SelfID law passed in German parliament.

@SwordToFlamethrower

The parents can't "choose at birth". However, for under 14s the parents can exercise the right to Self-ID on behalf of the child, and the law doesn't specify a lower age limit. What it does specify is that from age 5 the consent of the child is necessary. So strictly in theory, parents could indeed apply to change the sex marker of their, say, 3 or 6 month old. In real life one would hope social services would get involved and prevent this. But how about, say, 3 years?

Someone said upthread that parents will be able to choose the "gender of a baby" at birth, rather than going off the sex of the child.

I've looked for evidence of that and I can't find it. Which has made me look like an absolute tool to my adult son who is moving to Germany this year to get married.

I thought I could trust the sources here, but I guess not! ffs

The one in the thumbnail photo is Nyke Slawik, the article also contains a picture of another MP who is "transgender"

Which one is that in the photo?

anyway - Germany has had an off relationship with sex and sexuality (read older German literature/biographies and you may be a bit shocked) and last week a member of Parliament resigned when it was pointed out that his photos (which he published i believe) of him eating his own poo was not very Parliamentarian (minister for women and children or something like that).

very strange

The Greens currently have two MtF MPs in the Bundestag, one somewhat passes, one who, to me, seems to be "the term which cannot be used". Fairly sure you can see which is which

https://www.dw.com/en/nyke-slawik-weve-earned-the-right-to-be-acknowledged-and-respected/a-65198649

At least one of them did not do any legal and medical steps, was then outraged when the ballot papers showed the male name - again, you'll be able to see on the pictures which one I am referring to.

That the Greens are steeped in this ideology sadly does not surprise me. What does surprise me though is how many people are falling for the "most marginalised in society" lie.

@ConstructionTime

Maybe they thought that a simple edit wouldn't work anymore? It's a bit like a game of Mikado, taking out one piece can cause everything else crumbling down.

I very much doubt it. TRAs and their allies in both FDP and Greens were hell-bent on getting Self-ID without any medical gatekeeping whatsoever. Hence the need for misinformation. I'm fuming actually- local newspaper in their summary this morning repeated the lie about "replacing the unconstitutional TSG". This when it's quite likely the replacement itself that's unconstitutional, given that it contradicts both Basic Law 3.2 (Equality of the sexes) and 5 (Freedom of Thought).

This is madness

@GrumpyPanda Your comment made me look up the original law; thanks, you're right in that it was deemed partly unconstitutional mostly due to the surgery part. I should have re-checked it earlier.

For anyone interested, this site by the ministry of Justice is a reliable source for the original text.
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/tsg/BJNR016540980.html#BJNR016540980BJNG000200311

§8 has additional comments underneath referring to the non-application until there is a new law, which is the one that passed a few days ago.

This is the decision of the constitutional high court from 2011:
https://www.bverfg.de/e/rs20110111_1bvr329507.html

Line 27 refers to the surgery because when the original law was created, it was not possible for a man to marry another man, which has since changed. Interestingly, the text only talks about men, and not possible trans-men. It seems to have been created with the thought that it's only an topic of M-F-transition.

Thus, there was an argument that the requirement for surgery should be removed because two men can now be in a registered partnership (which is not 100% equal to marriage in the sense of the German law, though) and it's not illegal for two men to be partners.

I had not realized that this comment by the court connects to the debate about trans being a possibility when being gay is not accepted (either by the law in a country or by its society).

Line 28 about sterilisation was commenting on the topic of possible future children, who should be able to know their heritage and wouldn't be able to do that when the father changed. This debate has now moved on in society, together with changed laws on adoption.

Line 30 comments on the societal expectations at the time of the 80s law, where they lawmakers did not want legally male persons birthing children; it would create "disorder" (their wording, not mine).

Line 50 and 51 point out again that the original intention of the law also was to avoid gay marriage.

Line 57 then refers to the actual complainant who brought the case and explains that to change M-F (in this case) the law can not demand violation of bodily integrity from a person who in all other aspects (socially) already changed. Here, the person wanted to be registered female in order to marry a female partner.
So this was a use-case that wasn't envisioned by the lawmakers in the 80s, either, because then a registered partnership did not exist.

It seems the old law was not only deemed unconstitutional because of the requirement of surgery but also because other laws that criminalize homosexuality were abolished and and equivalent to marriage is available, so that the whole set-up of the old version was now falling down.

Maybe they thought that a simple edit wouldn't work anymore? It's a bit like a game of Mikado, taking out one piece can cause everything else crumbling down.

@ConstructionTime
TRAs, including the authors of the Taz article or the people who fed them their information, are habitually lying about the old law on transsexuality. Yes, parts of it were declared unconstitutional and were no longer applied - problem.solved, no need for a new law rather than an edit. And what the usual suspects slways conveniently "forget" to mention is that the Constitutional Court emphatically approved the core logic of requiring medical gatekeeping - even going so far as to argue the state has a legitimate interest in the stability and serious character of people's gender identification (paraphrasing from memory.)

@TheABC
Good question re medics. Beats me if I know. The trouble with the German language is that there's a single term encompassing both sex and gender, making it much harder to hold down a clear line of defense against the woo merchants. What this also means - and what the MPs who nodded this off didn't get - is that Self-ID effectively REPLACES sex as a legal category with gender identity - so very much like the problem Sall Grover is facing. It's particularly bad because feminists only a couple of decades ago finally managed to include a signature clause in the constitution requiring the state to actively promote not just formal equality of the sexes, but equity of outcomes. All that's effectively down the drain with Self-ID. It's also likely to be one if the core points of contention for a potential constitutional challenge.

Just been targeted by this ad on this thread?! https://www.germany.travel/en/campaign/world-heritage/home.html?etcc_med=Redirect&etcc_cmp=unesco-en

To add, this law replaces an outdated older law from the early 80s, in which, in order to change sex, the person was required to be unmarried and sterilised as well as surgically "adapted" to their new role. This is is not ethical or humane and violetes the constitution, and a High Court finally decided upon it in 2011. Since then, the law was not enacted.

In the left media, such as TAZ, it is clearly reported that it was about time that the requirement for surgery was removed, seeing as everyone has the right to a bodily integrity and refusal of surgery, especially for a non-medical reason.
https://taz.de/Bundestag-beschliesst-Gesetz/!6004179/

However, by separating the transgender debate into a law about social aspects and not talking about the legal implication for other areas, as PP outlined already, the connection between social transitioning and medical decisions, and the puberty blocker debate, especially for children and teenagers, is completely neglected.

In fact the High Court decision about bodily integrity and avoidance of unneccessary surgery could be used as argument against the medical transition-advocates.

The other big elephant in the room is about quota for women, which has been a big debate in Germany for a long time. I think that very large companies need to have a minimum amount of women within their board of directors, but it's not enforced for smaller companies. Many employers were encouraged to aim for a balanced workforce and if they have a majority of men, to hire more women until equity was reached (especially in sectors like tech, finance, business, engineering, STEM....). How can this be made fair and not turned on its head with the new laws?

Just to summarize, I think the old law wasn't ethical, either, and it is good that it was abolished, but the replacement creates new problems in many other areas, and its not well thought-through how many implications it has for women.

@GrumpyPanda after posting this, I browsed the Emma homepage and saw how many articles there were from the past. I didn't think they hadn't been doing anything until now, more that I added it as an example of famous media. Perhaps now that the law was passed, more people realize what is happening and start speaking up before the 6 months are over.

Possibly the Springer press has a wider influence, but it's still a risky strategy, more akin to giving matches to the pyromaniac. I'm also not so sure they would properly differentiate between LGB topics and the trans-debate, and doing harm to LGB, too. It might work, but it could also rile up potential feminist/left allies.

@TheABC Good question, because for some screenings, all women are automatically contacted by their health insurance, to remind them to go (like breast-cancer-screening).

And medical experimentation

One thing I don't get is how this plays out in German medicine. Is it a gender-only marker or is there a way to define the underlying sex on paperwork?

Otherwise its a nightmare for sex-based treatment such as smear tests, heart disease, blood work etc. "Non-binary" does not mean much in that context.

"Bild" staff have inexplicably been muzzled.

I’ve not come across Maike Klebl before, but this is pretty clear.

https://www.bild.de/politik/kolumnen/kolumne/kommentar-ein-schwarzer-tag-fuer-frauen-87865368.bild.html

@ConstructionTime Emma have been arguing against this project for ages, sadly they won't make the least bit of a difference. What we really need (embarrassing to say for a lifelong leftie) is for Springer to take a stance. Die Welt has started running critical articles but it's too little, too late, whereas "Bild" staff have inexplicably been muzzled. (Have a very vague recollection somebody may have mentioned a trans child, but can't recall now.) But hopefully once the shit starts hitting the fan for real that's when the tabloids can no longer avoid the topic.

Alice Schwarzer and the Emma-Magazine are already on it, pointing out what has been said here before, that your sex does not define your gender-role, that it's actually backwards to say "female behaviour" (stereotypes) make you a woman etc.
https://www.emma.de/artikel/alice-schwarzer-es-gibt-keinen-falschen-koerper-340969

Since they have a lot of reach, I hope they can get a campaign going.

The group "Sahra Wagenknecht" / split-off from "Die Linke" has been mentioned by PP already, but on the homepage of the Bundestag/Parliamament, you can see the results of the vote by name.
https://www.bundestag.de/parlament/plenum/abstimmung/abstimmung?id=910

Almost ironically (not), the topic was filed under "Women" ("Frauen").

The same problem and debate that is in the UK regarding voting Tory/Labour is happening in Germany as well: on one hand, the green and social and economic topics are very important, and the Conservatives have governed for decades before, with not very good outcomes, either.
The Conservatives were hindering women in different ways, for example not finally setting up enough kindergarden or pre-school places (school entry is at 6 years, not as early as in the UK), which often means families, or rather women, cannot choose whether they care for their children at home or go to work, but are foced to have one of the parents at home. Another aspect is the tax-system, which favours families with two unequal incomes and has never been fixed in decades.

Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (they said they'll get a new name once established, but will leave it like that at least until European Elections, which are soon) have different opinions on the Russia/Ukraine-war (more for negotiations and giving up), which affects people in Germany differently. Besides, The Left party is mostly a leftover / turnaround from socialist East-Germany pre-1989, which still affects some of their positions.

It is also possible that it's a political play, meaning parties will say that whatever they think gets them elected. So the Conservatives and AfD (far right and thus unelegible IMHO, they are already under observation by the police) will protest loudly for votes, that doesn't mean they'll later turn-about if it would serve them.

On the other hand, the self-ID issue is so vast and encompasses so many aspects of life and sets the path for the future, which I partly realiized thanks to the discussions on this board, that it may be necessary to set some topics aside and deal with them afterwards when it means winning this fight.

It is a very difficult decision.

You don't. It's been prohibited. Bonus points is if you can find some hideous gerund to replace it. That's if you want to scrape and bow to the blue haired crowd. I prefer to be part of the résistance and have deliberately expanded my usage of additive gendering. I also now make a point of explicitly talking about "beider" sexes rather than "der" (or heaven beware, "aller.")

Not a native speaker, but close enough that when I lived in Bayern most of my daily conversation was in dialect...

And that's another question. The new innovations only really work in very formal written language. I suppose you could approximate them in spoken language if you're one of those Germans who talks like an editorial writer on the FAZ. But I'd feel pretty ridiculous trying to use queer gendering if I'm speaking Bairisch.

I cant wait for it to reach south east Asia where "Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren", translates as the bubbly sounding "tuan tuan dan puan puan".

Add in "divers" and you would get "tuan tuan dan puan puan dan lain lain lagi" (Plurals are formulated by saying the word twice.)

So "Divers" is like ROW in sport, transport, data analysis and so on?

What I struggle with is "Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren", how do you "incorporate" the "Divers"?

By the way the first time I came across a job advert in a newspaper that had "M/W/D" I asked what the D stood for. My aunt rolled her eyes and said "divers", to which I then rolled my eyes and said "Well you're either one or the other".

The EU angle will be interesting. Woo in the west will presumably exacerbate natural tensions with the East, Poland and Hungary in particular.