Germany: Not voting for women's rights...

And with a nod to the thread topic: currently the negotiations about the coalition between conservatives (CDU) and social-democrats (SPD) are still ongoing.
The old government and parliament are still in placeholder / caretaker position and keeping things ticking along until the new government is ready.

At the moment the upcoming coalition wants the current parliament to agree to new debts for defense and other topics, because in the new parliament these would be harder to decide about without relying on AfD votes which they want to avoid. There is some murmuring about how constitutional this is that the old parliament decides about this amount of debt, as usually they should not make decisions that could hinder the next government.

However, in this case the next government has planned this, so that could be viewed as an exception. Currently there are debates by law experts and by the smaller parties like The Left and the Greens who want more concessions in exchange for the agreement.

An overview here:
https://www.dw.com/en/german-election-2025/t-70794502

I still sometimes see rumours about rescinding the Self-ID law but I don't know how substantial they are. The main topic is of course dealing with the US maniacs and defense.

@BeanieSue
You're welcome; it is not at my library yet but I plan to add it to the suggestion box. Usually they are very good about feminist books and books about education / children with disabilities, autism, ADHD, LGB and T, these kinds of things, as there often is a crossover of these topics (for example autistic and wrongly diagnosed as T, trying to identify out of oppression), but there is a gap in this regard.

Some feminist books are also only of the "cool girl" variant; they are not so bad but they don't go to the structural causes of the problems.

I know my library is frequented heavily, so the choice of books can really have an impact on discussion in society.

Thank you for mentioning the Korte book. I just checked and they actually have one copy - out on loan just now - at the main library in my city. I’m surprised they have it, although recently there has been an increase in books that aren’t promoting trans ideology.

De Gaulle's decision to develop an independent nuclear deterrent seems more and more prescient by the day. We of course merely lease our Tridents from the US and are wholly reliant on them for maintaining them. It wouldn't surprise me at all for Trump to use this as a card in any negotiations with the UK over, well, anything. Hopefully his generals have kept the facts from him.

@Delphin thanks for the interview link!

News:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/25/afd-readmits-two-politicians-excluded-over-nazi-related-remarks

@Mielikki very good point about the indoctrination of the West Germans. That is definitely food for thought.

@ForestAtTheSea yes I'm not far off your view, I'd be happy with Macron's press conference and I'm wondering if another is that useful.

We're very close in views and Trump won't change much

@EasternStandard

About the roles of Starmer, Macron and Merz in finding a way forward: It is very important that the USA discusses with different allies how the future might look. They are all trying to find a way between not setting off Trump (which is near impossible because he'll do it anyways) and speaking for their own countries. Actually I think since he's going to something insane anyways, there isn't a reason to be so delicate. Maybe it'll be better to be as posturing as Putin.

Also all three countries have tech and military industry which wants to profit from whatever the result is. Plus disconnecting NATO from the US military would be a very complex and long path.

I don't think any of the European leaders only speaks for themselves, they all hold calls and consultations between each other all the time, and they will all try to balance the interests of their own country, European stability and security and not wiping away the future when the US will have a different government again.

Actually I wonder how loud the voices of the US and NATO military personnel are, because they surely have the expertise for these decisions.

But I'm not worried Macron or whoever fixes a deal only for his country. He'll know he has to work with other European politicians, too.

It'll be interesting how much Europe's new "Foreign minister", Kaja Kallas can bring to the negotiations with Russia. After all as former Estonian Prime Minister she has much experience with their neighbour and her stance is that you can never trust Russia.

@Delphin
yeah, I know they are making this stand about stopping the war due to humanitarian reasons. I'm not sure what is behind that or what the motivation is; still trying to figure that out. They also had an article by a retired German general who was saying Russia doesn't have the resources to attack Europe or something of that kind.

However, I know that my knowledge and that of my relatives about this kind of thing is much stronger and more sceptical so I'm not worried about anyone getting swayed without additional information. And tbf, everyone wants the war to end; the question is more how do you secure the country and keep Russia from repowering and trying the same in a few years.

The articles on women's rights topics are things which are much more difficult to discuss and I can imagine, too, that people would just say it's not true as they couldn't grasp the depth of what is happening. Something written is very helpful, especially the stories by detransitioners.
By the way, there is a new book by a doctor working in youth medicine, Alexander Korte: "Hinter dem Regenbogen". He is also one of the expert voices disagreeing with the medical boards who are still in favour of hormones for under 18y/o.

I agree with @Brefugee that the west doesn’t care enough about what the east Germans went through, and just tried to “integrate” them. I also read that a lot of positive elements like better childcare were abolished just because they were a piece of the old system out of principle.

I know that this had partly to do with “indoctrination” and shaping the kids without the influence of the family – it was a socialist state after all – and they only did it because without the women they would have been short on workforce, but it surely would have been possible to drop the political background and keep the infrastructure. This is only one example of many. The STEM-research was also very good.

It refers back to what I wrote here earlier, that many in Eastern Germany still have a deep mistrust of the state and parties like AfD tap into this.

I also care about many aspects, not only Self-ID and my vote was entirely tactical to make the best of the situation.

“What i am seeing, not just here but also in the UK and especially in the US at the last election - is some parties (mostly the left-of-centre, strangely) seemingly ploughing their own furrow, expecting their supporters to simply go along with it, and paying no real mind to the actual wishes/needs/wants of their (potential) constituents. The Democratic campaign against Trump was a brilliant example of what happens when you (and i don't want to use the term with woke/broke in it, but it did very much look that way) ignore what people on the ground are saying.”
@Brefugee totally agree

@Mielikki your point about the Allies shaping our culture is also very good and I agree with that and it is somewhat ridiculous that the loudest US politicians either can't see it or are not aware of that.

@Angryexpat the entire West German mindset of anti-nazism, anti-militarism, anti-authoritarianism (what many would now describe as "wokeism") which persists to this day wasn't by accident, it was deliberately engineered by the Allied occupying powers - it's the greatest feat of social engineering ever: taking a nation that had been culturally dominated by militarism since 1815 and turning it into one of pacifist worker bees in a few years.

The irony of course is the US now criticising Germany for banning symbols and extremist speech, and erecting firewalls against the rise of the right when those bans and the mindset that goes with them were engineered largely by the US.

Of course the Ossis didn't get any of this so it's not surprising that they have a very different political and cultural mindset.

thanks, @Angryexpat i just wanted to be sure i wasn't the dog-whistler!

As far as nazi salutes go, meh. I am very very very reluctant to call it that - Musk's i would say was, Bannon's possibly, the AfD poster? meh - because i am a season ticket holder for footy, and i am often in the presence of a few thousand men raising a fist and shouting "sieg!" after a match. It makes me really really uncomfortable, but it is entirely innocent of nazi overtones.

What i am seeing, not just here but also in the UK and especially in the US at the last election - is some parties (mostly the left-of-centre, strangely) seemingly ploughing their own furrow, expecting their supporters to simply go along with it, and paying no real mind to the actual wishes/needs/wants of their (potential) constituents. The Democratic campaign against Trump was a brilliant example of what happens when you (and i don't want to use the term with woke/broke in it, but it did very much look that way) ignore what people on the ground are saying.

I am beyond furious that the 2 elections i have been able to vote in over the past 12 months have had me holding my nose to vote for a party that goes completely against something i have been fighting for since i was a young girl (women's rights). But on balance i couldn't vote Tory/CDU.

Sorry, Brefugee, with “dog whistles”, I was referring to something that was said earlier, about an AfD election poster that could be seen to contain a Nazi salute, with just about the right amount of plausible deniability. And that sort of thing services the ‘us versus them’ mentality that you also describe. But I don’t actually see it as a serious proposition to introduce Nazi-style policies. It’s about symbolic politics, and benefitting from the East-West divide. Sorry if this isn’t very clear.

Haha, my feelings about the Greens are also unprintable. How did they actually do in the East?

@Delphin What is Emma’s stance on Ukraine, out of interest?

dog whistles? eh?

My point is it is NO WONDER there are differences in voting patterns between East and West because, aside of the Solidaritätzuschlag what have we done to help Eastern Germans? Why don't they feel the same way as people in such disparate places as Bayern and Schleswig-Holstein? Why do we see the map show such a stark contrast based exactly on the division of the Inner German Border?

My feeling is that since the first euphoria of the fall of the wall, life for West Germans has continued in exactly the same way it did since the partition of the country. And life for East Germans has been completely upended twice in living memory.

What do the SPD offer to the East? What do the AfD offer to the East? Why are there stubborn pockets of green in places like Freiburg? Not sure about anyone else but i'm far far far from trying to "politically educate" East Germans. In my circle of friends i have bunches of people who left the East as soon as they could (mostly once they left school or apprenticeship) for various reasons, or who have stayed there. None of my friends in places like Leipzig, Dresden, Magdeburg or Jena vote for the AfD, sure - we are all pretty much politically alligned, that is why we are friends i think. What comes through from all of them, loud and clear is that politicians in the west don't understand the east, and make very little effort to understand their needs.

ETA: my feelings on the Greens are just about unprintable. But it boils down to they are spreading themselves too thin on subjects that are not necessarily green. Some of my friends (in UK and here) have left the greens because of their incessant need to be authoritarian on subjects that have nothing to do with being green but have everything to do with finding new exciting shiny things to play with. That seems a fair summary to me. Die Linke? Well, given what they are, is "authoritarian" surprising? not to me.

@Brefugee
Based on what you are saying, I’m wondering then if these dog whistles are partly a way for East Germans to troll West Germans because being associated with a return to Nazism pains West Germans intensely? (I grew up in the West.) It’s a political taboo that East Germans do not share to the same extent.

Maybe they’ve got it right. Having lived outside Germany now for many years, I’m not sure being stuck in a mental world in which it is forever 1933 is going to help solve the problems of the 21st century. This doesn’t mean that it’s not important to oppose authoritarianism and political violence, I absolutely do. But the ‘anti-fascist’ Greens or Linke have arguably woke-washed their authoritarianism and gotten away with it while everybody is focused on the AfD.

So rather than trying to politically educate East Germans like some here like to do (colour of political map has to turn to “at least the CDU” - is that for us to say?), maybe we should be a bit more thoughtful.

I really care about self-ID. To me, it’s one of the defining political issues of our time, worldwide. I see it as a form of colonialism and domination turned inwards, projected onto humans as living beings, and harming women most as they are the ones who make new humans. I still didn’t vote AfD …

i care very much about SelfID. But i care about a whole lot of other things too. Which is why i cast my votes as i did. And i follow accounts such as Heldinnen and Emma to see what's going on, and i have brought up the issues that i have been made aware of with some of my friends/family.

I live in an arch conservative village where i, at 60, bring the average age down significantly. SelfID isn't an issue here, but transport infrastructure, access to GPs and anything to do with farming (dairy farming in particular) is what people are concerned about. Basically my vote counts for nothing except statistics.

Self Id doesn't have to be the "only thing you care about" for you to care about it a lot.

I'm not sure if thhis has already been posted? A recent Redduxx article about men being housed in women's jails in Germany:

reduxx.info/germany-two-trans-identified-male-inmates-housed-in-womens-prisons-were-transferred-out-after-threatening-female-inmates-inquiry-reveals/

But I do think at some point my fellow countrymen and women will have to come to terms with the fact that it’s 2025, and almost every single European country has a party on the far right. We’re not special.

That's not the point people (like us) are making though. The far right have always been there. The point is how mainstream it is. I have said this since the Mauerfall but the DDR was obliterated without even considering that there may have been parts that we could have kept.

Look at the way the Ampelmännchen thing was handled for example. There was a huge (avoiable) conflict because of West German intransigence over "DIN Norm". Lots of my friends in the east see that as sn exemplar of how every aspect of their former lifestyle was rubbed out.

So now the politicians need to listen to what people want. Not just catty on carrying on.
And that huge pale blue Fleck needs to be won back to at least the CDU

Yep, I think it’s a Nazi salute, wrapped in just enough plausible deniability to stay the right side of the law. It’s deliberately provocative - and has the nice side effect of being a dog whistle to actual neo-nazis (which the AFD aren’t).

That wasn't on him though. Merkel boxed away anyone who could challenge her and surrounded herself with yes men/women. It was absolutely the right decision to leave.

@Danja2010 the post was pre conference but after watching I'd say incredibly so on friendly. Lots of reminders of being allies, talk of being friends, basically charm and attempt at getting the one thing France / Europe need..

This isn't a go at Maxron he did a very good job. The Oval Office correction was done well too:

I'm not sure he has what we need in the bag - the security guarantee for troops. Trump was flippant on the troops question and has not stated it will be in place.

Macron did well no doubt, but he's asking for something big

As for Merz how do pp in Germany view Macron and Starmer going and trying to set up this deal?