s051470: Shimizu, Yudai [CGS NewsLetter 001]
Introduction
On the plenary session of Diet held on July 10, 2003, the ruling and opposition parties voted unanimously to pass the "Special Law on Gender Identity Disorder" that would allow people with gender identity disorder to change their officially registered gender in their family registries under certain conditions. This law will go to effect from July 16 of this year. In this article, the author will give a brief introduction on the enactment process and the content of the law, and point out the problems of it in order to clarify the relations between the GID patients and law as well as society.
Background
Generally, Gender Identity Disorder (GID) is the decease suffered from the discordance between sex identity and gender identity. It is said that statistically, in Japan, there are about 2200 to 7000 people with GID, which is considered to be a large amount.
The Blue Boy Scandal, which occurred in 1964, was about the first Sexual Reassignment Surgery (SRS) operated in Japan. The operating surgeon was judged guilty for having offended the Article 28 of Eugenic Protection Law . From then on, GID and SRS issues had been never been taken up in public. However, recently the Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology operated the SRS under the GID treatment guideline. And the case of a student with GID was also raised in the popular TV serial "Kinpachi Sensei" (Teacher Kinpachi) televised in 2001. In 2003, Aiya Kamikawa, a GID patient, won the seat in the parliamentary election of Sedaya. With the happening of these cases, GID has become to be acknowledged by the public step by step.
However the fact is that GID patients are faced with many difficulties when they try to switch their registered gender in order to live a life in accordance with their gender self-identities. For example, although it would make them uncomfortable to present the ID cards and to be found out as GID patient, they was forced to show their family registers and insurance cards to get employed and to receive insured healthcare. And when going abroad, they also met problems in improving their gender while the gender records in the passports are found different from their appearance. To eliminate these difficulties, the GID patients and medical circle called for issuing a law to allow the GID patients to change their registered gender.
In the judicial precedent, although there are more and more cases of changing name in the family registration , it is not permitted to change the registered gender in most cases . Tokyo High Court declared in the decision dated February 9, 2000 that, since recognizing the GID issue and allowing or not the gender registration are important to the relative legislation and the future of our society, it is necessary to enact new law to resolve the problem . That means both the judicial circle and society are urged to find the ultimate solution in lawmaking.
Brief Introduction of the Law
According to the article 2 of this Act, GID patient is defined as person who persistently identifies with the opposite gender and has the desire to live and be treated as another gender, while the result of the diagnosis should be affirmed by more than two doctors who are with the necessary knowledge and experience to give an accurate diagnosis. According to the Family Court, if the person meets the requirements specified in the term 2 of the article 3, the judgment of gender transmitting could be called at the request from the person in question.
1. Person who is above 20 years old.
2. Person who is presently single.
3. Person who has no child.
4. Person who with no gonad or who with persistent lack of gonadal function.
5. Person whose genitalia with similar appearance to it of the opposite gender.
Chart Requirements for a Gender Transmit Judgment (Article 6 Term 1)
In principle, the person in question would be treated as people with gender transmitted in application of the Civil Law and the related procedure is to be done by making a new family register
Problems in the law
The enactment of this law means a lot to the GID patients who had been neglected in society and who had failed to be recognized by the legal system for long time. However, on the other hand there are still many problems in the law.
Especially, the item 3 of the requirements "Person who has no child" is the main target of the critical. This requirement is set from the perspective of child welfare to avoid the negative influence on the sustainability of the gender identity of the GID patient who has child. But the fact is that most of the GID patients are people who have children. It is pointed out that this kind of regulations may raise human rights problems by clamping restraints on someone's future by the person's past, like the child issue, with no respect for his or her will. Japan Federation of Bar Associations also submitted a proposal of changing the content "priority should be given to the well-being of children if the person in question has one or more children". It is emphasized that it is not appropriate to exclude all people who have child and the judgment should be given case by case with consideration of child's age, child custody, and life style and so on, to ensure children's well being.
At the same time, in the item 4 and item 5, the applicants are limited to those who had already received SRS operation, while the fact is that, in the people with GID, only a small group of people have received SRS or hormone treatment. It is said that about 60% of people with GID hope for a SRS operation. And actually the people who could receive operation is even fewer since some of them are not able to afford the expensive operation which costs almost several million yen, some are too old or too weak to receive the operation, and there are also some of them feel uncomfortable with operation on external genitalia. Other items of the requirement were also criticized, such as those that exclude minors and married as well as the biologically intermediate ones. Hereby we should pay attention to the perspective that only one fourth of the people with GID meet all requirements and are qualified for receiving the SRS operation.
Furthermore, from the view of the gender law studies, the special bill ignored the problem in the gender record in the family register relating to gender discrimination, and it also reflects the current gender discrimination system in which GID patient live in. Especially in the article 2, the GID is defined on the base of the dualistic theory on sex and the opinion that sex and gender should match each other, and the limitation on the child and marriage status also reflect the heterosexual gender standard.
However, the special law is considered to be very meaningful if consider its positive effect on resolving the economic and mental problems of GID patients, although we should still stick to the critical viewpoint on the system that had driven the GID patients into that kind of situation.
Conclusion
Through the study on this special law, I started to think about the future of a society with no gender discrimination. Although the law is said to be passed under the press from GID patients and it is only a compromised result that came from the consideration of reaching the goal of an earlier enactment, it did raise the social conscious towards GID, and it is also true that there are really some people have been helped by the new law. However as what I have already mentioned is that it is urged to modify the law to include the people who are currently excluded from the scope of application . And I think it is also necessary to consider the suggestion of abbreviating or deleting the column of gender in the administrative documents, giving an even deepened understanding of GID, and including the hormone treatment and SRS operation into the health insurance coverage and so on. Isn't it true that if gender had not been managed in the personal files like family register, or the society had been more tolerant to sex or gender, the people with GID would not have gone through these hardships? As members of society, we should try to make our society a nice place for any people to live.