Germany’s Self-Determination Act: One Year On

It was one of the last acts of an exhausted, deeply despised government, just days before its final collapse: the enforcement, on November 1st, 2024, of Germany’s radical self-determination act. Since then, people, including teenagers, have been allowed to change their gender and name via a simple declaration at a register office, a process that has replaced court approval, psychological assessments, and detailed documentation.

On the anniversary of its coming into force, the law has been hailed as a “liberating move” for many. Mainstream outlets have peddled stories of transgender people explaining how much better their lives have become, parroting the message the transgender lobby has promoted from the start: that Germany has become a more humane, open, and liberal country.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The reality behind the statistics

Since the law’s enforcement, some 22,000 people have changed their gender. According to some reports, there have been no major abuses, such as men attempting to gain access to women’s areas.

Except, of course, those who have done exactly that. There is, for example, the case of Hilton J., who was sentenced to 12 years and 8 months in prison for manslaughter in April this year. The man, a refugee from South Africa, had been housed in women’s shelters for months, where he repeatedly threatened and even physically assaulted women. He was arrested after brutally stabbing and killing a security guard assigned to protect one of these shelters. But even after his arrest, unsettled officials allowed him to be remanded in a women’s prison—until, unsurprisingly, he threatened the women there too. Such a case would be almost inconceivable without the legal uncertainty and confusion caused by the Self-Determination Act.

But tragic cases like these are only the tip of the iceberg. Almost more worrying is that the law contributes to the spread and legitimization of one of the worst ideologies of our time. It promotes warped and dangerous ideas: that people can be born ‘in the wrong bodies,’ that men claiming to feel like women are in fact women, and that children and adolescents with gender dysphoria are best helped by leading them toward ‘transitioning.’

Targeting the next generation

Germany’s self-identification law has proven to be a strong push down a dangerous slippery slope toward one of the transgender lobby’s main aims: winning over the younger generation for its ideology.

Parents with children who fall under the influence of the transgender fad have more to fear than ever. The law allows young people as young as 14 to change their gender in a simple administrative act. The boy who was once Tom can—literally from one day to the next—demand to be called Linda and join the girls in his school sports lessons. Although minors need their parents’ consent, the decision is transferred to a family court if they refuse to comply.

Yet even this far-reaching law, which makes a mockery of parents’ rights to educate and protect their children, is still not seen as good enough by the transgender lobby. According to one article, “The act stands for self-determination for adults. However, genuine self-determination must also apply to children and young people, regardless of the consent of their legal representatives or court decisions.”

This shows how much further the lobbyist will push if left unchallenged.

The medical consequences

One problem that opponents of the law faced from the outset was that many ordinary citizens were—and still are—largely unaware of the scope and relevance of the new regulation. Very few Germans are likely to know what the act actually regulates. It was never the result of a demand from the heart of society but always the pet project of a small middle-class bubble, quite removed from the concerns of ordinary people.

Yet the consequences are dire and should be made known to the public.

While it’s true that the number of young people who have undergone mutilating, painful, and irreversible operations still remains comparatively low, a worrying trend is nonetheless visible: Figures from the Federal Statistical Office show an exponential increase in gender reassignment operations since the 2000s—from around 400 cases in 2007 to over 3,000 in 2023, including mastectomies, breast enlargements, and genital transformations such as vaginoplasty or penoplasty. The highest proportion is in the 20 to under 35-year-old age group. 

These figures should raise the question of what we are doing to young people with gender dysphoria when we allow the path to these operations to be presented as not only normal but desirable. However, beyond these extreme cases, this law has a much broader, destructive social impact too. 

A web of untruths and coercion

One of the worst such consequences is the spread of a web of untruths and bad faith. It must surely be one of the greatest linguistic shams to call a law ‘self-determination’ that threatens harsh punishments for anyone who fails to bow to it.

Since its implementation, teachers, parents, neighbors, or anybody else who doesn’t accept a person’s new name or gender must expect heavy fines. First, there is the penalty for deliberately disclosing the former name or gender, which can be punished with a fine of up to €10,000. But as relevant legal websites warn, this is not all: “repeated misgendering” can also be considered an insult and punished with a hefty fine.

What kind of law promises liberation but works with threats of harsh punishments?

Germany’s self-identity law forces every citizen to carefully watch their words and actions when dealing with transgender people. They are told that the man dressed in women’s clothing must be treated like a woman—and even be accepted in female-only changing rooms, because bureaucratic proof that he’s a woman is sufficient to give him protection, regardless of anatomy. With over 20,000 new gender registrations in just one year, this net of falsities and lies has become quite strong, with too many playing along for fear of being picked upon and punished.

Women under siege

It’s good, therefore, that there has been resistance. Women’s groups in particular have begun to form and stand up for their rights. One such group is Germany’s Frauenheldinnen e.V., which formed some years ago and has just organized a conference—Heroica—on the anniversary of the new law, bringing together activists and feminists from all over Germany—and also from England, where the struggle against transgender ideology has already shown more success.

The group campaigns for women who have fallen afoul of the new law, such as Doris Lange, the owner of a women-only fitness studio in the south German city of Erlangen. The trouble for Lange started when a man claiming to be a woman—and, in the meantime, registered as a woman under the new act—wanted to join her “Ladies First” women-only fitness studio. When the staff informed him that there were no changing rooms or showers for men, he demanded acceptance, graciously offering to wear swimming trunks while showering.

According to Frauenheldinnen, which has organized a crowdfunding campaign, Lange has already had to spend €28,000 on legal fees, court costs, and other damages directly caused by the case. A further pending court hearing must now clarify what the law in Germany values more highly: the right of a business owner to stand up for her company, her customers, and the principle of safe spaces for women, or the right of a man to declare himself a woman and demand access to all areas previously reserved for women. Incidentally, the man was already a member of a women’s district league football team, which certainly further promoted his sense of entitlement.

Doris Lange’s case makes a mockery of the claim that Germany’s self-identification law is not a threat to women and women’s safe spaces. It’s quite the opposite: an attack on women and their long-standing rights. It highlights how much more difficult life has become for women in Germany—and how it undermines rights that women fought for decades to achieve, a battle many women thought they had won long ago.

The true nature of the law

One year on, Germany’s self-determination law has already shown its true nature: it has served as cover for a violent killer, it has undermined parents’ rights and children’s safety, and it makes women-only spaces increasingly hard to defend. Most importantly, it keeps German society caught up in a system of lies and threats of punishment.

There should be no doubt that this law is not about protecting a small transgender minority, as is often claimed—a minority that is only protected if it can win the genuine sympathy of the majority society. Instead, it is an attempt to whip society into line, to force people to comply with an ideology.

It is a law that allows our largely disoriented elites to portray themselves as progressive liberals. Instead of winning over majorities, they present themselves as protectors of minorities—and thus as forces that can feel superior to normal people, to whom this ideology is, for good reasons, deeply alien. This tactic did not help the last government. Just a few days after the law was passed, it collapsed.

The path forward

One of the biggest disappointments regarding the government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz is that it has not abolished the law, despite promising to do so while in opposition. Instead, the coalition has said that it will “evaluate” the law by July 31, 2026, at the latest. But what is there to evaluate? No one who cares about freedom for all citizens should wait for that. As this government, too, proves rattled by infighting and under pressure from a declining economy, it will, like its predecessor, happily resort to moral posturing and symbolic policies like claiming to protect minorities. The fight to have the law abolished must carry on.