The Bundestag has passed the Self-Determination Act. For trans people, this is a reason to celebrate. The debate in Parliament was previously heated.
“Self-determination now!” is written on their posters, the Bundestag debate is running on a large screen, rainbow flags are blowing in the wind. And in the afternoon, around a hundred people lie in each other’s arms in front of the Reichstag and cheer as if they had won the decisive game. For Mara Geri and the others, it is exactly that: a victory after a long battle.
“We didn’t know until the last moment whether it was enough. Now there’s just an incredible feeling of happiness,” says the 38-year-old. She has been campaigning for the rights of transsexual, intersex and non-binary people for years. The parliament’s decision is a satisfaction for her: “Trans people are finally being taken seriously!”
“Correct stereotypes from the 1950s”
She would have liked it to be easier back then, as a teenager. Growing up in a very conservative, rural family home with the feeling that I was born in the wrong body.
It took moving to Berlin and a long journey before she finally found herself. “It cost several thousand euros, was bureaucratic and somehow degrading,” she reports.
Twice she had to tell experts extremely intimate things and answer sometimes strange questions: “Whether I prefer pink or blue – those were real stereotypes from the 1950s.” In the end, a judge gave the okay. “A lot of effort, a lot of bureaucracy for something I’ve known for a long time. Namely, that I’m a woman.”
Necessary reminder to be objective
For some it is simply a decision about their own life, but for others it is a reason for heated debates. And so the debate in the Bundestag begins with warning words: Please refrain from personal attacks, defamation and insults, says Petra Pau, who is chairing the meeting today. Such an admonition is unusual – but necessary, as quickly becomes clear in the course of the debate.
“A man or a woman does not become anything completely different when they declare themselves to belong to one of the newly invented countless genders,” says Martin Reichardt. The AfD man speaks of “ideological nonsense”, a “trans hype” and a “ludicrous law” that endangers young people and opens the door to abuse.
The new law makes it possible to have your gender entry and first name changed with a simple declaration to the registry office. Without any prerequisites: without an expert opinion, without a doctor’s visit and without having to obtain the approval of a judge – all points that have previously been required.
You don’t want to have to get “permission.”
The Union also wants to revise the current law. It was one of the first in the world back then, in the 1980s, says CDU politician Mareike Lotte Wulf: “We as a Union recognize that it no longer fits the times.” There needs to be a low-threshold option to change one’s gender entry; it is a question of dignity and respect.
But that shouldn’t happen without preconditions: “You accept that minors will hastily take a path that might later turn out to be wrong.”
Mara Geri and the others watch the debate in front of the Reichstag. The mood is relaxed: there is clapping, booing or loud chanting, depending on who is standing at the microphone in the plenary session. For the group before the Bundestag, it is an important point that the law does not provide for any prerequisites. They don’t want to have to ask for “permission” or meet conditions in order to be themselves.
Roll-call vote
Inside the Bundestag, the traffic light parties agree: the law is overdue and right. “Because there are people who feel wrong in the gender they were born in and suffer from it,” said FDP MP Katrin Helling Plahr. “I respect that, even if I don’t understand it.”
The “state paternalism” must end, says Sven Lehmann from the Greens. You simply enforce the basic rights of those affected.
When the debate is in calmer waters, Sahra Wagenknecht stirs up emotions again. She steps up to the microphone and only needs 121 seconds before Petra Pau has to repeat her request for the debate to end with dignity and without insults.
The draft is misogynistic, said Wagenknecht. Dangerous for young people and far too widespread from a socio-political perspective. “It’s like it always is with traffic lights: ideology triumphs over reality, gender changes from a biological fact to a question of state of mind.”
The Bundestag discussed for around three quarters of an hour, after which tension increased in the group in front of the building. Because it is voted on by roll call. As a result, it takes another 45 minutes until the result is available: 374 MPs voted in favor, 251 against, and eleven abstained. The cheering from Mara Geri and the others comes from the heart. “A historic day,” she says. “It’s easier for a lot of people now.”