Moderating Anti-Trans Discourse: Conservative Women Politicians and Germany’s Self-Determination Act

Anti-trans politics has become a central site of contemporary anti-gender mobilisation. Existing research shows that anti-trans discourse travels transnationally, moves across far-right, conservative, liberal and feminist discourses, and increasingly shapes mainstream party politics. Less is known about the role that mainstream conservative female politicians play in anti trans discourse coalitions while distancing themselves from far-right antifeminism. This article examines this problem through a qualitative case study of the Frauen Union, the women’s organisation of the German Christian Democratic Union. Focusing on conflicts around Germany’s Self Determination Act, it asks what role Christian Democratic women play in the politics of moderation through which anti-trans restriction becomes acceptable in the democratic centre. Drawing on official communication, organisational and party documents, selected media texts and eighteen semi-structured elite interviews conducted between March and August 2025, the article analyses how a state-near conservative women’s organisation moderates restrictive anti-trans claims by translating them into democratic and state-oriented vocabularies. The findings show a three patterns. In the debate on trans policy, conservative politicans form part of the anti-trans discourse coalition by portraying gender self determination as disproportionate. This convergence of discourse on trans policy is legitimised by two interlinked frames. By referring to politics in their discourse – that is, by portraying the Self-Determination Act as hasty, inadequately scrutinised and closed to debate – they present delays, amendments, freedom of expression and a culture of debate as concerns for the democratic process. By also referring in their discourse to polity—that is, to the necessity of institutional regulation, state classification, and the defence of biological sex as a legal category—FU actors construct themselves as statesmen and thereby lend authority to their statements. I conceptualise this as ‘moderate feminism’, which legitimises itself through ‘insidious care for democracy’ and derives its authority from a constructed proximity to the cis-state. The article contributes to research on anti-trans politics, reactionary democracy and far-right mainstreaming by showing how anti-trans restriction can become compatible with the self-image of the democratic centre through moderation. It argues that mainstream conservative politicians normalise anti-trans discourse by translating policy restriction into democratic moderation and state authority.