The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice

by Shon Faye

The Swedish courts finally overturned this foul policy in 2012 – but, in the intervening forty years, the practice had spread to many other European countries, including France, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Astonishingly, all were signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights when they enshrined this coercive violation of trans people’s bodies. The United Nations has recognized the mandatory sterilization requirement to be a form of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and the Council of Europe has, in the past decade, finally established that member states must abolish this requirement: in 2017, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that coerced sterilization violates trans people’s right to privacy and family life.39 Yet sterilization of trans people is still demanded in many countries around the world, including Japan.