Germany just passed a landmark ‘Self Determination’ law – but does it go far enough?
Prominent members of the German trans+ community share their thoughts on the new law, passed on 12 April, which seeks to make updating your legal name and gender marker easier.
WORDS BY SAMUEL BENKE ARTWORK BY YOSEF PHELAN Since 1981, Germany’s trans, non-binary and intersex communities were forced to contend with the so-called ‘Transsexual Law’ (TSG for short) if they wanted to legally change their name and gender marker.
Entailing a long, costly and often discriminatory review process, individuals were required to present to a local court with reports by two experts “sufficiently familiar with the particular problems of transsexualism” who could attest that, in all likelihood, they would not want to revert back to the gender they were assigned at birth.
In the many years since the TSG was first implemented, the proportion of people who reversed their decision remained the same: around 1%.
