SelfID law passed in German parliament.

Actually, there's more information and context on that site than I'd realised!

Here's Germany:

https://rsf.org/en/country/germany

Like this, but also with evidence on a broader basis:

https://rsf.org/en/index

Thanks so much, that's fascinating.

I wonder if there's some global organisation that reports on media country by country, how open it is, how it's funded, how widely read, with commentary on press freedom etc.

I often roll my eyes at taz, but occasionally it has its moments.

Neues Deutschland (roughly equivalent to the Morning Star) has been weirdly quiet on the whole issue, apart from a hit piece against the Wagenknecht people accusing them of being fellow travellers of the far right. I know ND is formally independent of Die Linke these days, but it's still constricted by the party's politics (and the TWAW position of the dominant faction isn't universally popular in the party) so it's contented itself with taking a pop at an acceptable target.

I also suspect ND know their actual audience of elderly East Germans are not on the same page as the trendy urban vote that the Linke leadership are chasing, so their feminism mostly takes the form of waxing nostalgic about the GDR's abortion law.

Coverage on the bill has been very restricted. I'd say partly because the topic still has low issue salience, and also, needs too much prior knowledge - so it's outsourced to the activists who have an axe to grind.

Public broadcasters are utterly captured - one saccharine "trans child" film or documentary after the other. Broadsheets are mostly the same with less of the sentimentality. The main Berlin paper, Tagesspiegel, is utterly captured, apparently due in part to trans offspring somewhere up high, plus Berlin is the capital of woo. The Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung is critical, but sadly also a little too well liked by the German right wing, although a hard right hostile takeover failed a few years ago. That limits their credibility.
The right-wing press in Getmany itself means mostly Springer with their broadsheet Welt and tabloid Bild, and they've been oddly reticent. A couple of years ago Springer head Döpfner quashed critical coverage after Die Welt got disinvited from a careers fair after providing a forum to a GC guest article. They're now slowly putting their head over the parapet again, but only cautiously.
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/streit-um-transgender-gastbeitrag-in-der-welt-doepfner-und-die-queere-jobmesse-sticks-stones-18081571.html

Oh and funnily enough the wackiest left-wing paper of them all, taz, has been somewhat heterodox for years. Lots of utterly strident transactions articles, but also occasional pieces by a lovely GC journalist, Jan Feddersen. I think it's cause they're still anarchists at heart.

There are two main categories of media, public and private.
Public TV and radio stations are supposed to be neutral and report impartial, but they are also of course obligated to the democratic values. Thus, when there is a topic that endangers democracy, they shouldn't be impartial and uncritical. The public media is financed by taxes and a fee which every household pays.
I think that is a comparable category to the BBC perhaps.

I think there is no "public" newspaper in that sense, but the TV and radio stations have homepages and apps, and for example "Tagesschau", which was linked here, is the homepage of the main evening news of public TV.
The "Deutsche Welle" is a public site / station with news in English, but I looked there this week for the coverage on this topic and it wasn't that much.

Then there are all the private TV and radio stations, newspapers and pages. These often lean towards one party or another, or not directly towards a party but towards a political group, like liberal, socialdemocratic, conservative and such. A subgroup of them is the Yellow Press, or like other posters mentioned "Springer media/press", with Springer being the main publisher behind many of them, but they also publish weekly magazines that are not exactly Yellow Press, but more centre.
Springer could be compared to Murdoch media.

It seems the debate is free, in theory, it's just not always very in-depth or complex.
A big problem are also trolls and hate-campaigns, and unless you have nerves of steel and a bunch of lawyers behind you, some people will not publish some things anymore, which are then mostly smaller homepage or social media accounts, who don't have the apparatus behind them like large corporations.

An ordinary citizen can be prosecuted and fined for misgendering a male who self identifies as a woman. But in the event of a war the government will make an exemption and insist these Males are in fact men. In effect misgendering them.

Still live in the UK, so not sure now much it is present day to day, but from what I gather none of my family knew about the proposed law or that parliament would vote on it.

"Der Spiegel", one of the biggest news and current affairs magazines often had comments open until about a year ago, then they changed the topics you could comment on. Now they only have "debates" to certain topics for a very limited amount of time.
The "Focus" is, I'd say, a centre-right magazine, the few articles I read on there often had comments open which where overwhelmingly in opposition to TRAs and their goals.

Germany's biggest news paper is Bild, but I don't read it (really) nor does anyone I know. However, I would be very surprised if they supported the new law.
The issue with Bild is, that people who read it are looked down upon as uneducated, racist and many more isms you can think of, a bit like DM readers are regarded. Nevermind that between all the sensationalism and hyperbole, there are truthful(ish) and good articles.

On the public radio station I listen to, it wasnt even mentioned.

That's exactly what I was thinking.

Their official ID documents say they're female, but government records still say they're male. So everyone else has to pretend that they've changed sex, but the government doesn't.

When I read about that exemption it just emphasises the absurdity of this whole situation. An ordinary citizen can be prosecuted and fined for misgendering a male who self identifies as a woman. But in the event of a war the government will make an exemption and insist these Males are in fact men. In effect misgendering them. It is r I d I c u l o u s. They don't believe this crap do they? They know already men will self identify for nefarious reasons.

Can I ask what German media is like, is there much open, free discussion? Is it diverse?

@SwordToFlamethrower

(cont.)

Another strong aspect is the #bekind movement, too, without any further thought to whom the new law is very unkind.

Finally, and very crucial, there is a lot of #nodebate and any questions about scientific evidence and a Cass-report like responsibility are turned either into transphobic or people are immediately shunned as right-wing (which they are in 99,9% of the cases not).

The right-wing party/parties has indeed included this topic into their talking points (just like in the US) which is why it would have been much better if the democratic parties had been less of a walkover and more reasonable.

This is absolutely crazy as usually the Germans will argue until they’re blue in the face about correct sorting into the different recycling bins, but this is just swept away as “don’t ask about that”.

Of course any decent left-wing/socialdemocrat/green-person does not want to be thrown together with the far-right for questioning this topic and asking for evidence / pointing out the problems, which is why it’s a very handy shut-up mechanism.

@SwordToFlamethrower
"Are the German government so naive as to think that people won't exploit the system and abuse it or do they really just not care about the safety, dignity and fairness for women and children?"

Unless you actively search for or look at specific media, there is not much additional information in-your-face about all the implications down the road, mostly the coverage is very general and not going into details about safe spaces for women and children, the healthcare implication, the fairness aspect and so on. Also, as in the discussions here about the UK, it’s mostly about TW feelings and not about the feelings of the women shoved aside.

Language confusion: the German word “Geschlecht” implies both biological and social information. Especially in literature and philosophy, the social meaning additionally to the biological was always there. One could separate the meanings by saying “biologisches Geschlecht” und “soziales Geschlecht”.

With the introduction of the gender debate, usually there was no separate German word in everyday language. People would have to use “soziales Geschlecht”, for example, but mostly the English term “Gender” was used. Though most people speak English, I am not sure really everyone twigged the complete meaning.

Stirred into this word pudding was the discussion about traditional roles, which is much older.

That way, many people who reject traditional roles for men and women (in-)voluntarily accepted the gender-changes, too. I think this is a crucial point and where it went wrong and took a wrong turn, and into regressive stereotypes.
A man who wears dresses, has long hair and likes knitting can do all that while being a man.
A woman with short hair, a pilot license, who collectors toy tractors and hates cooking can do all that while still being a woman.

Instead somehow this freedom from fixed social roles of the past and from dress codes was mixed (probably intentionally) with the trans debate.

There's now a petition asking the Bavarian state government to file a constitutional challenged. Numerous arguments but one of them is patents might be tempted to trans their daughters in order to evade criminal sanctions on female genital mutilation (male circumcision being permitted.)

https://citizengo.org/de/pt/12935-Nein-zum-Selbstbestimmungsgesetz--Schalten-Sie-das-Verfassungsgericht-ein-?utm_medium=shared&utm_campaign=typage&utm_source=wa&_ref=

@SwordToFlamethrower

It seems as though, the part about under 14s needing parental consent is where the assumption is being made that technically, parents could have say, a male baby born, but to put female to bring them up "as a girl"? So, like a loophole.

Not quite. Over 14s make the declaration themselves but still need parental consent. If there's disagreement the child can apply (to court?) to have it overridden. Under 14s, parents make the declaration but need the consent of the child if the child is over 5.

With a baby... Parents can't simply register the wrong sex since a certificate from hospital/the midwife is needed for registration. They could presumably apply to change it shortly thereafter, but I can see German Standesbeamte getting quite stroppy about that - they've long had the power to reject ludicrous sleb-type children's names, and used it liberally! There'd probably be a referral to social services for endangering the child's welfare. But again, with a 2 or 3 you old it's much more of a grey area. There's a video of a TW dad asking his 3 y.o. son what his preferred pronouns are...! (There's also a separate video by the bloke's FIL saying he's shunned by the extended family because of abusive behaviour... now there's a surprise.)

Thanks for taking the time to reply to me. My future DIL is German and speaks fluent English. She is doing Alevels at the moment so don't want to burden her with it just now.

It seems as though, the part about under 14s needing parental consent is where the assumption is being made that technically, parents could have say, a male baby born, but choose to put female to bring them up "as a girl"? So, like a loophole.

But my understanding is that under 14s need parental consent, but the child must actually state they want to change their legal gender/sex. A baby can't ask to change genders so I'm not sure. I'd love to see the wording though. In English of course!

Are the German government so naive as to think that people won't exploit the system and abuse it or do they really just not care about the safety, dignity and fairness for women and children?

The German self-ID law is indeed bonkers! And it is astounding that countries like Finland and Norway, countries that I have considered to be beacons for women's rights and equality, also allow self-ID and have thrown women's rights under the bus in such a spectacular way! In Finland the self-ID law only applies to adults, but it has been badly thought through. Finland is a country with mandatory military service for men, so this law could be misused by men wanting to avoid military service. When politicians were asked about this, the response was that they trust the citizens not to abuse this law. Also no clear guidance on trans-women's access to women's prisons and sport and female quotas in workplaces. A lot of grey areas on such important matters for women.

What is infuriating is that the biggest advocate for the self-ID law in Finland was Sanna Marin, the former PM and a female! So much for sisterhood...

Thankfully Theresa May had opposition to her plans to implement self-ID in the UK. Many countries have managed to get self-ID approved through the back door without women understanding what it actually means for them. In the UK too much light has now been shed on this harmful ideology, so will be very difficult to get a self-ID law approved through the back door. As much as I don't like the current Conservative government, I am pretty sure had we had a Labour government in power in the past 10 or so years we would probably now have a self-ID law in place. So thank God for the conservatives for getting something right and I am saying this as someone who has never voted Conservative and I consider myself to be a lefty.

Theresa May and Sanna Marin- classic examples of adults putting their own desire for social approval above anything else.

If a woman turned up in any professional setting like TG did in this meeting, they'd be asked to get properly dressed.
The outfit is in no way professional, and even less so if you take into consideration that this is parliament.

The equality of the sexes is that which might break this law. In $7 of this new law it says that the registered sex/gender is relevant if you need a 50/50 parity which could mean that the obligation for gender parity is fulfilled when you have 50% men and 50% TW.

Do you know whether there are already legal cases going on somewhere?

@SwordToFlamethrower $3 (from the pdf above)
"Erklärungen von Minderjährigen und Personen mit Betreuer
(...)
(2) Ist die minderjährige Person geschäftsunfähig oder hat sie das 14. Lebensjahr noch nicht vollendet, kann nur der gesetzliche Vertreter die Erklärungen zur Änderung des Geschlechtseintrags und der Vornamen (§ 2) für die Person abgeben. "

=
Declarations by minors (...)
(2) summarized by me: Under 14yo, only the legal guardian (=parents) is permitted to declare gender-changes and changes of the first name.

There's a breakdown of the self-ID provisions here: Transmenschen: Bundestag beschließt Selbstbestimmungsgesetz | tagesschau.de

Basically a simple declaration for over 18s, kids from 14 to 18 can have their application accepted with parental consent, for under 14s the application has to be made by parents or guardians (and there will be trendy parents who use this to legally trans their children)

The thing is that the coalition has pitched this entirely as an exercise in allowing trans people to change their names and sex markers on official documents more easily. It was an open goal because the old 1980 law, requiring sign off by two psychiatrists, had been ruled unconstitutional. And the advertising has mostly been lots of images of attractive young Instagram influencers with interesting hair colours talking about inclusion and not being discriminated against.

I'm getting very distinct vibes of Theresa May being persuaded that self-ID was an easy win without any overheads. They're just handwaving away any concerns about safeguarding or about medicalising kids. Hopefully it won't take Germany as long to catch up as it took the UK. Not least because this is an incredibly unpopular government.

I looked for the original document with the actual law, as most media will summarize the result somewhat.
The wording so far is that this is a "decision" by parliament for a law, but the actual law is not valid yet, but in six months, as others mentioned upthread.
I'm sorry it's only in German and might require going through a translation app.

There are two links:
one is to the page on the parliament's homepage which collates all information, the speeches, the results and so on.
https://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2024/kw15-de-geschlechtseintrag-997406

The on the right side, when you scroll down, there is the part labelled "Beschluss" (Decision).
Filed here is the document "Gesetzentwurf 20/20949" ("draft bill") as pdf, and that seems to be the bill which was then accepted by parliament, so it's not a draft anymore.
Direct link to the pdf:
https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/20/090/2009049.pdf
Page 7 starts with the actual law, the rest are preliminaries.

This is the two of them at a previous committee hearing: