SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 27 2019, @04:14AM (21 children)
Why the hell would I get a perfectly-functioning piece of myself removed? Several pieces, really. And no, I don't trust hormonal pills, either; I'd rather bleed and cramp a bit than risk the side effects. It's just annoying and tiring.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday January 27 2019, @04:26PM (20 children)
That's your choice then.
I still don't see your point with menstruation. You still have not acknowledged that a number of women who have lived as women their entire lives but do not menstruate or are otherwise incapable of pregnancy are affected by that. With Serano's definitions, they are cisgender, but with your definitions, they are transgender.
Why? What does it accomplish, and what would it mean? You mentioned that resources are being “siphoned off.” This is a fairly typical right-wing rhetorical technique (a kind of projection) that always indicates that the speaker intends to siphon off resources from the minority they are accusing. What resources will you siphon off from these formerly cisgender women because they do not have reproductive systems up to your standards?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 27 2019, @05:32PM (19 children)
Oh for the love of Madokami...
I am not saying that lack of menstruation makes someone a transwoman, and only someone with a permanent persecution complex like you would even think to derive that from what was said. What I am saying is that the vast majority of us DO menstruate, whereas not one single transwoman, ever, in the history of history, has ever had a period. Similarly, no transwoman ever has or ever will be pregnant or have to worry about being pregnant.
As to "siphoning," maybe I'm just being overly paranoid here, but if someone gave me a choice between "allocate resources to poor neighborhood schools and womens' shelters to buy up a tremendous stock of pads" and "allocate resources to a trans visibility event," there wouldn't even be a contest. Try to imagine being so poor you can't even afford pads. Try to imagine bleeding all over yourself and being able to do nothing about it. You *can't,* because that is not even a remote possibility for your body. Know who it has been a reality for? Among other people, me. In 2010 when my ex went batshit insane and I had to hitch from Wisconsin back to what then remained of my family in NYC.
What happens if you get raped? Okay, it's no better for you than for a cisgender woman, with the big exception that you don't have to risk pregnancy.
Take your "typical right-wing rhetorical technique" and shove it. This kind of selfish, self-absorbed horseshit is what makes TERFs. And while it will never make one out of me just on principle, you are seriously eroding my sympathy for transwomen with this crap. Just because a bunch of assholes treated you badly at the MWMF does NOT give you the right to paint all cisgender women as complicit in your abuse. I reached out an olive branch when we first met here, and you smacked me across the face with it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 27 2019, @05:46PM (15 children)
To be fair, a large proportion of cisgender lesbians who identify as "feminist" are in fact complicit in the abuse of trans women. I'm not saying that you are, but you're doing very little to distance yourself from this abuse.
I never thought I'd say this without a hint of irony, but here goes:
For fuck's sake, check your privilege.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 27 2019, @06:19PM (14 children)
I'm trying very, very hard not to be part of that. As said before, I will never be a TERF just on principle, but having known a grand total of one, ONE, eins, ichi, uno, transwoman who wasn't a complete nutbar, it's ONLY on principle at this point. I've had three insist that having genital preference is transmisogyny, one of whom was extremely persistent to the point of harassment, ALL of whom ignored the fact that I am TAKEN and have been for almost seven years. I haven't had good experiences with them is what I'm saying, and so long as we're talking about privilege, given my background in both poverty and anti-human-trafficking work, you'll forgive me if I choose to focus resources on the poorest and most vulnerable of us.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday January 27 2019, @08:24PM (13 children)
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.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 27 2019, @09:01PM (1 child)
Very interesting, and modded up because of it. I don't see how this gets squared with some of the other things you've said though, like your constant castigation of *all* cisgender women, me included, for your plight. Everything in your reply makes perfect sense, and I've actually come to many of the same conclusions; these would be the aforementioned principles keeping me from TERFdom. And the bitter irony is that by aligning themselves with the hard right, TERFs make things worse for all women but especially cis lesbians and pre-transition FtMs.
Aaron (nee Paige) has told me in detail about precisely the kind of accusations of "treason" you mentioned, and as you pointed out, the very existence of FtMs trashes the entire TERF narrative hard. I never thought I'd see a more invisible, marginalized group than cisgender lesbians but transmen are it, and have the odd distinction of making up more of my social circle than any group aside from cisgender women. They are also some of the most chilled people I've ever met post-transition, and don't seem to have any of the toxic masculinity about them so many cis men do. And of course, I still remember with incredulity and not a little hilarity being accused of being "traitor to the Lesbian Race" (yes, with capital L and R and yes that is a direct quote) by some TERF for being trans-inclusive.
This is nuts.
Can we get along? If you'll just drop the knee-jerk blanket blaming of all cis women for what you've experienced at the hands of a few who are considered fringe even among radfems, that would go a long way toward repairing the breach.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday January 27 2019, @09:31PM
I do, and I am sorry. I was deluded by those same right-wing forces of division.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 27 2019, @09:26PM (10 children)
This made sense up until you brought in politics. Trans womanhood exists without reference to any particular means of social organization (capitalist/communist/whatever). Furturemore you completely erase the existence of right-wing trans women. Caitlyn Jenner is an obvious example, and so-called "based traps" have recently risen to prominance in the alt-right movement, but trans women have always been represented among supporters of capitalism. Historically, only the very wealthiest trans women have had the resources to transition.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 27 2019, @09:43PM (8 children)
Caitlyn Jenner is a disgusting example of humanity. Just goes to show you a new pair of boobs doesn't make someone a better person, ugh. She cares about no one but herself.
I had never heard of the "based trap" phenomenon, but the term itself absolutely reeks of low-intelligence, smirking, overprivileged, thoughtless alt-righthood. "Trap" itself is one of those terms that gets transwomen killed, since it's a justification for "trans panic" murders, which are depressingly common. Sounds to me like they've done the equivalent of, well, what Jenner did, and become the right wing's "pet trannies."
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @12:08AM (7 children)
There exists a strong current in the alt-right which holds as cis women, mislead by feminist ideology, abandon traditional female gender roles trans women are a better alternative. Everything about femininity that cis women are taught is demeaning or wrong are intensely desirable for trans women, who largely escaped that conditioning. Realizing a traditional family dynamic has become very difficult for cis women, but trans women are eager to fill the void. And men are recognizing that.
Not only is the "trad[itional] trap waifu" currently a popular archetype among the alt-right, it's spreading in popularity as trans women transition earlier (to much better results) and cis women continue to double down on imitating the worst parts of masculinity. In the near future's "house with a white picket fence," the wife will likely have (or have had) a penis.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 28 2019, @01:38AM (6 children)
...i figured it had to be something like that. Ew, ew, ew. So this comes down to exactly what feminism was always fighting to begin with, and exactly as I feared on reading your earlier post, we have transwomen over-compensating and over-feminizing themselves to stay alive in a rightward-trending milieu.
That will end very, very badly for them. What a shitshow. And now I've got some more understanding of what feeds the fires of "gender-critical" feminism.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @03:55AM
It's probably more of the psychology of trans-women than any kind of overcompensation. A man raised in patriarchal society doesn't want to become a woman who wants to escape patriarchy - but rather to take the place assigned to a woman in patriarchy.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @04:31AM (4 children)
There's no standard of reference for being "overly-feminine" except individual tastes and preferences. A trans woman who celebrates a demure and submissive idea of womanhood is precisely feminine enough for her. And her partner. Whether some third party thinks it too much or too little femininity is altogether beside the point.
Nor is this merely some survival mechanism. Many trans women find joy and genuine fulfillment in these arrangements. Perhaps much like the (underrepresented) majority of housewives in 1950s American, who found traditional femininity empowering.
There's a certain poetry to how trans women are rediscovering the soul of femininity. A bit like finding the essence of the "American dream" in an immigrant neighborhood and not a WASPy country club. Competition is great for any market.
Those with the privilege of being incumbant players (cis women) will naturally complain, but everybody will find a place in the new equillibrium.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 28 2019, @05:17AM (3 children)
Modded +1 Interesting, as the same had occurred to me, but the dark side here is that the alt-right men have some very specific and very dehumanizing ideas about a "woman's place." I can only hope the transwomen playing into the "based trap" (ugh) archetype understand that this isn't some kind of kinky BDSM roleplay; this is for-real patriarchy with a capital P, the kind the *First Wave* suffered and died to fight off.
...also, it's hilarious how the notoriously homophobic alt-right is suddenly having no problem with having sex with people born males.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @12:39PM (2 children)
The third or fourth largest board on the infamous 8chan is /cuteboys/. Food for thought (and maybe other things).
If first-wave feminists had understood their plight as "kinky BDSM roleplay," they might have enjoyed it. Obviously true consent was impossible given the laws and social mores of the time, but today's circumstances are probably robust enough to support this lifestyle. Which isn't so bad in the first place.
Take the common meme that "a woman's place is in the kitchen." For a trans woman, being limited to this "woman's place" might be very gender-affirming. Certainly a breath of fresh air after a lifetime's confinement to often more restrictice male roles. The only problem arises when society tries to enforce this on every woman unilaterally. But, online shitposting aside, that's not likely to happen. We're just seeing pent-up demand for a good hitherto unavailable on the market being satisfied by new entrants. Most white Americans won't deign to pick fruit or scrub toilets, but Latinos use these jobs to vastly improve their living conditions. Likewise modern women vis-a-vis trans women regarding "martini and a blowjob"-style homemaking.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 29 2019, @01:44AM (1 child)
If it works for them, then more power to them, but the instant things go sour, we're going to see a wave of dead transwomen that makes the already-horrific carnage they face look like a vacation in Maui. These men are not stable or sane and transwomen are some of the most vulnerable people in the nation; what will happen the day one of these alt-righters suddenly has, for example, a hardcore religious experience and becomes violently homo- and trans-phobic? His transwoman wife is deader than disco, and will be LUCKY if all that happens to her is getting her head blown off with a shotgun, and sure as hell the local "justice" system will care nothing for her. She'll be as disposable as she would have been on the street, and believe me, in the course of the anti-trafficking work I've done, I've seen exactly how disposable people in that position are...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @09:28PM
It's amazing to read how far some people goes on hating. "Men" aren't willing to hurt you.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday January 27 2019, @10:18PM
My analysis here is a fundamentally political analysis, because the political process is how we decide to fund this women's shelter or that LGBT clinic or make preventative health services such as pap smears and mammograms available and to whom. I did not mean to imply that LGBT identities are primarily or only political identities. What I am saying is that capitalism is incapable of meeting the needs of the working class, and by implication is incapable of meeting the needs of LGBT people, women, racial minorities, etc in the working class.
Right-wing trans women like Caitlyn Jenner and pseudo-left trans women like Brianna Wu are well taken care of by the capitalist system. I erase them from my analysis, because their concerns are bourgeois concerns. The world they exist in is completely alien to the world the vast majority of trans women exist in.
Alt-right trans women in the working class occupy a precarious position. They will be eaten alive by fascism when it turns on them. Any noises that proto-fascists are making right now about LGBT acceptance will be as meaningless as Donald Trump inviting bourgeois trans women into the bourgeois women's room in Trump Tower while he creates the legal basis of the exclusion of working class trans women from working class women's rooms!
And I suppose if they are not eaten alive by fascism, well, that's worth something I suppose, perhaps a victory for a tiny intersectional struggle, though I do not know what else.
I am rejecting identity politics, because identity politics are right-wing politics. Identity politics seek to change LGBT identities into political identities, and that is wrong for the historical reasons you note. Changing LGBT identities into fundamentally political identities is historical revisionism and plays straight into the notion that these people are somehow a completely new phenomenon, never before seen in all of human history.
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday January 28 2019, @04:17AM (2 children)
Uterus transplants are becoming a reality and there's not really any real reason that they wouldn't work for anyone. First one seems to have been done in June of '31, with the ovary implantation earlier, unluckily the patient got an infection and died. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lili_Elbe [wikipedia.org]. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_pregnancy#Uterus_transplantation [wikipedia.org] and a little further down the page for examples of XY people giving birth.
Never say never.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday January 28 2019, @04:54AM (1 child)
Although it appears to work, the potential surgical complications and expense will be a turn off. Artificial wombs are going to be the real big advance, impacting all people and gender relations by removing the need for any female to carry a child to term. It may result in less complications for a child due to better control over the "fetal environment", although that will have to be studied.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday January 28 2019, @05:05AM
I agree about the complications and expense and am not advocating, just when someone says never, I wonder if it really couldn't happen or has happened.
As for artificial wombs, gestation and birth is very complex and it seems it will need a lot of study. Just things like how important the microbiome is to human health is a recent discovery along with it being a missing thing in none vaginal births as an example.