So how are things going in Germany?

[Toutafait]

So Germany brought in self-ID almost a year ago, together with a hefty fine for deadnaming. I have a German friend, and he tells me that trans rights are now a non-issue in Germany. Nobody ever talks about them, apparently. So I'm wondering whether everything's going well ("transwomen" behaving like women, no children being inappropriately transitioned and operated on, nothing else bad happening), or whether bad things are happening and it's being swept under the carpet.
I've asked ChatGPT whether there are any problems, and I'll give you its response. It has mentioned the case of the Nazi criminal self-IDing to get access to a women's prison, but no other specific incidents. Does anyone have any more information?

"Where problems and discussions continue

Social acceptance & discrimination
Even though many things are now easier legally, trans and non-binary people continue to report everyday discrimination, prejudice and hate crimes.
Deutsche Welle
+1
Many such incidents continue to go unreported for fear of reprisals or because those affected do not believe that taking action will make any difference.
Deutsche Welle

Political and public controversies
There is criticism from conservative or right-wing circles, particularly with regard to minors, possible ‘risks of abuse’ in self-determination, or fears that the rights of women or other groups could be affected. Although many of these allegations are controversial, they accompany the debate.
Deutsche Welle
+1

The issue of minors remains difficult
Although changes are possible for young people aged 14 and over under certain conditions (parental consent, etc.), the treatment of younger children in particular remains controversial. Opinions differ on how extensive and early medical/specialised support should be (e.g. puberty blockers, hormone treatments), and there are practical hurdles such as access, costs, specialists, etc.
bild.de
+1

Enforcement and application in practice
Laws are one thing — how they are actually implemented is often another. For example, there are regional differences in Germany, delays at government offices, ambiguities among government employees, or problems with international documents, passports, etc.
Deutsche Welle
+1

Rights vs. public safety & institutions
A current dispute: a convicted neo-Nazi who has legally changed his gender is to serve his prison sentence in a women's prison. This has sparked a debate about whether and how the new law can be abused there and which institutions need to prepare for such cases and how.
The Washington Post"

Nothing to add to the substance of the discussion except a long sigh at the enduring misogyny of Gemany, but a quick tip for anyone looking for more readable translations from German than Google provides - try Deepl, it's a bit more accurate overall & slightly less clunky in output.

Apart from the hefty fines, one of the main reasons why few people seem to talk about it, seems to be that only few persons understand how thoroughly devastating the new laws are for women.

It seems that many who oppose "genderspeak" as they call it, see it mainly as a fashion and a woke-lefty-green topic that they don't agree with. But many who are talking down on it do not see the full complexity as the women on this board have discussed.

In reverse, if someone agrees with green politics, then they must include this topic, too. If you are, for example, pro veganism, anti-racism and renewable energy, then you "cannot" be against TRAs. Similarly, for the social democrats and a subgroup of conservatives and liberals, being pro Self-ID, means that they show their "good person" credentials.

Outside of the Emma-magazine crowd and some switched on people like Rona Duwe, Let Women Speak groups / activists in some cities and people like Faika El-Nagashi (who is Austrian), there aren't that many who speak out publicly. And Alice Schwarzer of Emma is a controversial person in her own right, also has some tax-"avoidance" schemes to her name and is against further war with Russia, which is another controversial topic in Germany, due to its location.

The other group of people who speaks loudly against Self-ID is on the very conservative and also far-right.

I remember there were discussions here that of course being against TRAs does not mean anyone is far-right; they just latched onto the topic, too. But in the public discussion, these topics still get quickly thrown together, as the far-right seized the topic as it helps with their "anti-woke" position.

Thus except for the women's rights campaigners who managed to keep the topic "pure" and unbiased, the other groups who are against it are either seen as "lefty Russia-supporters", "second-wave feminists who are too traditional and haven't got the memo", or far right.

That means it's not easy to discuss this on its own merits in the media and the public, not that many even tried. But I see the main problem in that many people still haven't realized what could go wrong here with regard to women's rights, and the medical problems which will accumulate with medication and surgery. #

Another factor is that many people are positive about gay and lesbian rights, which is of course good, and think if they oppose TRAs, they'll damage other rights, too. Here we need some conscious uncoupling, too.

@ForestAtTheSea It seems to me that Germany came to this late. They could and should have learned from what was happening in English-speaking countries. Was it a sense of superiority - we're modern Europeans and the bad stuff that's happening in the US etc won't happen in Germany?

@Toutafait

In my impression that's not what drives this.

I don't know how many Germans regularly read English-language media; I don't mean Insta & TikTok and watching Netflix, but looking at international newspapers / media. Probably rather those who are interested in economic topics or politics, which doesn't necessarily include women's rights.

Reading what is happening in the US might rather fuel a sense of resistance, such as "trans rights are not going to be restricted in Germany, because we are not like the Republicans in the USA". Not because of any superior feeling, but because Germany tends to have an acknowledgement that despite different political opinions, in the main people are decent and not heartless.

(Edit: I mean the "decent people" reference in the way that most people probably do not want a general situation like in the US because German capitalism is buffered by social measures, and most people don't appreciate the concentration of power in a few people).

Then there's an international crowd which probably checks up on events in their homecountries but these could be any: for example Spain, which has the same problems as Germany, or Turkey, which has very conservative politics, and hundreds of other countries. Thus the media they consume varies wildly, too and has many influences.

Maybe someone else knows more about that.

But if you'd only check up news in German, and aren't specifically looking for feminist topics, or feminist topics without the TQ, you might never come across it. It's a media problem and framing problem, too.
Most articles on the one-year-anniversary of the law were rather positive and never get to the bottom of the problems, only some surface niggles, like this one in the main news. It brought up a legal point of incongruency of looks and legal gender, but that is not the main point at all, it's not about "appearance".
The article gently touches on "genuine intention" when changing legal gender, but not nearly enough.
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/selbstbestimmungsgesetz-bilanz-100.html

Not many still dare question the main premise of becoming a different sex. As long as you don't go near that question, there cannot be a solution. I only see some brave women's rights campaigners do that, but no-one else in the mainstream media.

@ForestAtTheSea I'm very disappointed in the Germans. They've been both very stupid and very naive. They will inevitably suffer the consequences.

A great deal of the pressure comes from the EU Commission & the Council of Europe. Both are, er, blessed with some of the worst of the well-credentialled misogynistic wingnuts of a Gender Identitarian persuasion.
Being scrupulously fair, the German language doesn't make it easy to discuss the issue with clarity & that's even if you keep it abstract to try to avoid the idiotic elements of German criminal law.
One glimmer of hope is the recent establishment of the Athena Forum spearheaded by the Austrian former Green MP, Faika El-Nagashi. Mr Menno has a very informative interview with her on Youtube.

I'm not sure about the language. After all, they were already bending over backwards to make everything male and female (eg Politiker, Politikerin). They're now tying themselves completely in knots by introducing a 3rd gender, making the language even more ridiculous.

Such larks! And in a language in which, just as one example, "girl" was already neuter 3rd gender "das Mädchen". Schiller was right, "Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens" !

That's not correct. German language isn't "bending over backwards" to have a male and female version of a word. That's standard issue. Many words have a male and female version.

Within the second wave feminists, the linguistic researchers pointed out that many people only used the male version to include both men and women.

Luise F. Pusch is one of those linguists, if anyone wants to look it up. Efforts were made to mention both female and male versions in every day speech. It wasn't bending over backwards, just being more aware of available words and making women visible in language.

The researchers found that when you always only use the male version only, girls and women didn't feel mentioned, and it hindered their job prospects, for example. If politicians, doctors and CEOs are always men (in language), it makes those which are female invisible and girls wouldn't think they could be that. Some studies showed that the male plural was more often used for the "prestigious jobs" and female plural for the jobs which had less social status (not value!).

This is not the same as the next steps in the development, which is maybe what you refer to.

Then came the inclusive speech, for example with a capital "I in words, such as "PolitikerInnen", to demonstrate the male and female plural in one word. That was a bit clumsy but it was with good intentions and to avoid overly long sentences.

Currently it's "Politiker:innen" (similarly, meant to represent male and female plural), grammatically incorrect and for some terms, they use for example "Lehrende" (teachers, in this case it's a participle tense and sounds pretty weird in German, in my view), instead of "Lehrer" and "Lehrerin".

I think the newer forms are regressive as they again obscure male and female terms and make women invisible. Especially forms like "Lehrende" are in effect the same as "Lehrer" (male plural in my example case) and again I'm asking where the women are in this language.

The examples I presented are also meant to include everyone who is neither male or female; "non-binary", diverse and so on. For the sake of an illogical theory, millions of women are again vanishing from the language and we're back to the 1980s and before.

All diminutives are neutral in German, it doesn't only apply to girls, you can make diminutives of men/boys as well and they are also neutral. In my mother's dialect (Untermain, at the border between Bavaria and Hessen) every person (that is personally known to you and is a friend or family member) is referred to by a diminutive of their name even when fully grown adults, like my Onkel Hermann was "das Herrmännle" or my Tante Klara was always called "das Klarale" (impossible to say for people who also struggle with pronouncing "R"). If you speak German as your native language this is just a quirk of your language it doesn't impart meaning

I know diminutives are neutral & that people who speak german don't really think that "der Tische" is male or that houses are non-binary but it's worth a moment's consideration that "girl" is a dimuntive whilst "der Jungen" isn't. Nicknames are as you say made, & the ones you cite are familial terms of endearment like adding a diminutive suffix to an English name, which isn't the same as a girl being designated bth neuter & a diminutive.

I'm not solidly on board with the Linguistic Turn & I don't care if people say "manpower" or "manhole cover", etc, but if you speak more than one language you do get a sense of how you each one shapes your expression, & to some extent your thought.

@ForestAtTheSea I'm not a fan of the "Studenten und Studentinnen" way of talking. It's very clumsy. That's presumably what's led to people using terms like "Studierende" - "people who study". I understand the argument of course. But how do you feel about the change in the language to include "non-binary people"? So "Politiker und Politikerinnen" becomes "Politikerinnen", with the denoting non-binary people. In spoken speech, you're supposed to leave a (presumably respectful) pause between the male and female form of the word, to denote non-binary people. As if the expectation to use different pronouns isn't difficult and clumsy enough! I'm not surprised that some Germans have been rebelling against being put under (the usual) pressure to write and speak like this. This is discussed in this article: Why has non-binary language become a national debate in Germany? | Context by TRF

Brain fart re "girl"! Sorry, meant to say "neuter".

Fascinating stuff about the German language. Every day's a school day on MN.

Sorry, I haven't been able to amend this post. Apparently asterisks don't work on Mumsnet! So in German, in these trans-dominated times, you're supposed to insert an asterisk (or some people use a hyphen or colon) in between the male and female forms of a noun describing a person. So where in English you say "Students..." in Germany they basically say "Male students asterisk female students..." The asterisk denotes non binary people. But what do you do when you're speaking, and can't add an asterisk? Instead of the asterisk, you're supposed to pause. The pause in your speech denotes non-binary people: "We need to be inclusive of all our male students [meaningful pause to denote non binary] female students."
This one thing on its own has destroyed all my illusions of the Germans being a sensible people. At least there has been a fight back.

As the Sun used to say, you couldn't make it up! 😀

The Asterisk is spoken as a glottal stop in the middle of a word:
Studentinnen und Studenten --> Student'innen
Spoken examples (timestamp):

You can hear it live sometimes when listening to radio and TV presenters (mostly in "progressive" youth magazines of the public stations/öffentlich-rechtliche Sender). I've never heard it in "freier Wildbahn"/in the wild, only in interviews on TV/radio, where people are conscious of some hundred thousand or million people watching them...

It may be called a glotal stop, but it's actually a significant pause in that example - Leser[pause]innen. That must do terrible things to the brain of the compliant speaker.

@Toutafait I answered most of your question in the post before you - maybe go one step back. I mentioned women's fights for language because this is specific to the German language and our history, and not directly comparable to English.

I am not a fan, but not because it includes non-binary and other people, but because women become invisible in this new language. Separate terms for women and men and mentioning both when adressing a group is the most accurate.
Trans people are included because realistically they are either a man or a woman. Feelings are not included because the terms are for biologically distinct groups. It's not possible ask everyone how they feel today before adressing a big group, as according to TQ logic, the way someone identifies can change anytime (and change back anytime, too).

The version with the participle is also a big problem as you cannot use it coherently.

For a group of people, the term often used to end with “-schaft” (a specific group), such as “Ärzteschaft”, “Lehrerschaft”, “Schülerschaft” [doctors, teachers, pupils, always m&f plural) but you cannot transplant these terms to all situations, because they refer to the group of people at a specific location (let’s say a specific school), not all pupils in the country, for example.

But on the other hand, you cannot use the participle term in all situations, either, such as “Lesende” (readers, reading in action), it sounds silly, as people aren’t reading 24/7, but equally “Leserschaft” refers to the readers of a specific author, their fans, describing a specific group.

And drivers of a car or bus cannot be “Fahrende” (people who drive), as that is an old-fashioned term referring to (European) travellers. Implementing the participle for all kinds of topics runs into problems at every corner.

The most fair and inclusive wording is still mentioning both male and female plural terms, it’s especially advantageous for women because they are then equally visible and their 50% of the population is acknowledged instead of just “included”, as in the olden times when only the male plural was used for a group of people and it was pretended that it’s inclusive.

The fact that now there is a differentiation proves that exactly wrong, because if they had been included the decades before, then you wouldn’t have needed to change it. However, just for fun, we could use the female plural only and tell men they are included, in return for what they did before, maybe for the next 100 years.

By the way, the wording changed when women demanded entry into male-only fields, such as universities or politics (remember, women weren’t permitted to study at universities once). At that time, saying “Studenten” or “Ärzte” (both male plural form) was describing reality. This also proves the story of women being included into male plural terms wrong.

@ForestAtTheSea "However, just for fun, we could use the female plural only and tell men they are included, in return for what they did before, maybe for the next 100 years."

Well, that is what for example "Die Zeit" does. Using the feminin as a general term and changing between feminin and masculin in the same article. Which led me to write a scathing comment to an article about the British colonial rule in India, where they had used "Britinnen" in a spot that clearly referred to British civil servants and soldiers in India. Which were at that point 100% men.

Doesn't work, because except for a (tiny) minority who think that grammatical gender = sex (or even gender), Germans instinctively understand the generic masculin as a form to include all, and the femininum to only mean women. If we don't want people to play around with the meaning of words (e.g. women) we also shouldn't allow them to play around and change the structure of grammar of our language, par ordre de mufti.

Its perfectly serviceable to say Briten und Britinnen if one needs to name both and is disgusted by grammatical gender...

I don't know what the German language feels like to a native speaker, but Delphin says here that "Germans instinctively understand the generic masculin as a form to include all, and the femininum to only mean women". That doesn't sound so different from English, where most people terms include both men and women: students, politicians, bakers, plumbers. In the past, all of these people would have been male only, but we understand that many are now women. I don't feel the need to make up a new word to mean "female politician" or "female student". However, if appropriate I can of course specify that I'm talking about "male politicians" or "female politicians". I'm happy with that - it's much less clumsy to have one word to cover both sexes, and life isn't all about sex. Most of the time I talk about politicians or students, I mean all people in that category. Their sex is not relevant.

I've been searching via duckduckgo for German news reports on the IOC decision to ban transgender men (transwomen) from female events.

...tumbleweed...

Only BILD reported yesterday morning, and Schwulissimo (gay newssite), plus a handful of small sites like a catholic newspaper and msn.de. duckduckgo.com/?q=ioc+trans+frauen+olympiade&df=w&t=euandroid&ia=news&iar=news&ndf=w

Nothing on the major German newspapers from left to right, or in the weeklies (Spiegel, Zeit, Focus)...

@Toutafait

I agree with @Delphin in that people mostly are aware that one term covers both male and female people, but it’s still inherently unfair. I think the awareness also varies within the population. Someone who posts on this board is much more politically interested than other groups of people. And I still think when it comes to prestigious roles within society, the male plural is firstly understood as “mostly male people”.

With regard to making up new words, we usually don’t have to. The female words have been existing almost as long, it’s normal to have both a female and male word for occupations. But sometimes the female word only came into existence when women fought their way into an occupation, such as doctors or mechanics, and the ending "-in" is added.

But we had to create entirely new words when males came into a predominantly female profession, for example nursing was almost entirely staffed with women, they are called “Krankenschwester” (sister (probably derived from religious orders) who cares for the sick).

When men started to join, a new term was created, “Krankenpfleger” (carer for the sick), instead of “Krankenbruder”, which would have been the logical choice. So we made up new words for men. Then the term for men was adapted for females, too: Krankenpfleger & Krankenpflegerin.

The same happened for assistant roles in GP practices and roles in kindergartens.

@Delphin

Yeah, that’s the problem, women would then be included when it’s most unrealistic, such as in crimes that are committed 95% by men. Same problem as what’s now protested when transwomen commit a crime and the reporting says “her” and “she”, and women protest that these are not our crimes.

I get what you mean, and I concede that the situation is not as bad with regard to the meaning of the generic masculinum as it used to be, according to earlier research (from the 70s/80s), but I don’t think it’s yet applicable to all situations.

If you think for example of the campaigns which addressed teenage girls and young women for studying MINT subjects and going into these careers, they (obviously) featured photos of young women and school-age girls and often used the feminine terms: “Werde Physikerin” (become a physicist). And I have the impression that it’s probably more likely to think of a group of women and men when talking about fields which nowadays feature a lot of women (such as politics), but less likely when you talk about “Baggerfahrer” or “Geologen” (excavator operator / geologists).

I haven’t read Die Zeit for a while, so I wasn’t aware, thanks for updating me. But alternating this within an article sounds even more confusing.

I wasn’t entirely serious with the idea, as I said, as it’s equally inaccurate, but would be fun in contexts such as politicians, for example, where men dominated for a long time.

For background information, the linguistic researcher I mentioned earlier, Luise F. Pusch was working with a second researcher, Senta Trömel-Plötz.

Both their works contributed to feminist linguistics. And I have looked up an interview with the latter, from the 90s (in German), which shows in a lively way that just a few decades ago, the situation in Germany was very different with regard to who is meant, who is included and how language and social situation of women was interwoven, and that’s what I am aiming at with my posts on this thread.

https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/709723.wirklichkeit.html

More recent interviews with Luise F. Pusch:
https://www.emma.de/artikel/das-gendern-ist-ein-irrweg-341963

https://www.nzz.ch/nzz-am-sonntag-magazin/weshalb-die-gender-pionierin-luise-f-pusch-heute-genderkritisch-ist-ld.1772933

Bio of Senta Trömel-Plötz (in English)
https://www.fembio.org/english/biography.php/woman/biography/senta-troemel-ploetz/

and a great overview over “geschlechtergerechte Sprache” in Germany, but including international influences:
https://frauenmediaturm.de/neue-frauenbewegung/geschlechtergerechte-sprache/

Sorry that some resources are only in German, but I hope it’ll be interesting for someone.

I'm predicting a wave of German men declaring themselves to be female in the very near future:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/cf5aa17e-cfe6-44ad-b673-76978003964d?shareToken=41573740c9ddc06b7171005618621312