What?
Geschlecht-zaehlt.de is an initiative that actively advocates that „sex“ continues to count in its current meaning in the German legal system. The initiative is committed to maintaining the legal category of sex based on the physical-biological characteristics that distinguish „female“ from „male“. The name „Geschlecht zählt“ means both „sex matters“ and „sex counts“.
Who?
Geschlecht-zaehlt.de was founded by feminists committed to the goals of the second women’s movement. The initiative is supported by an array of women and men from the worlds of politics, science, medicine, education, business, justice and care work. Geschlecht-zaehlt.de is an independent, non-commercial and fact-based initiative.
Why?
The initiative was founded in response to the announcement of the “Gender Self-Identification Act”, with which the government elected in 2021 wants to fulfill the demands of the transgender rights lobby and which is now on the table as a draft law. This planned new law is intended to replace the Transsexual Act, under which people are currently allowed to change their legal sex. The current act stipulates a procedure with expert opinions and specific measures for this.
In contrast, under the draft law, the definition of a man or a woman would no longer be determined on the basis of physical-biological sex, but would be based on the subjective feeling of which „gender identity“ a person feels he or she belongs to, i.e. which socially constructed role (gender). Under this legal regime, a person seeking legal recognition of their changed gender would simply declare this „emotional state“ at the register office and then immediately obtain a legal change of their gender entry in the civil register. A man would legally become a „woman“ and vice versa. Since emotional states can change over the course of life, the entry on a person’s gender could be changed repeatedly. To create the legal basis for this, it is planned to redefine the legal category „sex“ (Geschlecht) and to replace it or its meaning with „gender identity“ (Geschlechts(rollen)identität/Genderidentität).
The Self-ID Act would thus herald a paradigm shift for the German legal system and would not only affect transsexuals, „transgender“, „non-binary“ and intersexual people, as is falsely being suggested, but all citizens. It would become the reference point for all other laws for which sex is relevant. This would affect all family and social law as well as labour law.
How this law would influence sex-specific statistics in particular is already apparent in the case of the Green member of the German Bundestag Markus (Tessa) Ganserer. The German Green Party had enabled him to take a seat in the Bundestag as the self-defined „woman“ „Tessa“ on a safe list position by means of the party’s internal women’s statute. In the statistics for the Bundestag, Ganserer, who is legally a man, is now counted as a woman. Numerous women lodged an objection with the Bundestag against the action of the Green Party and the election of Markus Ganserer.
Geschlecht-zaehlt.de strongly opposes the plans of the new German government. The achievements of second wave feminism and the findings of feminist research in all scientific disciplines must not be undone by a queer understanding of feminism and politics. The specific rights of women and girls are not a privilege but have been hard fought for. Among other things, this involves separate spaces that offer women and girls protection from male dominance and violence, and to which male persons who see themselves as women are not allowed access.
The initiative is committed to ensuring that the sex-based protection and civil rights of women and girls, as laid down in the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), are upheld.
Geschlecht-zaehlt.de aims to motivate and support women to actively stand up for their rights and to exercise their fundamental right of freedom of expression, including on the topic of sex. To this end, Geschlecht-zaehlt.de provides information on this issue. The initiative aims to encourage women (and men) to defend themselves against the defamation and threats that experience has shown occurs as soon as the negative effects of the transgender ideological concept of gender or gender identity are brought up for discussion.