A Mainichi Shimbun column focusing on gender identity issues has won the grassroots democracy section of the 10th Waseda Journalism Award in Memory of Ishibashi Tanzan.

The column, “Kyokai o Ikiru” (Living on the boundaries), written by a team headed by Koichi Tanno, started in September 2009. It highlights the anguish of children with gender identity disorders and patients with sexual differentiation disorders caused by hormonal abnormalities that make it difficult to determine their gender. It addresses the slow response to such issues in the fields of medicine and education, as well as the lack of understanding in society.

“It addresses a fundamental problem that is not commonly picked up in the mass media, and adopts a gentle perspective with reports that focus on people individually. It raises questions suggesting that being a person is what is important without dividing men and women into separate categories,” a statement on the Mainichi’s award said. …

Editorial comment:

OII rejects the term Disorders of Sex Development (DSD) as pathologising and stigmatising. Further, intersex is not a question of gender or of gender identity: intersex is biological variation in sex.

The Mainichi Daily News: Mainichi column on gender issues wins Waseda journalism prize