trans rights: stop the moral panic! – column

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I find it worrying and frankly creepy how people talk about trans people in some places in the German discourse.

(In America, where a candidate for the US Congress from South Carolina publicly demands that parents who gender-affirmed their trans children should be executed, and in Britain anyway.).

I would not have thought that in an enlightened, liberal society with a culture of debate that strives for decency, a group of people would be degraded in such a misanthropic way in 2022.

In the meantime, talk shows and other opinion platforms no longer only

, but also

trans people - but not without my observation of three recurring - and humiliating - moments:

These three moments are almost textbook reminders of the

, the so-called "moral panic" in, for example, the debates of the 1980s when the gay community and queer people were blamed for the supposed moral decay of the world, and the raunchy assertion of a connection between pedocrime and homosexuality was spread.

Moral panic as a means of creating identity

The term "moral panic," coined by the sociologist Stanley Cohen, refers to situations in which behavior or groups of people become the target of disproportionate outrage and moral condemnation;

by a section of society that sees it as a threat to social order.

Famous examples include allegedly satanic rock music that turns youngsters into dishonest drug dealers and unkempt, long-haired conscientious objectors.

Even the game Pokémon GO triggered a little moral panic among cultural pessimists a few years ago.

A social development is condemned unduly and defamed as a sign of a cultural crisis, accompanied by the fear of decadence and nefariousness.

Gender norms lose their meaning

The group antagonized in this way is then stigmatized as an outgroup as a symbol of an alleged civilizational danger.

In this way, transphobia becomes a new tribalistic demarcation feature and moral panic becomes an identity-forming means of dogged defense of one's core values.

This panic begins with the denial of the existence of human beings - which strikes me as phenomenological astonishment, for how can one deny the existence of persons when they, well, exist, live and breathe?

Two trans women sit in the current Bundestag, Tessa Ganserer and Nyke Slawik;

there are other prominent trans people like journalist Georgine Kellermann, reality star and model Benjamin Melzer, author Linus Giese, GNTM winner Alex Mariah Peter;

or an internationally known actor like Elliot Page, the Wachowski sisters and former athlete Caitlyn Jenner and countless other examples.

Part of the anti-trans fomentation of a moral panic is the willful conflation of gender and sexuality in order to equate gender identity with supposedly amoral behavior.

The fact that the law was called the »Transsexuals Act« didn't necessarily help.

Accordingly, in Germany, but also in the USA, the popular narrative emerged that children who are educated about gender identity are “sexualized early”.

An edition of the »Show with the Mouse«, which explains about trans people, is described as indoctrination and linked in the same breath to videos about anal group sex.

Everything gets mixed up here, gender identity, sexual orientation, sexual behavior, an evoked idea of ​​promiscuity.

The insinuation, speaking and informing about trans people, simply making them visible, creates a kind of intellectual contagion, demonizes a group of people – who are already victims of hatred and discrimination – until being trans itself becomes a moral threat.

It is evident that the participants in the discourse perceive the mere existence of trans persons as an attack of the present on their own being.

If their own gender world is perceived as binary and as purely biologically defined, trans people question these conformities.

The resulting feeling of insecurity, that one's certainties are up for negotiation, translates into a disturbing hostility.

The current bureaucracy makes life difficult for trans people, society makes it difficult for them to exist and now we sometimes have debates on the level of a drunken round table after a witch burning.

Trans people are no more a social trend than left-handed people were a trend when suddenly the number of left-handed people in the statistics was rising rapidly.

It is absolutely necessary that we have discussions about how the Self-Determination Act could look like in concrete terms, or how exactly children and young people should be informed about their gender identity;

and the offer for people with questions about gender identity must not only be more comprehensive, but also more qualified.

And of course, doing so must ensure the safety of women, cis women

trans women – i.e. women – have priority.

But all of these debates must be conducted without heteronormative hubris and cis panic, without the unjustified fear that if trans people are allowed a safe and dignified life, something could be taken away from mainstream society.