Gender Change without Surgery

For a man who changed gender to live as a man, is surgery needed? The court answered the question “no.” Hamamatsu Branch of Shizuoka Family Court decided on Wednesday that a provision of Act on Special Cases in Handling Gender Status for Persons with Gender Identity Disorder violated Constitution of Japan which guarantees pursuit of happiness for the people. It indicates that Japanese society can be regarded as having progressed to the extent it is not disturbed by freedom of gender identity.

Article 3 of the act lists up conditions for a person to be recognized as having changed gender, one of which is having no “reproductive glands or whose reproductive glands have permanently lost function.” For a person to make “reproductive glands” lose function, no measure except having gender reassignment surgery can be imagined. A person, who is a woman in terms of family registry and recognize himself as a man and suffered from gender identity disorder, filed a lawsuit to the court in 2021, requiring change of his family registry.

 

The branch found that the act on gender identity disorder would harm the individual rights guaranteed by the constitution for being respected one’s gender identity or not being hurt one’s body. Presiding Judge Takehiro Sekiguchi told on the provision as irrationally discriminating the people with gender identity disorder from others. The petitioner Gen Suzuki accepted the decision as a great hope for whom suffering from not being their gender acknowledged.

 

The court recognized that the petitioner, born to be a woman, had discomfort to be a woman by the time of going to a mid-school and medically recognized as suffering gender identity disorder in 2021. The surgery to remove reproductive glands poses a significant impact on the body and the decision for having the surgery depends on the individuals.

 

And the court decision describes the purpose of the act to be consideration of possible social confusion which can be brought, if a baby were born with the reproductive function before the sex change. But it raises a question against the provision that it lacks necessity and rationality, because a childbirth after sex change should be rare and the treatment for gender identity disorder does not require reassignment surgery.

 

The significance of the decision was making the provision of surgery requirement obsolete. According to the report of Tokyo Shimbun, 11,919 people has been recognized their gender change after the act was enacted in 2004. Certain number of the people in Japan live their lives based on their changed sex, regardless persistent protests of conservative activists or lawmakers. Although the Supreme Court decided that the provision was constitutional in 2019, there has been a change in the society on recognition of gender, as seen in the legislation of LGBT Understandings Promotion Act in June this year. The judicial branch should be changed.

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