Self ID State of Play in Germany?

[AngelaMerkelEyeRoll]

Is anyone here able to bring me up to speed on self ID in Germany? There appears to have been a political push towards it in 2020. I can't work out what exactly is going on and who the main players are. It all looks very reminiscent of the UK three years ago. Does anyone have any links or insight?

Are there any women's groups campaigning against it? For various outing reasons I'd be interested in getting involved.

Check out twitter for #selbstbestimmungsgesetz, which is the name of the proposed legislation. It is being pushed by Greens and liberals (FDP). There is some resistance and a German version of the LGB Alliance exists.

You’re right, the discourse is where Britain was in about 2017. Recently, a successful ‘mummy blogger’, Nora Imlau, tweeted that it was never OK to say TWANW. It’s the sort of safe right-on and ‘inclusive’ thing that prissy middle-class Lady Bountiful influencers like to be seen supporting. Mainstream women’s magazines also make vague references to ‘gender diversity’ but never spell out that this actually means recognising fully intact males as female.

The other thing that is striking about Germany is the extent to which so-called intersex conditions have been put in the same category as trans. There is a law that allows a third sex marker for people with such conditions, but anecdotally it is also being used by trans-identified people to alter their documents.

The Greens are the party most supportive of gender identity ideology. Interestingly, they have only recently emerged from a serious historical pedophilia scandal. In the 1980s, the Green Party was a political home for several pro-pedophilia activists. Their demands were marketed as ‘sexual self-determination’ for children and adolescents. It must be said that the party tried quite hard to investigate and that it issued an apology. But a proposed law that allows 14-year olds to change their legal sex without any meaningful gate-keeping seems oddly myopic given the circumstances.

A high-ranking functionary in ILGA, a European lobbying group at the forefront of pushing for gender self-ID, is also German, I believe.

Thanks so much Daca. That's helpful and exactly what I feared. Do you have a sense of how successful the proposals are likely to be?

Interesting about DSDs and transgender. Presumably there are so few people with DSDs that any opposition to conflation is not heard.

Also interesting about Green cognitive dissonance. It's familiar from the British political context but equally disappointing.

The speed of self ID mainstreaming is quite amazing. I feel like the last time I looked, Germany had a status quo of medical gatekeeping. It wasn't part of youth culture and was nowhere to be seen on friends social media.

I'll check out the #selbstbestimmungsgesetz. Thanks.

Yes, this women’s group is protesting against it: fffrauen.de/

Fairness Für Frauen.

Now and then there’s some German news on another feminist website where women gathered when they were Over the Reddit ban.

@saynotofondant

Yes, this women’s group is protesting against it: fffrauen.de/

Fairness Für Frauen.

Now and then there’s some German news on another feminist website where women gathered when they were Over the Reddit ban.

Thanks for the link Saynotofondant.

In my hometown, about eight people have decided to go for the "third gender" option since that was made available. But it is a fairly conservative city where the AfD ( not envy) often gain a large number of votes.
In the two cities that are closest to us, that would probably look quite differently.
I fear that if the Greens form part of the government after the elections in September it will speed up things a lot.

Interesting information. Whilst the TWAW idea should be opposed wherever it comes up, in Germany worth noting that the sauna culture is such that mixed nudity is not unusual, whereas in the UK a woman seeing a naked man other than one they are in a relationship with is rare.
This probably weakens the argument about changing rooms as a single gender place, as far as Germany is concerned.

I occassionally check a German parenting forum that I used to post on to see if there is any discussion about this but there is very little. Recently there was a thread about the breast/chest feeding thing but it was short and quickly died due to lack of interest. All the people I predicted to be TWAW, have gone fully TWAW.

Thanks saynotofondant. FFF is exactly the kind of group that I was looking for.

@peak2021

Interesting information. Whilst the TWAW idea should be opposed wherever it comes up, in Germany worth noting that the sauna culture is such that mixed nudity is not unusual, whereas in the UK a woman seeing a naked man other than one they are in a relationship with is rare. This probably weakens the argument about changing rooms as a single gender place, as far as Germany is concerned.

Just because a limited number of sauna sessions are mixed-sex, used by a limited number of people, it does not follow that the vast majority of the population must want to forgo their right to single-sex facilities.

Very many Germans never use mixed-sex sauna sessions, and this is always a tiny number of available sessions btw. Most sessions are strictly single-sex. I used to go to the mixed-sex ones when I was young. And I have no idea what I was thinking back then. I also went to a naked swim session at my local pool, which was once a week. Even then I'd have been massively pissed off if a male person had come into our showers/toilets or changing rooms, and I would have gotten an attendant to call the police because that is considered pervy.

The Freikörperkultur in Germany is badly understood by those unused to the culture. Outsiders tend to assume it means anything goes and that privacy doesn't matter in those situations. There is a strict etiquette governing behaviour though and if you cannot follow it, you're not welcome.

You’re right, the discourse is where Britain was in about 2017. Recently, a successful ‘mummy blogger’, Nora Imlau, tweeted that it was never OK to say TWANW. It’s the sort of safe right-on and ‘inclusive’ thing that prissy middle-class Lady Bountiful influencers like to be seen supporting. Mainstream women’s magazines also make vague references to ‘gender diversity’ but never spell out that this actually means recognising fully intact males as female.

I wonder if you can use that. Because if you're still in 2017 stage, how can Nora Imlau's recent comments accusing Hibo Wardere the FGM campaigner of being transphobic be publicly acceptable?

She went straight into 21st century US/UK discourse there.

*into 2021 US/UK discourse

Just because a limited number of sauna sessions are mixed-sex, used by a limited number of people, it does not follow that the vast majority of the population must want to forgo their right to single-sex facilities.

Yes. Germany has a Muslim population that is many times greater than the transgender population for a start. Even people who go to mixed saunas or FKK lakes won't necessarily want to share mixed toilets at work or hospital rooms when they get ill.

My sister uses a mixed-sex sauna with her husband regularly (pre-covid) but would not change in the same changing room as men.
My parents enjoyed going to the Sauna, too, and I often went with them when I was a child, this was usually on a Friday night when the pool where the Sauna was also had "textile free swimming". We also went to FKK (nudist) beaches on quarry lakes every summer. I only stopped going when I became a teenager. But no one ogled or made strange comments. It was just normal because everyone went there for the same reason and knew the rules. But that was in the 80s and early 90s. Would I go there now? No, not my cup of tea.
However, as Charlie above said, the majority of Sauna sessions are single sex, and I know many people, male or female, who prefer to go to those.
I also believe that should the attendees of those single sex sessions be faced with a self-id'd person of the opposite sex, there could be a minor riot.
The same would apply, for example, at single sex swimming sessions. In my hometown they were, mostly, attended by muslim women and even the lifeguard on duty was female.

I used to change and shower with my social (mixed sex) Volleyball team but they were my friends and it was pre mobile phones. I know a lot of Germans who don't use shared saunas or changing rooms including my 31 and 27 year old nieces.

Yes, there are unwritten rules/customs and it does lack any of the naughty nudity stuff that is apparent in the UK. Some beaches in he east especially will specify clothes and in others it’s a preference so you get some naked some not.

I see what you are saying,Pothole, and since Imlau tweets in English and German, she is probably in the know. What I was trying to say, though, was that there isn’t a grassroots women’s movement as in Britain. And yes, if the Greens get into power, self-ID might become reality. My sense is that most ordinary Germans think this is all quite mad, but the elites have bought into it. Academic gender studies discourse is incredibly uncritical, from what I can tell.

EMMA, the second wave feminist magazine, is staunchly GC, though.

And whether Germans like nude mixed-sex saunas or not is a bit of a tangent. This is the economic powerhouse of Europe, there’s a big problem with the objectification of women (prostitution) and the traditional centre-right party has bought into unfettered social liberalism. Voters don’t necessarily like it but there are no viable alternatives.

I know you've already seen it all when it was happening, but in case she deletes it later. Could be useful if you're trying to get other women concerned about where the current stage of rhetoric really leads. Back in 2017, I couldn't have ever believed that anyone would say this kind of thing.

twitter.com/Kali_im_Exil/status/1363601314605912067?s=19

I just read this thread Pothole posted, then went down the Twitter rabbit hole and came across this:

twitter.com/messpugge/status/1363452796520038400

Very good summary why the Selbstbestimmungsgesetz* is dangerous . But the "we must be nice and include everyone" warriors would never accept those arguments.

*You just have to love the German language and its compound nouns.

Thanks for this, Pothole.

If you needed one last proof that this "movement" is about policing a type of repressive social etiquette, established by white middle-class women to police others, you couldn't do much better than these Imlau tweets. There is a quest for moral purity, unforgiving of human weakness, and the people that are supposedly benefitting from all this remain abstractions. (I struggle to imagine that the majority of trans people - not the activists - would be offended by a campaign against FGM.)

How is this different from the olden days, when you couldn't possibly be seen in the company of another woman who disregarded social conventions, maybe by smoking, speaking too loudly, not going to church, or associating with dubious characters? It's the same old shit, just painted in millennial pink and curated online. I wonder if Germany has always had this kind of finger-wagging female culture, interesting to see how it has been updated.

I wasn't familiar with Imlau. What a good example of the belief system's end point.

The grassroots womens' organisations of which I am aware have gone full TWAW. It is interesting that gender identity and transgender inclusiveness are rarely mentioned on web pages aimed at migrant women. I have never seen it mentioned on pages written in 'einfache Sprache' (simple German). Because how can the concept of transgenderism be boiled down into simple language without highlighting the fact that TW remain male?

The only posters for IWD I’ve seen around town are for Frauen*. I thought, “Frauen und... Frauinnen?!”

I looked up Frauen* and found a definition saying it means FLTI: Frauen, Lesben, Trans, Intersex.

That doesn’t make any sense! Lesbians ARE Frauen. Intersex women are also women. Trans... well, wouldn’t the transwomen want to be included under “Frauen” anyway?

It just seems like shorthand for “we’re woke and inclusive!” ... really? Is it actually progressive to think that lesbians aren’t really women?

There is no German word for ‘gender’ but a strong push to adopt it and conflate it with the German word for sex (‘Geschlecht’).
To be fair, Geschlecht historically used to include biological as well as sociological status.

So for example ‘Gender-neutral language’ becomes ‘Geschlechtergerechte Sprache’ which actually translates into ‘Sex-fair language’. It’s a mess.

We had a hugely ranty thread about it last week, after her bizarre pronouncement that FGM only happened to "cis women and girls".

Did she think the children were shown gender identity powerpoints before it happened, or was that her accidentally saying that she didn't think there would be such a thing as Somali children with gender identities.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4170253-Anti-FGM-campaigner-Hibo-Wardere-comes-under-attack?pg=2#prettyPhoto

More information on the German scene:

taz.de/Trans-Rechte-und-Gesetzentwurf/!5750869/

It seems to be more of a left-right issue, as in the US.

A very interesting article I came across on SPoN today:

www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/spd-so-emotional-streitet-die-partei-ueber-identitaetspolitik-a-89a38be7-0002-0001-0000-000176138614

Just be warned: It is a Spiegel Plus piece, so mostly behind a pay-wall. The comments are very interesting, too.