Without consent
The German parliament has passed a law making it easier for citizens and residents to legally change gender. It’s also introducing hefty fines – in specific circumstances – for disclosing someone’s prior registered name or gender without consent.
Hefty fines for mentioning someone’s actual sex? Really? So men can force themselves on, say, women’s hostels or refuges or rape crisis centers and no one is allowed to “disclose” the fact that he’s a man?
Previously, changing your registered gender required a doctor’s certificate and the approval of a family court. Now over-18s can change to male, female or diverse, a third gender option that already exists under German law…The intentional and harmful disclosure of someone’s prior name or legal gender could attract a fine of up to €10,000.
Despite the fact that women often need to know who is a man and who isn’t. Yawn; women don’t matter.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz said: “We show respect to trans, intersex and non-binary people – without taking anything away from others. This is how we continue to drive the modernisation of our country. This includes recognising realities of life and making them possible by law.”
Recognizing what “realities of life”? Not the reality that men are not women, for one.
Nyke Slawik, from the Greens – who is transgender – said it was a “first step” towards a society which allows self-determination for trans people.
But we can’t have that kind of “self-determination.” It’s not possible. We can’t self-determine ourselves into raccoons or planets or airports or an endless list of things we’re not. We can’t make ourselves into reptiles or fruits or furniture. Our scope for self-determination is sharply limited. Sentimental airy glurge about unlimited “self-determination” is infantilizing. Knock it off.
