Germany’s new gender self-identification law has sparked its first major scandal after a convict secured a transfer to a women’s prison simply by changing his legal sex at a registry office.
‘Marla-Svenja’ Liebich, 53—a German activist known for his stunts exposing the cracks, double standards, and hypocrisies of establishment politics—obtained the right to serve 18 months in Chemnitz women’s prison after registering as female in December. Until then, Liebich was known as Sven. Liebich was sentenced to prison for crimes under Germany’s ‘incitement to violence’ (Volksverhetzung) law.
Thanks to the Self-Determination Act, which has been in force since November 2024, he now gets to serve his prison term among women. The law, pushed through by the coalition of Social Democrats, Greens, and Liberals, abolishes medical reports and judicial evaluations: a simple administrative declaration is enough.
The bill faced strong opposition already before its approval. Women’s organizations, jurists, and police unions warned that the text failed to address security concerns. “The law allows any man to enter women-only spaces just by filling out a form,” denounced the British magazine The Critic in a report on the feminist protests in Berlin after the vote.
The UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, Reem Alsalem, also expressed concern: the law “fails to address the implications for women and girls in single-sex spaces” and could “facilitate abuse by sexual predators,” she said in an official statement in October 2024.
German child psychiatrist Alexander Korte went even further: “The state is pushing adolescents with emotional problems toward irreversible decisions instead of treating the underlying causes,” he warned in remarks published by Spiked.
The Liebich case has amplified the controversy. The activist has repeatedly ridiculed the LGBT movement, even burning rainbow flags. And now, he has exposed exactly how easily male convicts can benefit from the law pushed through by the trans activists he ridiculed.
The Times underlined the irony: “An extremist who called transgender people ‘parasites’ is now legally a woman and will share a prison wing with female inmates.”
The transfer has reopened the debate about the limits of Germany’s legislation and has given fresh arguments to those who warned that the governing coalition approved the law for ideological reasons, ignoring its practical consequences.
“What was presented as a historic advance is turning into a political boomerang,” summarized Spiked. “The first high-profile application of the law does not protect vulnerable minorities, but an extremist who knows how to exploit the system’s loopholes.”
Germany may soon discover that its boldest social reform has become a political own goal.
