German Trans Activists Damage Door of Justice Minister Who Drafted Self-ID Bill

On May 19, trans activists damaged the door of the German Justice minister, Marco Buschmann’s home. An anonymous group of “autonomists and anarcha-feminists” took responsibility for the incident on German Indymedia.

The vandals were motivated by the gender self-identification bill, in particular by their understanding of the draft as “not good enough.” Marco Buschmann, along with Family minister Lisa Paus, is the bill’s author. In the manifest published on Indymedia, the activists claim to have written on the minister’s door: “Self-identification instead of a bathroom bill,” along with a drawing of the “transgender anarchy” symbol. In addition to that, they stated they have broken the glass of the entrance.

According to the activists’ manifesto, the Justice minister had a “trans-negativistic” influence on the bill. German queer ambassador Sven Lehmann has also criticized the draft.

He complained about a provision that would prevent men from avoiding the draft by changing their gender identity. If the bill passed, in case of war, Germans would therefore draft men according to their sex, not identity. Lehmann also spoke out against exceptions related to fines for “deadnaming and misgendering” of trans individuals by their family members. Additionally, he lobbied against female-only services keeping the option to refuse to accommodate people of the opposite sex, such as women’s shelters opting to exclude trans-identified men.

The current bill establishes fines for the “misgendering” or “deadnaming” of self-identified trans people that could go up to 10 000 euros (USD 10,710). If the exception for family members was scrapped, the following could happen: the children of a man who changes his name and legal gender could be fined for calling him “dad” or using his former name.

The trans activists’ manifesto claims: “When justifications for transmisogynistic discrimination are to be enshrined in law for the first time, when the state reserves the right to militaristic options to stop transgender people from changing their gender and subject them to conscription, when explicit exceptions are to be created where the gender of trans people is to be disregarded - then autonomists who want to stand up for trans liberation and anarcha-feminism cannot leave this

They also call for seeing “transphobic propaganda and anti-feminist lobbying as existential threat” that has to be “countered with maximum determination at an early stage."

On Twitter, Marco Buschmann denounced the vandalism: “Democrats argue using arguments, not violence and the damage of property. Of course, you will not change my political opinion using such means.” He also claimed to have filed a complaint with the police.

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