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Japan's Supreme Court upholds transgender sterilization requirement
Those who wish to change their gender on official documents must have their original reproductive organs removed, according to the 2004 law.
Japan’s Supreme Court has upheld a law that effectively requires transgender people to be sterilized before they can have their gender changed on official documents.
The court said the law is constitutional because it was meant to reduce confusion in families and society. But it acknowledged that it restricts freedom and could become out of step with changing social values.
[...] [Takakito] Usui, 45, had appealed to the top court after he unsuccessfully requested lower courts to grant him legal recognition as male without having his female reproductive glands surgically removed.
Despite the unanimous decision, presiding justice Mamoru Miura joined another justice in saying that while the law may not violate the constitution, “doubts are undeniably emerging,” according to Usui’s lawyer, Tomoyasu Oyama.
The two judges proposed regular reviews of the law and appropriate measures “from the viewpoint of respect for personality and individuality,” according to Japanese media reports.
[...] Japan does not legally recognize same-sex marriages. As LGBTQ rights awareness has gradually grown in recent years, some municipalities have begun issuing partnership certificates to ease problems in renting apartments and other areas, but they are not legally binding.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday January 27 2019, @08:24PM
Different AC here, as it were. (And are we not all ACs in the end?) An essay on TERFs and capitalism:
I had suspected this might be the basis for your reasoning. You've been taken for a ride by the capitalists (as I was). The capitalists are the ones who constantly cry “butbut there is no money!” while last year allocating $700,000,000,000 in the USA alone for death and destruction (while Japan, UK, Australia, and EU likewise beat the war drums). The productive forces of society most certainly produce enough wealth to meet our needs.
The basic problem is that the wealth we create is, in fact, being siphoned off (stolen, as a libertarian would say) by the parasitical capitalist class, which demonstrably is only interested in doing the bare minimum to sustain our existence as a expendable laborers.
The trans trenders who want to stick their dicks in you are operating from a right-wing perspective. Obviously I cannot tell somebody that they are not a trans woman, because then I would be forced to engage the endless logical contortions of gender essentialism, and there may in fact be “authentic” trans women who have been deluded by the capitalists into thinking that taking estrogen saying “i wanna be a lesbian!” is get laid free card. Once again the capitalists create the distinction between cisgender and transgender to pit us against each other and delude us into believing that our interests are opposed.
The fact that they do not care that you are taken should tell you that either you are misinterpreting what they are saying or that they have, in fact, aligned themselves with patriarchy. If the latter case, then we will not be able to even, and we will wait to see which side of the picket line they wind up on. (Dark humor: when the revolution comes, I call dibs on Brianna Wu with a side of fava beans and a nice chianti. In other words, she will not be on the same side of the picket line as you and me.)
In fact, the genesis of this trans/cis distinction is with the TERFs themselves and their insistence that “womyn-born-womyn” have an exclusive claim to women's health services (see Serano). The theory that transgenderism is somehow a new phenomenon (it is not and it is likely older than h. sapiens, neanderthalis, denisova, heidelbergensis, etc) plays into their theory that trans women represent a counterrevolutionary force.
And what about trans men? They are erased by the TERFs or turned into “traitors.” Again we have the right-wing motivation to divide society along bigoted lines and deny essential services for entirely arbitrary reasons. And where do the denied resources wind up? In the hands of an elite capitalist class that serves nobody's interests except their own, which, at the moment, seem to be the interests of tobogganing with eyes closed towards planetary catastrophe (a mass extinction event entirely engineered by humans with AGW and even nuclear weapons).
As we know, a deeper examination shows that the idea that trans folks are a counterrevolutionary force of patriarchy, colonizing women as Raymond put it or turning “traitor,” is pernicious. For the peanut gallery, observe how Greer manages to start from the position of denying health services to trans women (who are, according to her, in a zero-sum game with cis women), justifies it with a feminine mystique (a rejection of the basis of second wave feminism), and concludes that abortion should be illegal. Abortion to Greer threatens the feminine mystique. Well of course it fucking does! Greer and the TERFs are not opposed to trans folks per se, but they are opposed to the whole of second wave feminism!
Trans folks must struggle alongside cis folks, because there is no fundamental (or essential perhaps) difference between us. Menstrual chauvinism is inherently right-wing and seeks to divide. Our needs are the same needs as the rest of the working class, and so we must be united with the working class as a whole. We are all (including men) oppressed by patriarchal notions of gender and subjected to the whims of the capitalist profit system.
The means of production must be brought under the democratic control of the working class. That is the only way to ensure that our needs will be met.