The German legislation will allow adults to change their first name and legal gender at registry offices without further formalities. The new rules will allow minors 14 years and older to change their name and legal gender with approval from their parents or guardians; if they don’t agree, teenagers could ask a family court to overrule them. In the case of children younger than 14, parents or guardians would have to make registry office applications on their behalf.
After a formal change of name and gender takes effect, no further changes would be allowed for a year. The new legislation focuses on individuals’ legal identities. It does not involve any revisions to Germany’s rules for gender-transition surgery.
Among others, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Spain already have similar legislation. In the U.K., the Scottish parliament in 2022 passed a bill that would allow people aged 16 or older to change the gender designation on identity documents by self-declaration. That was vetoed by the British government, a decision that Scotland’s highest civil court upheld in December.
In other socially liberal reforms, Scholz’s government has legalized the possession of limited amounts of cannabis; eased the rules on gaining German citizenship and ended restrictions on holding dual citizenship; and ended a ban on doctors “advertising” abortion services. Same-sex marriage was already legalized in 2017.
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You seriously do not want to know how much pain and fear and rage the process to get to this point caused in the German trans, inter, nonbinary and agender community (CW for transphobia and humiliation, obviously). It was a complete shitshow, every step was flanked by fearmongering from all the political and media pundits you’d expect, and a lot of it directly found its way into the new law, which has a ton of questionable passages, many of which appear outright unconstitutional. I expect this law to be constantly revised and harmful paragraphs stricken from it in decades of court battles, with exceptions for open and blatant discrimination in public spaces and in sports being especially sore points. Like, this law that is supposed to allow me self-determined gender id suggests (not outright states, but very strongly suggests in a legally ambiguous way) that it would be ok to kick me out of a public toilet, dressing room or sauna if i do not pass. In Germany, the country known all over the world for mixed gender saunas. You can’t make this shit up.
Up to a week ago, the draft for this law even included a paragraph that would have outed everybody changing their name to every single state and federal police and intelligence agency, customs, immigration offices and the central weapons registry, based entirely on the spurious cis fantasy that trans people are spies and infiltrators (you can thank the SPD for that). Up until yesterday, i still considered using the old, humiliating, expensive and openly unconstitutional legal process to change my name because of this threat, a process which involved not one, but two independent psychiatric exams you had to pay for yourself, exams which traditionally included highly invasive questions about your sex life, early childhood and gender presentation. Like, there’s people who’ve been asked to show off their underwear in these trials, and were then asked to jump up and down to prove they do not have a boner from wearing women’s panties. These are actual procedures German trans people have been put through to not get deadnamed anymore.
And because the process to get the new self id law took so long, was so traumatizing and included so many threatening regulations, i know tons of people personally who’ve opted to go for the old TSG process to change their papers. It’s less traumatizing today than it used to be because people exchange info about good or at least not that bad psychiatrists for the exams online, but i still know somebody who got denied his name change this year because the psychiatrist in question thinks that “nonbinary is just a phase.” Dey ended up paying almost 2000 € to get to hear that.
So yes, this new law is a huge step forward for our gender diverse communities, but it was war to get here and there’s a ton of other, equally necessary changes in Germany’s legal treatment of trans, inter, nonbinary and agender people that have been postponed because of this, may be met with comparable transphobic outrage campaigning, and may not pass the parliament anymore before the next election, which is almost guaranteed to lead to an even more transphobic government again that will do fuckall for us. For example, health insurance covering gender affirming surgery is entirely up to goodwill at this point and needs entirely new legislation to be guaranteed again. Health insurerers are letting this slide for the time being, i get my bottom surgery payed for in spite of this problem and that seems to generally hold true, but it’s an extremely precarious situation when trans healthcare is under attack worldwide and your government drags its feet on providing a solid legal framework for it.
exams which traditionally included highly invasive questions about your sex life, early childhood and gender presentation. Like, there’s people who’ve been asked to show off their underwear in these trials, and were then asked to jump up and down to prove they do not have a boner from wearing women’s panties
Holy fucking shit the cis are not ok.
The wrong Germany won the cold war, what the fuck.
We, collectively as humanity, clearly didnt deserve the GDR
But muh Stasi!
Breaking into the house of a reactionary and rearranging their stuff to fuck with them is objectively funny.
When I’m the Secretary of The Supreme World Soviet I will make a worldwide Gender Stasi into reality
Spoiler: These laws did not prevail. “Reunited” Germany continued under West German trans laws, which meant that pre-existing marriages of trans people where unconsensually divorced until 2008 and made either bottom surgery or forced sterilization a mandatory prerequisite for name and gender id changes until 2011.
pre-existing marriages of trans people where unconsensually divorced
The Cruelty is the point
The western powers never upheld the Potsdam agreement.
Thank you for that detailed reply. Reading the AP article vs your actual experience are like two completely different realities. If one just reads the official news, they’d be left with a “feel-good” story and a somewhat positive impression on the current German govt. (obv. none of us here who know their stance on Palestine). You make it clear just how much of that is pure propaganda made for international audience.
Yeah, Olaf Scholz tweeted yesterday about how progressive and important this is and the mfer didn’t even bother to be present for the vote.
Now, don’t get me wrong, this is a massive step forward, it has saved me a ton of money and a lot of … it’s hard to say if it would’ve just been cringe and weird or some humiliating white-knuckle ride for me to go through the TSG procedure instead. I seriously can’t tell. I have a lot of friends who are like “it wasn’t that bad anymore”, but i don’t know how well i would’ve handled the interviews and reading through several pages of being misgendered and deadnamed (they continue doing that in the very documents that legally confirm you are actually the gender you say you are).
So yeah, the trans people i’m in community with have been celebrating yesterday when this passed, but we’re not forgetting what led up to this and we’re not forgetting the battles ahead of us.
Transpeople now only need to sign 5 instead of 7 loyalty pledges to Israel
If I had any playwright skills, I’d do a modern take on Captain Black’s loyalty oaths from Catch 22. Annoyed westerners trying to do things like buy groceries or book a concert ticket or drive across town to see a friend, but having to sign stacks of loyalty oaths to Israel before being allowed to do so.
(for german politics nerds) the Sahra Wagenknecht party voted 9 out of 10, against this law. They are still the Terfs that pretend to be the real socialists, because they are also racist and bigoted, like the working class. Some people said that Wagenknecht isn’t a Terf anymore, this vote showed the opposite
Sahra Wagenknecht read the Stalin quote about social democracy being objectively the left wing of fascism and unironically decided to become a social democrat because of it.
Wow basic human rights!! Lemme just lick the blood of my elders from your boots, West Germany.
Thankful that something has improved thanks to the tireless work of our queer German comrades.
Wow basic human rights!!
Rights which German queers gained twice, and subsequently lost. First during the Weimar years, and second in East Germany.
if anyone’s curious, they seem to be joining these countries that allow gender self-identification:
Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and Uruguay
as well as 11 US states and several Canadian provinces/Mexican states
Yippie
