I was thinking about this article and it seems to me that the solution
is to demand that governments just stop recognizing gender altogether.
That way anyone could claim to be male or female as he or she sees fit;
anyone could either have surgery or not as they see fit; anyone could
marry anyone they want and so forth. Government could then just
recognize each person as a person and ignore what kind of person they
might be or want to claim to be.
https://socialistaction.org/2019/01/31/japans-highest-court-upholds-sterilizations-for-trans-people/
Japan’s highest court upholds sterilizations for trans people
/ 12 hours ago
feb.2019transtakakitousui
s Supreme Court rejected the appeal of a transgender man, Takakito Usui,
to overturn Law 111, which requires applicants to “permanently lack
functioning” reproductive parts in order to qualify for gender affirmation.
By AUTUMN RAIN
The Supreme Court of Japan upheld an abhorrent law that explicitly
requires trans people to be sterilized in order to have their gender
recognized by the state—a terrible blow to trans people’s rights, and
reproductive rights generally.
Trans people are denied the right to have their gender legally
recognized in many countries. But even where they have attained this
basic right of recognition, they face other forms of state repression.
In Japan, Law 111 allows for legal recognition of a trans person’s
gender identity after transition. But it explicitly demands that the
transition entail sterilization and surgical alteration of genitalia,
which is not something universally desired by transgender people. Law
111 was challenged by Takakito Usui, a trans man, but the Supreme Court
of Japan upheld the law as constitutional on Jan. 24.
Among the governments of the world that allow individuals to legally
change their gender, many still require medical or surgical
interventions that lead to sterilization. Though the European Court of
Human Rights ruled against these sorts of requirements in 2017, 14
European countries continue to demand sterilization as part of gender
recognition (source: Transgender Europe)! And many states in the U.S.
continue to demand surgical intervention to change important documents
like birth certificates and state IDs, leaving pre-op and non-op
transgender individuals at risk of being outed in a country with
extremely weak protections, where they exist, against discrimination.
It is important to note that most governments where gender recognition
is possible (including the U.S.) pathologize the state of being
transgender, forcing trans people to go through a difficult process that
makes their gender a question of medical inquiry. So even where invasive
surgeries are not required, transgender people face hurdles wherein
states treat them as abnormal medical subjects.
But being trans is not a disease, and no one can vouch better for the
gender identity of a person than the person herself. Instead of allowing
the governments of the world to determine arbitrarily and cruelly which
bodies should be deemed authentic, and which surgeries should be
required of trans people regardless of their own desires, we should
trust that no people other than themselves can determine their own
gender identities. Mere self-identification is the only thing that
should be needed to legally change one’s gender.
It is dehumanizing to have to get permission from the government to be
who you are, yet there are only a few countries in the world (such as
Ireland) where people may legally change gender with a mere statutory
self-declaration. We must stand in solidarity with the movements in the
world for self-identification, for rights to gender recognition, and
against the pathologization and repugnant violations of bodily autonomy
by all states against trans people in the world.
Furthermore, we need a trans inclusive reproductive justice movement
that accounts for the myriad experiences within the working class, and
the various ways in which the right to reproduce is denied to workers.
The denial of bodily autonomy is paramount for the ruling-class goal of
disciplining the workforce and creating oppressed “surplus” populations.
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January 31, 2019 in East Asia, LGBT rights.
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Jules Verne
“ Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add
nothing to them. ”
― Jules Verne
