isn't a new thing. I think it's an international thing that you can't require surgery and they've framed it as 'forced or required sterilisation '

So essentially for any gender recognition legislation or changing of birth certificates/ID you can't require surgery.

Which is why I don't think you should be allowed to change birth certificates and ID*. It's a nonsense.

*Obviously sex or gender markers on your supermarket loyalty card wouldn't make any difference. We need to decide if knowing the sex is important: if it is then it shouldn't be changeable, if it isn't, why is it required?

From what I've read so far, it seems the requirements for a GRC are to have had gender reassignment surgery AND sterilisation. The latter specifically to avoid confusion in the child-parent relationship.

It is hard to interrogate the guardian's characterisation of the legislation without being able to actually look at the legislation itself (and translate it!) but my best guess is that Japanese law has specified that a legal gender change has to formalise some sort of physical 'gender reassignment' (what used to be called a sex change) and has therefore tried to arrival at a formalised definition of what physical gender reassignment is. The formalisation consists of two parts - (1) genitals resembling those of the preferred sex and (2) the absence (or eliminated function) of reproductive glands associated with the actual sex (not in order to make the person infertile, but just in order to arrive at some definition of what it is, physically, to have 'changed gender').

It is this second requirement that has been overturned.
Is it a requirement that can be met by using hormone supression, as well as by surgery? Does the overturning of this requirement undermine the possibility of requiring testosterone supression in order for a male to be called a woman?

I’m incredulous at the incredulity shown in these articles. It’s somehow inhumane to force adults to be sterilised while also inhumane to deny children treatment that will sterilise them. The insanity is off the scale.

Yes, that puts it well, @NotBadConsidering. When those who express anxiety about 'gender affirming' surgery/hormones for young people characterise it as sterilisation, that characterisation is regarded as evidence of transphobia. But somehow the same 'gender affirming' surgery becomes 'mandatory sterilisation' when it is politically handy to represent it that way.

Accuracy doesn't matter to the BBC as long as they can find a tenuous reason to depict transpeople as the most vulnerable and oppressed group ever.

Or the Guardian. Both are running misleading reports on this. And yet I've never noticed either of them mentioning the fact that most transwomen retain their penis. Funny that.

This, presumably?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/25/japan-court-rules-mandatory-sterilisation-transgender-unconstitutional

yes, sorry - I thought i'd included the link in the op but i messed up!

From the BBC article:

The [transwoman's] lawyer had argued that her reproductive ability has already been diminished by years of hormone therapy, adding that surgery entailed physical suffering and the risk of after-effects.

Her request was denied by both the family and high court before she approached the Supreme Court.

But some groups opposed to the law being changed had argued that if people were allowed to change their registered gender without surgery, it could result in women feeling unsafe. They also argued that it could cause legal confusion.

All this sounds to me as if he still had his penis - how else could him not having surgery "result in women feeling unsafe"? So the surgery is the standard surgery that we all , long long ago, used to think transwomen undertook in their efforts to deal with their body dysmorphia/gender dysphoria. Yes, it sterilises them, inevitably. But that's not it's primary purpose, it's what the TRAs 'call gender-affirming care', surely? The one they want the young dysphoric boys to undertake, in the manner of Jazz Jennings?

Surgery did used to be the standard, otherwise trans activists wouldn't have needed to change that standard by invoking human rights legislation that is supposed to prevent forced sterilisation.

''The European Court of Human Rights today found that the sterilisation requirement in legal gender recognition violates human rights. Setting the legal precedent for Europe, this decision will force the remaining 22 countries using the infertility requirement to change their laws.'' (edit for formatting)

https://tgeu.org/echrend-sterilisation/