The traffic light wants to strengthen the rights for transgender people. However, the experts cannot come to a common denominator when it comes to the Self-Determination Act.
Berlin – How diverse the voices in the debate are is already visible at the Bundestag doors. Women stand there and protest. “Yes to women’s rights! No to the Self-Determination Act,” reads one banner. Women who are against people being able to change their gender and first name more quickly in the future. This Tuesday morning is the public hearing in the Bundestag on the self-determination law of the SPD, Greens and FDP.
This self-determination law has been heating up people’s minds for months. The traffic light coalition had agreed in the coalition agreement to replace the outdated transsexual law of 1980. The rights of transgender people should now be strengthened. One of the core elements: The two psychiatric reports and the one court order should no longer be necessary in the future to change the gender entry and first name. A simple declaration to the registry office should be sufficient. Less discriminatory, less bureaucratic.
The experts disagree on the Self-Determination Act
As simple as the project sounds, it is viewed in different ways. The visitor stands at the public hearing in the Bundestag are well filled. Someone is wearing a jacket in rainbow colors. A statement for diversity and openness. Down in the hearing room, AfD MPs repeatedly make fun of certain terms or representations of the invited experts. Worlds collide.
The experts came to the public hearing to analyze the legal, scientific and social dimensions of the Self-Determination Act.
It is above all child protection where the opinions of the invited experts differ widely. The draft stipulates that people over 14 can change their gender entry themselves if their legal guardians have agreed. In the event of a conflict, the family court will decide. For children under 14, parents must submit these declarations.
Plans for children and young people in particular are being scrutinized
Affected children are thus “placed in a situation that is hopelessly overwhelming for them,” criticizes Professor Bernd Ahrbeck, from the International Psychoanalytic University of Berlin. “14-year-olds find themselves in an irritating, often vulnerable life situation,” says Ahrbeck. While protective functions would apply in other areas, this would not be the case with the planned law.
Professor Sibylle Winter from the Charité University Medicine in Berlin sees it differently. “It is undisputed that many young people during puberty have a critical examination of themselves, their bodies and their gender,” says Winter. However, the Self-Determination Act does not mean that it can be assumed that “inflationary use” of the easier gender entry will occur. According to the child and adolescent psychiatrist Winter, this only occurs “after many years of conflict or when the level of suffering is very high.”
Legal scholar: Law clarifies gender entry, not medical transition
Directly linked to the planned self-determination law is the discussion about medical gender reassignment, the so-called transition, of transgender people. “Once the path has been taken, you become a patient for life,” warns Professor Aglaja Stirn, a specialist in psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy. And further: The risk potential of the traffic light project is greater than the benefit.
Professor Bettina Heiderhoff, a legal scholar from the University of Münster, urges us to stick to the core of the law. She makes it clear: “We should first remember that it is only about the gender entry, that is nothing really dangerous, nothing that can be reversed.” The law is for transgender people, rather an instrument “that can be used by away from state paternalism and should lead to private autonomy”.
Tessa Ganserer: Germany is “not planning something completely new”
The hearing shows: It is a major legal, family policy and medical task to initiate the Self-Determination Act. And is it time? In 2015, the Council of Europe passed a resolution against discrimination against transgender people. “In the social discourse about the Self-Determination Act, one could get the impression that it was only because of the law that people would suddenly become trans,” says Tessa Ganserer (Greens), the first transgender member of the Bundestag. But: “The opposite is the case. There are transgender people in all parts of society and professional groups: in the German Bundestag, in the Bundeswehr, in the police,” says Ganserer. And the traffic light coalition “is not planning something completely new”, rather “numerous European countries have already implemented the Council of Europe’s demands”.
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