Mobilization for Equality: Stop Germany's SELF ID Law
The Réseau Féministe Québécois invites you to a demonstration in front of the German Consulate in Montreal on November 1st, 2024 at 12:05 p.m. to denounce the application of one of the world's most permissive laws on gender self-identification in Germany. More than a hundred feminist organizations will be demonstrating simultaneously around the world in front of German embassies and consulates.
It is in a spirit of international sisterhood that our attention is focused today on Germany. On April 12th, 2024, the government of the Federal Republic of Germany passed the “Self-ID Act”, which will come into force on November 1st, 20241. The Self-ID Act (Selbstbestimmungsgesetz) will legally replace sex with gender.
From November 1st, 2024, it will be possible in Germany..:
- change your civil status to the opposite sex and your new name every year ;
- anyone who continues to refer to a man who claims to have a “female gender identity” as a man is liable to a fine of up to €10,000;
- parents can choose the official sex of their newborn; after the age of 5, the child's “consent” will be required;
- children over the age of 14 can appeal to the family court if their parents do not support their belief in their “wrong body”.
Yet Germany is one of the countries, like Canada, to have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women “CEDAW "2 and the ’Istanbul Convention ”3 on the protection of women against gender-based violence. In addition, women's gender-based rights are guaranteed by Article 34 of the German Constitution. The German government therefore has a clear mandate to protect women and girls on the basis of their sex. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms4 and the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms5 also protect women's rights on the basis of their sex. The new law dislodges this legal basis from a factual and verifiable biological reality.
We are deeply concerned by the experience of other countries with similar laws, including our own. The safety of women, children and girls is no longer guaranteed. Canada, like Germany, allows trans-identified men to go to women's prisons. Violent murderers, sexual abusers, pedophiles and necrophiles, whose victims are mostly women and children, are currently in Canadian and Quebec federal prisons for women when they discover their female gender identity6. Feminist groups critical of gender identity theory are intimidated, threatened7 or outright defined8 when they denounce the clash of rights between the demands of trans activists and women's rights. Let's not forget that on April 4, 2023, Quebec's Liberal Party called for the removal of the word “woman” from the family law reform bill. Not to mention that no women's rights group was heard during the revision of family law9 in Quebec, and that the Conseil du statut de la femme has never pronounced itself on the impact of self-identification in Quebec and Canada on the rights of women and girls10.
It is in this context that we invite Canadian women and men to join us on November 1st, 2024 to defend our rights and freedoms in front of the German consulate.
