I’m a 25 yr old nonbinary transgender person who will be fully transitioned by the end of the year. My legal gender on my ID is “X.” But since the US federal government doesn’t allow “X” on passports yet, my passport gender is “F.” The names match.
This is a problem if I want to move to Japan, right? Theoretically, if the US were to allow me to change my passport gender to “X” one day, and all my documents matched, would I be able to get a visa? Or is it just a hard no because I’m nonbinary, even if my documents match?
I’ve tried doing research but can’t find anything on nonbinary people. 🙁
edit: It turns out I can get X on my US passport as of April 2022, so my legal gender/sex will match on my US documents. 🤔
7 comments
There is no “X” in Japan. You’re male or female. That’s it. If your passport says you’re a woman, Japan will register you as a woman.
This is going to be… Complicated.
Japan doesn’t legally recognize X/3rd Gender/Nonbinary. So attempting to apply for a visa is going to be a struggle. As is living in Japan if you manage to get said visa. Generally the answer to questions like this is “Your gender in Japan is the gender on your passport”, but…. I honestly don’t know how it would go if your passport is marked “X”. Honestly, in terms of a visa you would have better luck as a non-binary presenting legal female than as a legally non-binary person.
Honestly the only real advice that can be given here is “Consult with an immigration attorney”.
As for actually *living* in Japan… It’s also going to be complicated. Particularly when it comes to work. For most jobs (particularly English teaching and most traditional office jobs) you’re going to be expected to present as your legal gender. Even if you somehow manage to get a visa/residence card with an X on it, you will probably *still* be expected to present as either M/F.
Asia is not welcoming to people in your situation.
If you disagree, Asia isn’t the palace for you. I’m sorry but that’s the way it is.
Does it really matter to you that much what a paper says? You’re going to complicate things down the line if you change it to X
I would recommend really weighing the benefits of moving to Japan. Japan is still a pretty conservative society and gender fluidity isn’t yet accepted (or even known as a serious possibility). If your gender is something which is important to you (as it is for many people) Japan probably isn’t really the best environment.
It’s not really that you can’t get a visa “because you are non-binary”. It’s just that there is currently no possibility that you can have your gender on Japanese legal documents listed as the alphabet letter X. It comes down to how much of a dealbreaker that would be for you. Unfortunately I think we are quite a while away from American passports listing something other than male or female. But If/when the time comes, I’m sure the Japanese immigration will figure out how they are going to handle that. You may not get what you want on the visa documents but I doubt their policy will be, no visa for non binary people. In that sense, I don’t think it’s really worth worrying about that legal documents aspect. But to be clear, they don’t even have a “gender” field in Japan. It’s a 性別 field. Is that sex, or gender? Don’t know how good your Japanese is but you might want to explore non-binary equivalents in Japanese and Japanese communities. This would also probably help with the issue of what life in Japan as a non-binary person would actually be like, which is separate from the whole visa paperwork issue.
You actually can get X on passports now in the US.