The Japanese Society of Gender Identity Disorder, a body promoting transgender studies, has decided to drop "disorder" from its name based on the latest understanding of people with gender identities differing from those assigned at birth.
The change, announced Sunday at its general meeting, is in line with the World Health Organization's recent advice to use the term "gender incongruence" instead of "gender disorder." The society's new English name is yet to be formally decided.
Speaking to reporters in Okinawa Prefecture after the meeting, Mikiya Nakatsuka, president of the society and a professor at Okayama University's graduate school, expressed hope that the name change would help increase public awareness of transgender people.
"Without a societal change, the hardships faced by transgender people will persist," Nakatsuka said.
The WHO stopped using "gender identity disorder" from its 2022 international diagnostic manual and treated the issue under its sexual health chapter rather than as a mental disorder.
The society has used gender identity disorder in its name since its establishment in 1999 as a research group, but it proposed a name change to its members amid the international shift, which also included the American Psychiatric Association replacing the term with "gender dysphoria" in 2013.
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