Japanese Supreme Court: Transgender people must have birth genitals removed to qualify as other gender

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.

The 2004 law states that people wishing to register a gender change must have their original reproductive organs, including testes or ovaries, removed and have a body that “appears to have parts that resemble the genital organs” of the gender they want to register.

The unanimous decision by a four-judge panel, published Thursday, rejected an appeal by Takakito Usui, a transgender man who said forced sterilization violates the right to self-determination and is unconstitutional.

HoratioTarr wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:

Yes, but it's not normal for a man to want to be a woman. What I mean is that the X chromosome is what makes a woman "feel" like a woman, so an extra X might make a man "feel" like a woman also. The Y chromosome is normally dominant, but two Xs might make a difference to how someone feels.

It's difficult know how they feel anyway because I don't really know if I feel like a woman or not - because I don't know what it feels like to be male.

What is normal?   It's more a case of what is more prevalent.   I'm sure trans people don't feel 'abnormal' just different.  They certainly shouldn't be treated as abnormal.  

As I've already said, and what Thor the Thicko seems to conveniently ignore, this isn't about the body but about the mind/emotions.   It's how a person feels rather than what the body is or isn't.  

There was a time when homosexuals were more or less tortured in a bid to 'cure' them of their 'disease'.  It was feared like some awful contagious disease.  

According to Ray Blanchard, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto, the reason for homosexuality could be that the mother’s body mounts an immune attack on the fetus of her unborn son. As the report authors explain:

Male fetuses carry male-specific proteins on their Y chromosome, called H-Y antigens. Blanchard hypothesized that some of these antigens promote the development of heterosexual orientation in males ... Because these H-Y antigens are not present in the mother’s body, they trigger the production of maternal antibodies. These antibodies bind to the H-Y antigens and prevent them from functioning.

With the H-Y antigens not functioning, it could be that the “be straight” signal in the fetus’s brain never flicks on.

It's  known that the male human embryo forms testes very early during pregnancy and that these promptly start to secrete testosterone. This means that the male brain is exposed to testosterone during a critical time during its development.

Testosterone, it appears, has a major role on the development of sexuality. In the 1980s, when Germany was still divided into a Western segment and an Eastern one under the domination of the then Soviet Union, a group of East scientists proposed that human homosexuality was the result of insufficient exposure to testosterone in the womb.  Since the moral atmosphere of the time in that country regarded homosexuality with abhorrence, they proposed that all pregnant females should have the fluid surrounding their male foetuses tested for testosterone. Those with low values (they did not specify what these were) should be aborted, thus eliminating gay men from East German society. An excellent example of the misuse of science, though it was never adopted.



https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/hormones-and-the-brain/201706/how-the-brain-determines-sexuality

Raggamuffin wrote:

HoratioTarr wrote:

What is normal?   It's more a case of what is more prevalent.   I'm sure trans people don't feel 'abnormal' just different.  They certainly shouldn't be treated as abnormal.  

As I've already said, and what Thor the Thicko seems to conveniently ignore, this isn't about the body but about the mind/emotions.   It's how a person feels rather than what the body is or isn't.  

There was a time when homosexuals were more or less tortured in a bid to 'cure' them of their 'disease'.  It was feared like some awful contagious disease.  

According to Ray Blanchard, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto, the reason for homosexuality could be that the mother’s body mounts an immune attack on the fetus of her unborn son. As the report authors explain:

Male fetuses carry male-specific proteins on their Y chromosome, called H-Y antigens. Blanchard hypothesized that some of these antigens promote the development of heterosexual orientation in males ... Because these H-Y antigens are not present in the mother’s body, they trigger the production of maternal antibodies. These antibodies bind to the H-Y antigens and prevent them from functioning.

With the H-Y antigens not functioning, it could be that the “be straight” signal in the fetus’s brain never flicks on.

It's  known that the male human embryo forms testes very early during pregnancy and that these promptly start to secrete testosterone. This means that the male brain is exposed to testosterone during a critical time during its development.

Testosterone, it appears, has a major role on the development of sexuality. In the 1980s, when Germany was still divided into a Western segment and an Eastern one under the domination of the then Soviet Union, a group of East scientists proposed that human homosexuality was the result of insufficient exposure to testosterone in the womb.  Since the moral atmosphere of the time in that country regarded homosexuality with abhorrence, they proposed that all pregnant females should have the fluid surrounding their male foetuses tested for testosterone. Those with low values (they did not specify what these were) should be aborted, thus eliminating gay men from East German society. An excellent example of the misuse of science, though it was never adopted.



https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/hormones-and-the-brain/201706/how-the-brain-determines-sexuality

Not normal doesn't necessarily mean bad, and I still say it's not normal for a man to want to be a woman.

It may well be all to do with feelings, but what is causing those feelings? What makes a man "feel" male in the first place? Feelings aren't a separate thing, and they're not outside the body, they're the result of physical events in the brain.

Raggamuffin wrote:

HoratioTarr wrote:

What is normal?   It's more a case of what is more prevalent.   I'm sure trans people don't feel 'abnormal' just different.  They certainly shouldn't be treated as abnormal.  

As I've already said, and what Thor the Thicko seems to conveniently ignore, this isn't about the body but about the mind/emotions.   It's how a person feels rather than what the body is or isn't.  

There was a time when homosexuals were more or less tortured in a bid to 'cure' them of their 'disease'.  It was feared like some awful contagious disease.  

According to Ray Blanchard, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto, the reason for homosexuality could be that the mother’s body mounts an immune attack on the fetus of her unborn son. As the report authors explain:

Male fetuses carry male-specific proteins on their Y chromosome, called H-Y antigens. Blanchard hypothesized that some of these antigens promote the development of heterosexual orientation in males ... Because these H-Y antigens are not present in the mother’s body, they trigger the production of maternal antibodies. These antibodies bind to the H-Y antigens and prevent them from functioning.

With the H-Y antigens not functioning, it could be that the “be straight” signal in the fetus’s brain never flicks on.

It's  known that the male human embryo forms testes very early during pregnancy and that these promptly start to secrete testosterone. This means that the male brain is exposed to testosterone during a critical time during its development.

Testosterone, it appears, has a major role on the development of sexuality. In the 1980s, when Germany was still divided into a Western segment and an Eastern one under the domination of the then Soviet Union, a group of East scientists proposed that human homosexuality was the result of insufficient exposure to testosterone in the womb.  Since the moral atmosphere of the time in that country regarded homosexuality with abhorrence, they proposed that all pregnant females should have the fluid surrounding their male foetuses tested for testosterone. Those with low values (they did not specify what these were) should be aborted, thus eliminating gay men from East German society. An excellent example of the misuse of science, though it was never adopted.



https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/hormones-and-the-brain/201706/how-the-brain-determines-sexuality

Not normal doesn't necessarily mean bad, and I still say it's not normal for a man to want to be a woman.

It may well be all to do with feelings, but what is causing those feelings? What makes a man "feel" male in the first place? Feelings aren't a separate thing, and they're not outside the body, they're the result of physical events in the brain.

HoratioTarr wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:


Not normal doesn't necessarily mean bad, and I still say it's not normal for a man to want to be a woman.

It may well be all to do with feelings, but what is causing those feelings? What makes a man "feel" male in the first place? Feelings aren't a separate thing, and they're not outside the body, they're the result of physical events in the brain.

I'd say perhaps yes and no to that.   Yes, because our brains are influenced by hormones etc.  No, because I do believe things like certain preferences can't be pigeonholed.  Like why some people prefer certain foods and others hate them.  Why some people find one type of person attractive and another not.  Is that determined solely through hormones and other chemical influences on the brain?  

HoratioTarr wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:


Not normal doesn't necessarily mean bad, and I still say it's not normal for a man to want to be a woman.

It may well be all to do with feelings, but what is causing those feelings? What makes a man "feel" male in the first place? Feelings aren't a separate thing, and they're not outside the body, they're the result of physical events in the brain.

I'd say perhaps yes and no to that.   Yes, because our brains are influenced by hormones etc.  No, because I do believe things like certain preferences can't be pigeonholed.  Like why some people prefer certain foods and others hate them.  Why some people find one type of person attractive and another not.  Is that determined solely through hormones and other chemical influences on the brain?