Germany’s Green Party has chosen a trans-identified male member of parliament, Tessa Ganserer, to speak at an event highlighting women in politics. Ganserer, whose real name is Markus, was elected to Germany’s Bundestag in September 2021, taking a seat that was reserved for female political representation.
The event, titled Women*. Power. Politics, uses an asterisk throughout its description to indicate “all women are welcome,” by which they are clearly referring to Ganserer, who is a man.
“Time for new perspectives, time for more women* in politics and business,” reads the event’s tagline.
Leading up to Ganserer’s election, feminist campaigners protested a policy put in place by the Green Party allowing men to self-identify into political roles designated for women under a quota system.
On July 31, 2021, Women’s Declaration International’s branch in Germany issued a public statement condemning the move, pointing out that a total of three men had taken women’s places: Ganserer, as well as Nyke Slawik and Victoria Brossart.
“The German Green Party and the Social Democratic Party are both discriminating against women in politics on the basis of sex,” read the statement.
“Three men claiming a female ‘gender identity’ who are running as candidates for the general election are listed by the Green Party as women. The Party thus prevents three women, defined as adult human females, from running for the Bundestag for the benefit of three men (adult human males).”
Speaking with Reduxx, a representative of WDI Germany commented, “It is striking that Ganserer seeks out specifically women’s and LGB events, but he is male and heterosexual.”
As reported by feminist magazine EMMA, the women-led organization Sex Counts was recently formed in response to the conflict between women’s rights and sex self-identification policies.
“With the Ganserer case, the Greens simply de facto introduced the Self-Determination Act, which was rejected in the Bundestag in the summer of 2021,” representative Hilde Schwathe told EMMA, continuing:“It’s not about Ganserer’s personal case, but about redefining the term ‘sex’.”
According to Sex Counts, a self-declaration of gender identity is not legal under German law. However, the Greens bypassed the law in order to allow a man within their party to be listed as a “woman,” and therefore to fill a seat under a quota designed to ensure female representation.
“The Greens’ strategy is to introduce a de facto gender self-ID ruling which is not based on law. Gender self-identification is the core element of a ‘Self-ID Act’ which was turned down by the German parliament in May 2021. The May 2021 draft law had been introduced to parliament by the Green Party and the Free Democratic Party (FDP).”
Recently, the number of female representatives in the Bundestag has been on the decline, and currently just over a third of parliament officials are women.
Tessa Ganserer was first elected to the Bavarian state parliament in 2013 under his legal name Markus Ganserer for the Greens. Despite this, his Wikipedia page has been edited to display only the name Tessa, with no mention of his prior political career as Markus.
In addition, Ganserer has been campaigning to introduce sex self-identification policies in Germany, and has claimed that “a penis is not a male sexual organ” and “there are women who have penises.”
A 2019 article published by Welt states, “Markus Ganserer ceased to exist on December 12, 2018. Then Tessa Ganserer gave Markus’ clothes to a friend.”
The article also describes Ganserer in a sexist and objectifying manner typically reserved for women in politics: “Her nails are mud gray and manicured to perfection. She wears two ornamental rings on her right hand. Her hands are slender and thin. She looks amazing.”
In a press conference that year, Ganserer explained how he decided to begin identifying as a woman after years of stealing his wife’s clothing.
“At first I was totally surprised at myself. But I immediately felt that there was more, it wasn’t a fetish, I felt like a woman,” said Ganserer.
In 2021, Ganserer was behind an initiative in Nuremberg that introduced “queer bathing days,” when public swimming pools were reserved for trans-identifying and intersex individuals only, and excluded women who did not identify as transgender.
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