Japan Should Join Germany and Peers in Upholding Trans Rights

On April 12, my fellow lawmakers and I voted in the German parliament to pass a landmark law protecting transgender people’s right to recognition before the law.

It was a momentous occasion for Germany to join peers around the world in becoming the 20th government to institute a legal gender recognition procedure based on an individual’s self-identification.

During an official visit to Tokyo in May as the head of the German parliament’s transportation committee delegation to Japan, I learned that Japanese parliamentarians are currently debating a change to Japan’s legal gender recognition procedure, namely the revision to the GID Special Cases Act.

I encourage Diet members to follow Germany and other peers in protecting transgender people’s rights to have their gender identity recognized on official documents through an administrative procedure with no compulsory medical interventions, including hormones, or other onerous requirements.

In Tokyo, I met with LGBT rights advocates who told me that Japan’s current legal gender recognition law makes trans people’s lives difficult. This was also true in Germany, where trans people like myself were constantly exposed to discrimination in everyday life due to inaccurate documents. We were also required to have medical experts “confirm” our identities before a legal document change was possible. 

Advocates also told me that in 2023 Japan’s Supreme Court ruled that the surgical sterilization requirement in the current law was unconstitutional. This is a watershed moment for trans people in Japan, and the ruling should prompt broad reform to update the law, including and beyond the issue of surgery.

In Germany,  Supreme Court’s ruling in 2011 already made surgical and hormonal interventions for gender recognition void and therefore, trans people in Germany have been able to change their legal gender without these medical intervention for more than a decade.

I am aware that there are people in Japan who insist that hormonal intervention should be made a requirement in replacement of surgery. However, I note here that German society has run without noteworthy problems for the past decade without either surgical or hormonal requirements for legal gender recognition. As a matter of fact, the overwhelming majority of the German population has not been affected by this progress at all.

What makes me proud of Germany’s new “Self-Determination Act” is that, on top of removing these medical interventions, it puts a critical aspect of civil registration – how one’s gender is recorded by the government – in the hands of the individual.

Transgender people know who we are, and do not need an assessment or evaluation by medical or mental health practitioners to confirm it. After years of unjust procedures the introduced law gives trans, inter, and non-binary people back the dignity they deserve.

Once the German law comes into force this autumn, the change of name and gender marker must be registered orally or in writing with the civil registry office. Three months after that, the person can go to the office and makes an official declaration expressing their desire to have their gender identity legally recognized.

The legal change then takes effect immediately. This short waiting period, along with the official paperwork and declaration, are the only requirements for the process – no compulsory surgery, no compulsory hormones, no mandatory evaluation by any practitioner.

In my meetings in Tokyo, I learned that much has changed around trans rights issues in recent years in Japan. These changes parallel some that we experienced in Germany as well.

Professional From a scientific point of view, the idea of a “natural” two-gender system has been refuted. In a statement, the German Psychological Society describes gender as a “multidimensional construct whose development is determined by the complex interplay of various physical, psychosocial and psychosexual influencing factors”. This shows that gender is more diverse and cannot be determined by biological characteristics or an external assessment.

In 2017, Berlin’s Humboldt University was commissioned by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth to produce a report on the “Need for Regulation and Reform for Transgender People”. The researchers highlighted that assessors themselves increasingly support abolishing the obligation to undergo an evaluation or assessment.

Additionally, further research （Meyenburg, Renter-Schmidt, K., & Schmidt 2015） found that a person’s gender identity cannot be assessed by others, as the “evaluation” through professionals in 99 Percent of the cases merely reflect what the person reports about themselves.

This underlines the centrality of self-determination and corresponds with the changes in policy at the World Health Organization in recent years, and the consensus from the world’s leading trans health organizations, such as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health（WPATH）.

I am inspired by the social progress in Japan around accepting and embracing transgender people as equals in society, and I encourage my colleagues in the Diet to protect trans people’s basic rights by reforming the legal gender recognition law to uphold self-identification as its core principle. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s recent statement resonates strongly in this regard: “Gender identity is diverse and different for each person, and no one should ever be denied their own gender identity.”

【Read in Japanese】日本もドイツや各国とともにトランスジェンダーの権利を守ってほしい

Ms. Nyke Slawik is a Member of the German Parliament, Vice Chair of the Committee on Transport and Member of the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. She is one of the two first openly trans people ever elected to the German Parliament.