Germany’s gender self-ID law is dangerous and regressive

Just days before Germany’s deeply unpopular and chaotic government coalition collapsed, a new gender ‘self-identification’ law came into force. On 1 November, it became legal for people aged 14 and over to change their gender simply by making a declaration to a registry office, which they can do once per year. While minors will need the consent of their parents or legal guardians to alter their legal gender, they can seek recourse in the family courts should their parents or legal guardians refuse.

What a state Germany is in. As the economy continues to contract and unemployment rises, chancellor Olaf Scholz’s collapsing administration is busily promoting gender ideology. The so-called Self-Determination Act clearly shows how woke authoritarianism is the default mode for this failing, ineffective government.

Some, of course, are celebrating the new gender self-ID law. The Green Party, one part of the collapsed coalition, claimed that the changes ‘make our society more open, more democratic and more diverse’. Marco Buschmann, who served as justice minister until the coalition’s collapse last week, praised the act as an example of ‘tolerance’ in ‘an open society’.

The views expressed by the Greens and Buschmann are all too typical of the failed coalition. It has been far more interested in virtue-signalling than in representing the interests of its citizens. The truth is that the law is not democratic, free or liberal. It was not the result of a broader popular movement, but the relentless campaigning on behalf of a small group of activists.

Supporters of gender self-ID made much of a recent YouGov survey, which they claim shows high public support for the law. Yet this doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The question people were asked was whether they supported an act ‘intended to facilitate the process for transgender, intersex and nonbinary people who wish to change their gender’. It was a tendentious question – who wouldn’t want to make life easier for other people? Yet even then, only 47 per cent responded ‘yes’, while 37 per cent said ‘no’ and 16 per cent said they ‘didn’t know’. Had YouGov asked whether they thought people – including 14-year-olds – should have a right to change their gender every 12 months, the responses would surely have been different.

Most Germans have paid little attention to the Self-Determination Act, and there has been a distinct lack of interest in the issue in the mainstream media. This indifference has seemingly worked to the benefit of the trans lobby, which has been able to advance this piece of legislation almost unnoticed.

Instead of striking a blow for diversity, as the Greens claim, the new law has either left people cold or antagonised them. Women’s organisations have warned that the new law will further endanger women-only spaces. Their concerns are far from groundless. This year, a women’s fitness studio in the Bavarian town of Erlangen was threatened by Germany’s commissioner for anti-discrimination because its owner had turned down the membership application of a transwoman (ie, a man). The commissioner demanded the business owner pay the trans-identifying male €1,000 for ‘personal injury’.

The new law may well have darker, unforeseen consequences. Gay rights’ activists, like journalist Jan Feddersen, have warned that it threatens gay people, as many young people who are placed on the medical pathway to transition would otherwise grow up to be gay. Legal experts have drawn attention to the new law’s curtailment of parents’ rights. For if parents oppose their child’s wish to change gender, the courts will step in and grant consent instead. This undermines any parent who has a critical view of transgender ideology, or is simply concerned about the welfare of their child. At the same time, it empowers pro-trans parents who might be a little too convinced their child is stuck in the ‘wrong body’. Either way, this law does not serve the best interests of the child. Its main function is to promote and legally entrench gender ideology.

The danger this legislation poses to vulnerable children who are confused about their gender has been highlighted by medical experts. Youth psychiatrist Alexander Korte, a board member of the German Society for Sexual Medicine, Sexual Therapy and Sexology, has warned that promoting the idea that we can be born in the wrong body will encourage more children to transition rather than address their underlying mental-health issues. Adolescent girls are particularly at risk, he says. Statistics already show that gender-reassignment surgery is on the rise, with over 100 German 15- to 20-year-olds and over 1,000 20- to 30-year-olds undergoing surgery in the past year.

The legislation also carries a strong punishment for those who refuse to conform. Talking about or revealing a person’s birth sex, if distinct from their legal gender, could land the offender with a €10,000 fine.

Of course, those courageous enough to challenge the new gender self-ID law had already faced harassment and cancellation. Trans lobbyists have called for Feddersen to be dismissed from his job as editor of the progressive newspaper, Taz. And activists were similarly outraged when Korte was invited by the opposition Christian Democratic Union as an expert witness for a parliamentary hearing on the new law. One called him an ‘extremist’ because of his opposition to experimental puberty blockers, even though his scepticism is backed up by considerable medical evidence. The new law will make standing up to gender ideology even tougher.

The only good news is that the government that implemented this regressive and dangerous law is slowly dissolving. We can only hope that the next government will scrap it.

Sabine Beppler-Spahl is spiked’s Germany correspondent.