Japan —
A Japanese court rejected a male-to-female transsexual's
request to change her officially registered sex because
she already has two children who were born before the
operation, a news report said Monday.
The Gifu prefecture
(state) family court on Jan. 16 turned down a sex change
registration request filed by Atsuko Mizuno, 44, Kyodo
News agency reported Mizuno as saying. Gifu is located
274 kilometers (171 miles) west of Tokyo.
Mizuno said the court
denied the request because the 2004 law permitting
changing one's registered sex stipulates that the
individual must be unmarried with no children,
Kyodo reported.
Family court officials
declined to comment on the report, citing privacy
concerns.
The 2004 law allows
people to change their registered sex if they've had a
sex-change operation and have been diagnosed by at least
two doctors as having gender-identity
disorder.
Applicants must be aged
20 or older, unmarried with no children and not be able
to reproduce.
The rationale for
including the stipulation regarding children is that
children would be confused should a parent change his or
her registered sex, according to the home page of a
transgender support group that Mizuno
co-leads.
Mizuno filed the request
because she wanted to demonstrate "that it is the
legislation and the family court ruling that are making
things confusing," she said according to
Kyodo.
Mizuno was married and
had two children before being diagnosed with a gender
identity disorder in 2001 and undergoing a sex-change
operation, the agency said.
Mizuno and the children's
mother are divorced, the report added.
A Japanese court granted
a transsexual's sex change registration request for the
first time in July 2004, shortly after the new law was
implemented.
