Germany’s traffic light government has agreed a new self-determination law. Its purpose is to make it easy to change the gender entry. Feminist Alice Schwarzer has sharply criticized the draft law passed by the federal cabinet.
She warns: The new law makes it all too easy for children and young people to undergo gender reassignment. Furthermore, the draft law passed in the federal cabinet on Wednesday poses a threat to women, “whose shelters can be invaded by biological males who simply ‘define themselves as female'”.
Alice Schwarzer shook her head: “It is hard to understand that the cabinet is passing an unrealistic draft law that has not been considered to the end,” she told the Funke media group’s newspapers.
The German Council of Women takes a diametrically opposite view. For its president, Beate von Mikael, the law, which is due to enter into force in November 2024, comes too late. She also criticizes the anti-trans narrative in the cabinet draft. “These would place trans women in particular under general suspicion of violent behaviour,” he explained to the “Rheinische Post”. So the chair of the Women’s Council called for “immediate” changes to problematic parts of the parliamentary process.
The Self-Determination Act also does not go far enough, according to Maja Tegeler, member of the Bremen parliament and bizarrely-political spokesperson of the left wing. Tegeler – herself a trans person – criticizes: “People are not automatically given access to saunas, changing rooms etc.” However, trans women should also have free access to women’s saunas, changing rooms, etc., demands Maja Tegeler.
