Know better. Do better.

Welcome to this month's ‘Policy, honestly’ which is a special LGBTQ+ edition and one I'm excited to bring you from my home base in Berlin.

In Germany, one person’s story has sparked a national debate about a law to protect a historically marginalised minority – a group of people that makes up about 0.6% of the country’s 84 million inhabitants.

A well-known far-right extremist, who had previously described LGBTQ+ people as “parasites of society”, transitioned legally, obtaining new identity documents that reflected a female gender marker and a new name: Marla-Svenja Liebich.

In late August, it became known that Liebich, convicted for incitement to hatred, would go to a women’s prison.

And so – again - a national debate ensued around how easy it should be to change one’s name and legal gender.

Since 1981, the “Transsexuals Act” forced Germans seeking to change their legal gender to undergo sex-reassignment surgery or to be rendered permanently sterile.

But even after a court in 2011 struck down those requirements, the quest to start afresh remained lengthy and expensive.

Trans Germans had to embark on a judicial process that involved two external evaluations, usually by psychologists or psychiatrists. I've interviewed people who were asked extremely personal questions – questions, say, about their masturbation habits or choice of underwear.

The process often ended up taking years and costing trans Germans thousands of euros. As a result, many decided not to go ahead.

But that all changed when the German parliament passed a self-determination bill in April 2024 after years of debate that we’ve covered extensively at Context.

A few months later, in November, trans “self-ID” entered into force in Germany.

The brand-new self-determination law allows trans, non-binary and intersex people to change their legal gender by simply going to their local registry and declaring the change without encountering any outside checks or meeting set conditions – a process that takes about three months.

Gender-affirming care is no longer tied to the administrative process of changing one’s identity documents, which allows trans people to freely decide whether they want to medically transition or not, when, and how.

Germany is far from being an outlier here: since 2014, 11 other European countries have introduced trans self-ID, from Malta and Ireland to Spain and Finland.

The numbers in Germany since the law was changed speak volumes.

Between November and December 2024, 9,993 people changed their legal gender, compared to 596 in the first 10 months of the year - before the law came into force - according to the Federal Statistical Office.

A spokesperson told me that the government expects an average of 4,000 people to legally change their gender each year after this initial peak.

But Germany’s policy isn’t free from critics.

Right-wing groups and gender-critical women’s rights activists say trans self-ID threatens women’s safety in single-sex spaces, as well as children’s rights.

They also fear that criminals could exploit the change to commit fraud.

Such claims have gained rapid ground in recent years, as the issue of trans rights became a weapon wielded by politicians from the United States to Britain and Spain.

The two biggest parties in the German parliament, the CDU/CSU conservative bloc and far-right AfD, are among those that oppose self-ID.

Trans advocates, along with Germany’s main feminist organisations, say there’s plenty of evidence that their opponents’ worst fears are unfounded.

In 2023, Transgender Europe (TGEU) released a study of nine European countries with self-determination, including Denmark, Portugal and Belgium.

Authorities surveyed did not report any cases of related fraud nor did they find that the safety of cisgender women in single-sex spaces had been compromised due to self-determination.

“None of those worries have materialised,” Richard Köhler, a senior policy officer at TGEU who has been working on the topic of legal gender recognition for almost two decades, told me.

Some places have even more experience than Europe.

In Argentina, the first country in the world to pass legislation of this kind, there is widespread consensus about its positive impact, according to the country's main women's rights groups.

“Some people are deliberately pushing this topic, with a very political agenda, because it's something that people can easily get upset about,” Köhler, the German researcher, told me.

“But also it is a reminder that our societies still do not know trans people.”

Yet the rising clamour against any advance in trans rights is having a concrete impact on life in Germany.

The CDU/CSU, the major partner in the governing coalition, wants to introduce a special registry – one that is specifically for trans people - that opponents say could compromise their privacy and data.

Negative attitudes and hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people are also surging.

And self-determination could still be reversed when the law gets revised next year – if the Liebich case convinces conservative politicians to change course.

“We need fact-based policies,” Julia Monro, a trans woman and LGBTQ+ activist, told me.

“The problem is that people aren’t interested in facts. Instead, they’re listening to populist groups that are making noise with single cases and offer easy solutions for complex realities.”