From Private Wrongs to Public Rights: The Politics of Intersex Activism in the Merkel Era

During the Merkel era, Germany moved from a traditional gender binary to a gender triad by introducing a third sex category. Why did a nation that has historically lagged on gender issues become the first country in Europe to take this extraordinary step? This article sheds light on changing LGBTQI discourses in Germany and the successful politicization of intersex concerns. Initial reform was prompted by transnational social activism at the UN and top-down international pressure, while the second phase was dominated by competition among German domestic parties and the courts. I process-trace policy-making throughout the Merkel era to show how claims by intersex activists morphed from the private to the public sphere. Once the issue gained visibility, most political actors expressed support for social movement claims for physical inviolability framed as human rights. Semi-autonomous medical authorities resisted change, however, and maintained a correction paradigm that discursively came to be perceived as a ‘private wrong’. As a result, the state's legal recognition of a third sex preceded the ban of invasive medical procedures on intersex children. Recent far right anti-gender discourses have challenged these achievements and tried to limit the visibility of and broader accessibility to a third sex category.