German Courts Defend Freedom of Expression in Trans Person’s Legal Battle

A trans person wanted to stop the slogan #DuBistEinMann in an urgent procedure. It failed, German courts insisted on freedom of expression. Anything else would have been questionable.

Definitely male: Barbie’s companion Ken.

Ton Koene / Imago

If free societies want to abolish themselves, they would do well to censor themselves. Then organizers deny polarizing figures like Richard David Precht the stage – his reading in Hamburg has just been canceled. Universities are removing supposedly disturbing sculptures and paintings from their rooms, and journalists are turning mothers into “birthing people.”

Of course, all of this creates backlash. The feminist group Radfem Berlin has now achieved a stage victory in the fight for free speech. She prevailed against the trans person Julia Monro, who was born with male chromosomes. The Frankfurt am Main Higher Regional Court came to the conclusion that the slogan #DuBistEinMann used against Monro did not constitute defamatory criticism.

What happened? In March of this year, the trans person Monro called on the platform X, formerly Twitter, to support the German Women’s Council. According to Monro, there were a lot of “Terfs” on his online profile. “Terfs” means “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” and is used as a insult for women who assume that there are two biological genders. A representative from Radfem Berlin then replied to Monro: «Times changed! #DuBistEinMann».

A gender dispute escalates

Monro apparently found this hurtful. Through an urgent application for an injunction, she wanted to have the feminists banned from making this statement in court. This was unsuccessful in the first and second instances. Monro ultimately withdrew the urgent application.

Both the regional court and the higher regional court in Frankfurt am Main rated the right of feminists to freely express their opinions more highly than the protection of the personal rights of trans people. A correct, but not a self-evident, strengthening of freedom of expression.

The legal dispute between a trans person and the online portal “Nius” ended very differently. In a text by “Nius,” a trans person was first described as a “biological man,” then as a “60-year-old man.” The Frankfurt Regional Court confirmed the interim injunction on the grounds that the name was deliberately denigrating and thus violated personal rights.

Struggle for worldview

Decisions of this kind are groundbreaking for future social interaction. If the self-determination law passed by the Federal Cabinet, including the so-called “ban on disclosure,” comes into force, the fight over the terms could intensify. The law allows anyone to change their gender entry almost without any hurdles – from man to woman or woman to man. The number of cases in which disputes about biological realities are likely to increase.

There is already a struggle over the question of how many genders exist and whether self-declared trans women are considered women.

This debate is led by transgender ideologues who, for example, tried to silence Berlin doctoral student Marie-Luise Vollbrecht. They are a small minority, but they are relentless in their demands on the majority society. They receive support not only from activist media representatives, but also from politicians.

So tweeted the SPD party executive in August: “Trans* women are women.” The traditional party thus presented an interpretation as a universal truth. Conversely, the sentence “Only women are women” would probably be wrong for the Social Democrats.

But it is part of the basic structure of free societies to be able to express facts with impunity. Realities that were once officially certified must remain expressible in a liberal constitutional state.

2023-11-04 05:21:19
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