Nuremberg (dpa) – \u00abIf you want Tessa, you have to vote for Ganserer\u00bb is written in thick white letters on the green election posters.<\/p>\n
On the poster is a woman with long blonde hair, casually pushed behind her ear on one side. She smiles cheerfully into the camera.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, the Nuremberg candidate for the Bundestag, Tessa Ganserer, is anything but happy about the posters. They are only a stopgap measure.<\/p>\n
Because Ganserer is on the ballot paper with a different first name – a male first name that the 44-year-old discarded almost three years ago and with which she does not identify. \u00abThis is very painful and humiliating for me,\u00bb she says.<\/p>\n
Ganserer has been sitting in the Bavarian parliament for the Greens since 2013. For the first few years, she attended under her previous male name.<\/p>\n
In November 2018, Ganserer then became the first politician in a German parliament to come out as transgender.<\/p>\n
From then on, she has appeared publicly as Tessa Ganserer.<\/p>\n
Since then, Ganserer has been fighting for legal equality and social acceptance of transgender people in the Bavarian state parliament as a queer policy spokesperson – a fight that she now wants to continue in the Bundestag \u00abin the hope of being able to make a difference so that others will have it easier after me.\u00bb<\/p>\n
Like many other people in her situation, Ganserer refuses to change her first name and gender officially under the Transsexuals Act.<\/p>\n
The 40-year-old law stipulates that people are only allowed to do so after a psychological assessment and a court decision – in which they often have to answer very intimate questions.<\/p>\n
Therefore, Ganserer’s identity card still shows her former first name.<\/p>\n
In everyday life, this means that she has to explain and re-explain her name and identity and justify herself, for example, when taking a coronavirus test, when she wants to pick up a rental car or when her ticket is checked on a train.<\/p>\n
The German Society for Transidentity and Intersexuality estimates the percentage of transgender people in Germany at 0.3 to 0.6 per cent.<\/p>\n
There has only been one trans person in the Bundestag so far, but she only came out after her term in office.<\/p>\n
\u00abThe 2021 Bundestag elections are a historic moment in this respect,\u00bb says Gabriel_Nox Koenig from the Federal Trans Association.<\/p>\n
Openly trans people are represented on the electoral lists for the first time, Koening says: Tessa Ganserer, her party colleagues Victoria Brossart and Nyke Slawik as well as the Social Democrat politician Ria Cybill Geyer are all breaking new ground.<\/p>\n
Ganserer and Slawik are seen as most likely of this group to enter the Bundestag.<\/p>\n
Climate change, but also her personal history, persuaded 27-year-old Nyke Slawik from Leverkusen to stand for the Greens in the Bundestag elections.<\/p>\n
\u00abAfter my transition, I went through many experiences that I found discriminatory,\u00bb she writes in an email. \u00abLike the degrading, lengthy and expensive process of changing my name.\u00bb<\/p>\n
In addition, she says, she herself grew up without role models because transgender people have not been present in politics until now.<\/p>\n
\u00abI want to change that,\u00bb says Slawik, adding, \u00abI hope that it will be more difficult to discriminate against us as a gender minority when we finally have a seat at the table.\u00bb<\/p>\n
As recently as May, the Greens and the FDP made an attempt in the Bundestag to abolish the Transsexual Act and replace it with a law for gender self-determination.<\/p>\n
However, the two bills failed: the government and the far-right AfD voted against them.<\/p>\n
By Irena Guettel, dpa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nuremberg (dpa) – \u00abIf you want Tessa, you have to vote for Ganserer\u00bb is written in thick white letters on the green election posters. On the poster is a woman with long blonde hair, casually pushed behind her ear on one side. She smiles cheerfully into the camera. Nevertheless, the Nuremberg candidate for the Bundestag, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":985338,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1099010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actualidad"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t