Jun 6, 2021
When Fumino Sugiyama, then a fencer for the Japan women’s national team, decided to come out to one of his coaches as a transgender man, he was not sure what to expect.
What followed shocked him in its brutality.
“You’ve just never had sex with a real man,” the coach responded, and then offered to perform the deed himself, according to a letter that Sugiyama wrote last fall to Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee.
Sugiyama, 39, who is now an activist, wanted to give Bach an unvarnished picture of the deeply entrenched discrimination in Japan, particularly in the rigid world of sports. He also hoped Bach would lobby the Japanese government on a bill protecting gay and transgender rights. Doing so, Sugiyama wrote, could shield “the next generation of athletes from what I experienced.”
Legislation labeling discrimination “unacceptable” has been blocked by conservative lawmakers, showing how far the country has to go to fulfill the goal of equality enshrined in the Olympic charter.