Transgender history in Finland

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The history of transgender people, their rights, legislation concerning them, and transgender healthcare in Finland dates from the earliest records in the 19th century.

Before there was legislation on transgender issues in Finland, it was possible for transgender people to change their gender marker or name. Transgender healthcare has been offered since at least the 1980s, but there was a lack of uniformity as courts and local authorities had widely different practices, and the national legislation that did apply was also generally not suited for serving transgender people. The first Finnish Trans Act was passed in 2002, came into force the next year, and gave legal recognition to transgender people and standardized their treatment by public authorities. It required that someone changing their gender be infertile, making a process that had become relatively simple in the 1990s harder. These aspects of the law were criticized by national and international organizations. The Social Democrat cabinets from 2019 onward promised to allow gender self-determination for adults. In 2021, an initiative to reform the law, but with a lower age limit, was started by the transgender advocacy organization Trans ry [fi]. It garnered the necessary 50,000 signatures within two days and was given to Parliament. The act was passed on 1 February 2023. As amended, it allows any adult to change their gender marker at their will.

Though trans patients were mentioned in medical journals in the 19th century and early 1900s, more extensive documentation exists from the 1950s onward. From the 1950s to the 1970s, psychiatrists were supportive of transgender patients' identities but were reluctant to provide somatic treatments like hormone therapy or gender-affirming surgery. Through the 1970s and 1980s, knowledge about trans healthcare improved, treatments became available, and, by the 1990s, they were relatively routine.