Since 1981, Germany’s trans, non-binary and intersex communities were forced to contend with the so-called ‘Transsexual Law’ (TSG for short) if they wanted to legally change their name and gender marker.
Entailing a long, costly and often discriminatory review process, individuals were required to present to a local court with reports by two experts “sufficiently familiar with the particular problems of transsexualism” who could attest that, in all likelihood, they would not want to revert back to the gender they were assigned at birth.
In the many years since the TSG was first implemented, the proportion of people who reversed their decision remained the same: around 1%. Nevertheless, under the TSG, people had to undergo a months-long, degrading assessment process, which was not only expensive at – costing around €2,000 – but also, allegedly, asked
