While society as a whole is unanimous about the need to protect women from violence, the question of who is considered a woman and who is guaranteed access to shelters by means of this predicate is receiving special attention in current debates.In the wake of the forthcoming Self-Determination Act, by means of which people will be able to self-determine their gender in their marital status without major hurdles, a broad media debate has flared up about the effects of this new law on the protection of women from (sexualized) violence and discrimination. In particular, transgenderness is treated in this discourse less as a social phenomenon than as a social problem, with fear narratives conveying an increase in sexual assault against women and the discrimination of women in social life. This presentation will introduce the identity politics struggle between cis- and queerfeminist positions along the discourse around the Self-Determination Act, which strives not only to interpret the concept of gender but also to determine which lives are worthy of protection and, in the process, constructs transgenderness as an enemy image. The latter can be found under the increased recourse to "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria", a scientifically highly controversial theory, which constructs transgenderness as a social contagion and is strategically used as a threat scenario in the feminist magazine EMMA or the Welt, in order to legitimize a protection of the gender-conservative way of life, thereby primarily supporting patriarchal structures. The lecture will also refer to current socio-political events, such as the cancellation of a lecture at the Humboldt University Berlin on bisexuality and a related criticism of public broadcasting and the publication of a position paper of the Frauenhaus-Koordinierung e.V.

Speaker: Dr. Annette Vanagas is a social psychologist and gender researcher, teaches sex education and professional role reflection within educational sciences at the University of Cologne. Among other things, she has published "Trans*Gender im Film. On the emergence of everyday knowledge about transsex* in cinematic narrative staging".