Trans sauna ban being considered in Germany

Germany’s government is wrangling over whether to let trans women into female-only saunas as it debates the details of a law on self-identification.

Set to be presented in the coming days, the draft law will abolish the current barriers that stand in the way of Germans officially changing their sex.

Current law states that trans people need to provide two psychological tests before the state recognises a sex change.

But the reform will allow everyone aged 14 and upwards to change the sex on their ID cards and passports by filling in a form at their local registry office.

While Berlin’s three-way coalition is in agreement on the outline of the Bill, it has struggled to find consensus on what it means in practice.

After an initial plan caused fierce backlash by feminists last year, the Right-leaning Free Democrats have back peddled and are insisting that the law will not give trans-women an automatic right to enter female-only spaces.

With saunas an important aspect of German culture, the debate has centred on whether trans women should be allowed into the wooden cabins where clothing is normally strictly forbidden.

“A women’s sauna will still be able to consider the protection of the privacy of female customers and therefore tie entrance to someone’s outward appearance,” justice minister Marco Buschmann of the Free Democrats told Die Zeit newspaper.

That proposal has not gone down well with the Green party though, who insist that it would contravene anti-discrimination laws.

Ferda Ataman, the government’s discrimination commissioner, responded that: “This is not about a man wanting to access a women’s space, but about a woman (wanting to do so).”

Trans rights groups have expressed concern that the law would reinforce stereotypes and could lead to saunas rejecting customers on the basis of arbitrary criteria such as the size of their chin.

Some feminist groups meanwhile have rejected the law in its entirety, saying that women’s shelters will in future fear losing state funding if they stop trans women from entering their spaces.

The opposition CDU have also criticised the fact that the law will allow teenagers to change their sex at the stroke of a pen, saying a psychological assessment was “absolutely necessary” in the case of adolescents.