Towards the end of October 2023, Japan’s Supreme Court ruled that their long-held legislation requiring transgender citizens to undergo medical sterilization and have “no functional reproductive glands” to legally change their gender is in fact unconstitutional. Even with this change, they must be unmarried and have genitals that present as the “gender” they are trying to identify as. Though there remain some obstacles, this court decision will allow for a life without legal violations of physical autonomy. In the spirit of this queer legislative win for Japanese people, we’d like to highlight how queer folks in other regions of Asia have also witnessed victories and an expansion of dedicated space within the past year.
The Homophiles, the Liberationists, and Us
Activism is rough, and we throw a lot of words around at each other. “Assimilationist!” “Unrealistic!” “Conformist!” “Aggressive!” LGBTQ+ activism has not only been met with virulent backlash from the cisgender, heterosexual side of society but also has been plagued by intra-community conflict on the best ways to do things. The tension surrounding LGBTQ+ activism boils down to a push and pull between outright rebellion and more incremental forms of justice. This conflict is not specific to the LGBTQ+ community; all sorts of movements spanning different identities and ideas encounter the contentious dichotomy between abolition and reform.
Roe v. Wade: What’s Next?
Roe v. Wade was overturned on June 24, 2022 reversing 49 years of legal precedent in the U.S.. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has made it clear he does not plan to stop there, and gay marriage could be next up to take a massive political hit.
The Lavender Laws
A deep dive into the history of legal rights for the LGBTQ+ community in the United States
From the Archive: The Feminist Mystake (Fall 2013)
Welcome to OutWrite’s “From the Archive” series! This series is designed to provide an opportunity to interact with our organization’s archives, assess the opinions and relevance of our past content, and bring that content into the present. In doing so,…