https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-67213374
In a landmark ruling the court says it is unconstitutional to require a trans person to undergo surgery.
It strikes me as wild but so much of the opposition towards LGBT rights in Japan is, effectively, a paperwork issue. Backed by bigotry, but fronted by paperwork.
The koseki system, or family registry system, basically cannot handle same-sex couples or parents. The system only allows for one male partner and one female partner, one male parent and one female parent. So Japan can't register same-sex marriages or parents.
But this might also be why sterilisation is required for trans people. Because the requirement for recognition of gender isn't actually just to be sterilised. The requirements are to be unmarried, have no children, and be permanently sterile. Because anything less than that could lead to a system where a marriage involves two same-sex partners, or a child has two same-sex parents. Which is impossible using the current paperwork, so it is forbidden.
So trans people have to be sterilised, and if they have children already, they can never be recognised by the current system. Because bureaucracy.
Sounds like they need to update their system.
Maybe it's just me, but in the digital age I don't think there's an excuse for systems like this to be too difficult to change. Heck, if you designed it like an idiot, then you deserve to pay the costs to fix it.
I know Japan lives in the stone age when it comes to governing, but that's simply not an excuse. Do better. Take money from your ruling class to fix these issues.
It's do-able. Let's get off our fucking hands and do it.
Sounds like they need to update their system.
Oh definitely. Desperately.
Maybe it’s just me, but in the digital age I don’t think there’s an excuse for systems like this to be too difficult to change. Heck, if you designed it like an idiot, then you deserve to pay the costs to fix it.
Thing is. I don't even think it would be that difficult to change. It's not like it's the first time we've ever had newer versions of forms. And the change isn't even drastic, just de-gender the terms. Partner 1 and Partner 2, Parent 1 and Parent 2.
One of the simple benefits of the paper-based way Japan tends to favour is that it can be updated and overriden by the person performing the process.
Boy, thank God that you don't have to deal with the draconian legacy codebases that governments have. There's a reason no sane engineer wants to get even near them, and it's because any change, no matter how small it is, completely breaks the entire system and no-one knows how.
Sure, a new system could be developed from the side, but implies getting engineers in a higher level than interns and governments don't have good reasons to hire them. Their broken system gives them the perfect excuse for their bullshittery.
Bureaucracy does tend to be inherently conservative, because it has to condense people into neat and tidy boxes in order to make them legible to an authority, so it will only allow formally defined categories, which will always lag behind culture. It also reduces people to numbers and strips them of their identities, which is another win for conservatism.
So it's a great excuse for conservatives, because they can just say, "computer says no" and deny you healthcare.
Bureaucracy is a necessary evil in a modern society. Perhaps if you're using a traditional definition of "conservative," that could be accurate in that it (purposefully) slows things down to allow the administrative state (just a bunch of regular people working in their field of expertise) to review permits, etc.
But if we're going by the current definition as used by the Republican party? Absolutely fucking not. These people are actively and openly working to literally "dismantle the administrative state." That is their stated goal.
Without bureaucracy, society would be untenable.
No, they're not doing that, that's a propagandistic lie. Outlawing abortion and trans people is a massive increase in the powers and scope of the state, not to mention how much they want to increase the powers of the police in the largest carceral system in history.
And bureaucracy exists primarily to address the legibility problem that states have in condensing millions of people's lives down to policies that can be enacted by a central ruling party. It doesn't exist to serve the people or the society, but the state which is the enemy of the people.
Perhaps that state is what you think is necessary for a "modern society", but I assure it's quite old and has a long history from which to demonstrate that it acts primarily to oppress.
It is literally their stated goal to "dismantle the administrative state." Please inform yourself:
And please don't just skip over those articles, that "Project 2025" is absolutely terrifying (and should surprise no one who's been paying attention). I would even recommend reading Project 2025 yourself.
Yes, they want authoritarian rule. And they are explicitly telling us exactly what they're going to do once they have it. Their persecution of LGBTQ+ people, and p.o.c. is a completely separate thing. One thing about fascism is that it's never consistent. It's a feature. They will say whatever they need to say to do what they want to do and get what they want to get.
With all due respect, as someone with a career that often works hand in hand with bureaucracy in my day to day working life, you are completely uninformed about the subject. Of course it can sometimes lead to unnecessary red tape, but the alternative would be absolute chaos, with a complete lack of public health and safety, and zero accountability when people literally die because someone thought we didn't need the FDA anymore.
I'm not going to get into a big argument about bureaucracy, but so many people are so ill informed about why it is so important, and that's frustrating.
Edit: No response? Nothing? Huh, what a surprise.
Anyway, it turns out that debunking your crap is way easier than I thought it would be, because it's so paper thin, so I may as well just do it.
The idea of dismantling these agencies isn't novel. Republicans have long run on the idea that the federal government is too big and needs to be streamlined. Abolishing the Department of Education, in particular, has been a Republican Party goal since the agency was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.
President Ronald Reagan made it a standard applause line.
But there's a reason it hasn't happened.
There are so many roadblocks to any such effort, experts said, that none could identify the last time a high-level department was entirely wiped off the map.
Literally this is just campaign rhetoric that never happens. Exactly the propagandistic lie I said it was. Your own article frames it as such. They are fascists and they are full of shit.
With all due respect: As someone who works directly with this kind of thing, you need to know that this is more than rhetoric.
And it is in the process of happening already. Trump did tons of damage to the administrative state at the federal level, and GOP state governments are doing it in their respective states across the country. You maybe just haven't been made aware of it because it's "boring" and not "sexy," so it gets next to no coverage.
Look at how they're dismantling the IRS.
Look at how SCOTUS just ruled that over half of America's wetlands (by scientific definition) aren't actually wetlands, and therefore no longer need protection from the EPA.
Look at what Trump was doing with the USPS (in cases like these, killing the government's involvement means private companies do it instead. How convenient. And how do those companies curry favor with a fascist leader?
You can find lists and lists of regulations that have been killed since 2016. This is very real.
There are regulations that have been in place for decades that are being gutted or removed completely.
Did you read the plan they put out at all? It's already underway.
You seem to be missing the point. Fascism demands complete control. That means when millions of career scientists who's research goes against your goals, you purge them.
We're not quite at that level, but it's in their 2025 plan. Part of it is to, over time, replace career public servants who do their job with no bias, with gop lackeys.
Complete control doesn't always mean more. It also means purging those who may stand against you.
You're just so confidently incorrect, and I can tell you haven't actually looked at their very real plans for the near future. Yes, they've talked about it in the past.... And? Now they're in the position to do it, so they are doing what they've always talked/dreamed/wished about.
Business plays a big role in allowing fascism to take hold, historically. Please remember that.
Edit: added more examples as they're coming to me
None of this actually addresses the point that I was originally making, which is that bureaucracy is inherently conservative.
Conservatives dismantling certain kinds of regulation has no bearing on that.
Fascism needs bureaucracy in order to function.
Strikes me as awfully convenient that there's no such thing as a bad guy and all bad ideas are easily dismissed as "campaign rhetoric"...
Edit: No response? Nothing? Huh, what a surprise.
People have lives, asshole. I just moved my entire house twice in the last two weeks, but I'm so sorry I didn't drop fucking everything to answer you. I can answer what you've said, but after that bullshit you'd have to tell me you're actually interested in what I have to say, otherwise I won't bother.
Truly: don't bother.
You should still inform yourself about the (stated) goals of the modern conservative movement in the US.
Okay, so it sounds like you're saying you're not curious about what I have to say because you have judged me too ignorant to have anything worth saying.
Of course how you arrive at this position without being curious about what I think in the first place is a bit of a mystery.
As it should be. What kind of moron would suggest that sterilising people is the right thing to do?
Ooooh, you're not gonna like this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell
And btw, this decision has, to this date, never been overturned. So yes, according to the Supreme Court of the United States, it is ok and constitutional to forcibly sterilize people.
to the best of my knowledge even after this ruling, you would still need to be sterilized to get your gender marker changed as the requirement of having genitalia that matches your preferred gender is still in effect. You also need to be 18+, unmarried and have no children who are minors.
In case anyone wasn't aware, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in 1927 that forcibly sterilizing people is constitutional and totally cool.
This ruling still stands to this day.
We already found out just how secure rights backed only supreme court precedent are against the current court. If that taught us anything it is that any right not explicitly spelled out as an amendment can be revoked at any time. Don't jinx it.
Japan is a very regressive nation.
Racism, classism, sexism, transphobia, xenophobia, you got it all in Japan and most of them are proud of it.
Yup, peeps don't like to admit how totalitarian / dystopian all the sea countries really are, or how enourmously proud the average man or woman are of all the regressive ideals and cultural norms. Thinking real change is possible in a system if we "get off our hands" is so unbelievable naive. Has anyone in this thread actually spent any time working or living in Japan or any other Asian island nations? The xenophobia and classism is so next level the only comparison in the west is a deranged Trumper who believes white people should be paid more than any other race for their contributions to ccultured civilization.
I don't have alot of personal experience with transphobia as other than Fillipino and Thai ladyboys, who are kinda their own thing, culturally. (Not to say their societal reputation is very good, or even a positive, as they are basically expected to emgage in sex work. I have never meet a asian trans person outside the west other than the two previous examples.
Japan is on of the few western aligned countries that i believe literally needs a big dose of post modern French style feminism. Full on women strikes across the board. The average Japanese man is physically and emotionally incapable of taking care of himself and any potential children or dependents.
Not saying this is the case, but they should take their time to fact check and develop a story like this.
I mean, yes fact checking is good, but beyond translating existing Japanese sources on a Supreme Court ruling, which is already written down... there's not much to clarify here. It's not like it's war coverage where it's dangerous to even cover stories at all.
I am glad that BBC was able to give me a timelier update on much more 'impactful' news like Blackpink's Jisoo and actor Ahn Bo-Hyun's break up though.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Japan's Supreme Court has ruled that it is unconstitutional to require citizens to be sterilised before they can officially change genders.
The woman'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.
"The government now needs to act quickly to remove the clause," Kanae Doi, Japan director of Human Rights Watch told news agency Reuters after the verdict.
Recent opinion polls have shown growing support for LGBTQ-friendly laws - although there is opposition from conservative sections of society and politicians.
Earlier this month, a local family court ruled in favour of a transgender man - Gen Suzuki- who requested to have his gender legally changed without undergoing the surgery.
The family court judge, Takehiro Sekiguchi, said the current law violated Article 13 of the Constitution that stipulates all people shall be respected as individuals.
The original article contains 307 words, the summary contains 152 words. Saved 50%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!