New culture wars in Germany? Transgender representation in German electoral politics

The paper explores transgender issues in German electoral politics to establish the state of the ‘new culture wars,’ increasingly prevalent in the United States and the United Kingdom, in Germany. To do that, it focuses on the representation of transgender women in the 2021 Bundestag elections. For the first time, openly transgender candidates were represented on party lists with two transgender women entering the parliament for the Green party. The paper tracks the public perception of their campaigns in the traditional news media and on Twitter to explore public discourses about transgender issues in German politics. It identifies discursive tropes demonstrating divisions within feminist networks between exclusive and inclusive discourses on trans rights, but also argues that the purported clash between trans and women’s rights is primarily used by the far right to constrain the rights of transgender people in Germany.