Bayer Leverkusen: Two-gender ruling and fine cause discussion

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Banners at the game between Bayer Leverkusen and Werder Bremen on November 25, 2023

Photo: Stephanie Zerbe / Eibner press photo / picture alliance

What is it about?

The sports court of the German Football Association (DFB) sentenced Bundesliga club Bayer 04 Leverkusen to a fine of 18,000 euros on January 30th. The reason for this is a banner that fans of the club showed on November 25, 2023 at their club's away game against Werder Bremen. It read: “There are many styles of music, but only 2 genders.” The association accepted the current judgment, making it legally binding. Bayer 04 Leverkusen can use 6,000 of the total 18,000 euros for so-called preventive measures against such misconduct.

Now the matter is causing debate, at least on social media. Right-wing culture fighters have discovered the topic, they suspect gender gaga and gender madness. »How many genders are there? Think carefully before you say anything! Because the answer can be expensive in Germany in 2024," writes "Welt" editor-in-chief Ulf Poschardt on

What is it really about?

Maybe you have to separate the reason and the current debate. Originally, the ultras from Bayer Leverkusen were primarily concerned with insulting their counterparts from Werder Bremen. Although the fan scenes are not considered to be traditionally enemies, they have nevertheless been taking small pricks at each other for years. Bremen's supporters are seen as more left-wing and progressive, and the second part of the saying, the one about gender, was apparently intended to offend them on a level that has nothing to do with football.

It is part of the argument between the two fan camps: The first part of the saying, “There are many styles of music,” refers to a poster that Bremen fans used to mock Leverkusen supporters in the previous game in March 2023. “Bierkönig ≠ Technoclub,” it said, which in turn referred to a choreography by the Leverkusen Ultras in the previous game against Freiburg. They called their club “Raverkusen”. The people of Bremen obviously wanted to say to the people of Leverkusen with their banner: You have no place in the cool techno club, you're just going to the flashy beer king on Mallorca anyway.

But the Ultras dispute is only background. The current debate is primarily about propaganda on the backs of minorities. The right-wing populist culture warriors don't care that an insistence on gender binary insults trans or non-binary people or denies their existence. They are concerned with polarization; they want to portray the other side as “crazy” or driven by ideology. Hate speech against gender minorities is an often repeated and apparently well-functioning tool.

What is it not about?

It's not about football, of course. But it's also not about the supposed issue of gender, then at least the media involved in the discussion would talk to experts instead of just letting their gut feeling produce an opinion piece.

Who started?

Actually, the discussion could have been over. There is a consensus between the DFB and the club concerned that the statement about the two genders is not okay because it is discriminatory. Shortly after the game, Leverkusen's managing director Fernando Carro distanced himself from the statement via "Bild": "This action was tasteless and wrong and it has nothing to do with values ​​such as openness and tolerance, which Bayer 04 stands for as an organization." The The club accepted the fine from the DFB court without objection. But the discussion does not end there because the culture warriors from the right have discovered the topic.

Did not we have that before?

Yes, all of this already existed. There have already been anti-queer attacks among football fans, even though associations and clubs have been opposing homophobia and transphobia for years. According to research by the portal queer.de, Leverkusen-Ultras showed a banner in 2014 with the inscription "HetrosexUL - club colors uninteresting - the main thing is to have the gay flag in your hand", at that time also in a game against Werder Bremen. Of course, the Leverkusen Ultras are not alone in this; football fans repeatedly use prejudices against queer people to defame their opponents, in the Bundesliga and internationally, most recently in Liverpool, Leicester or Nancy. After all: More and more football greats are taking a clear stand against discrimination, Liverpool coach Jürgen Klopp took a stand against his own fans, national players Leon Goretzka and Manuel Neuer clearly criticized the homophobic statements of a World Cup ambassador from Qatar.

And of course there are always attempts by right-wing populists to raise the mood with the topic of gender, be it by making opinions against gender-equitable formulations, toilets for all or dealing with people outside of the two predominant genders. The gender researcher and media scientist Simon Strick already described in SPIEGEL why scandalous debates about “biology” and so-called academic freedom are so successful: why the transphobic debate simply does not fall silent. SPIEGEL columnist Sascha Lobo sees conservative fragility behind this.

What is being overlooked?

Pretty much everything research says about gender. Yes, at a high level there is a division into male and female, but the closer you zoom in on the different definitions of gender, the more complex the matter becomes. In mammals, including humans, there are many transitional forms between male and female. This was also recognized by the Bundestag in 2018, when it introduced the gender designation “diverse” alongside male and female.

“The categories of man and woman form a kind of framework within which diverse manifestations of sexuality are possible – both genetic, anatomical and hormonal as well as psychological and social,” describes the doctor Olaf Hiort in “Spectrum of Science”. He is head of the Hormone Center for Children and Adolescents at the Clinic for Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine at the University of Lübeck.

Heinz-Jürgen Voß from the Institute for Applied Sexual Science at Merseburg University also believes that the binary definition of gender is too narrow. "Biologically there are also many genders," he told SPIEGEL, and the division into "female" and "male" merely represents a social classification that is often associated with an upgrading or devaluing. “Every person has a wide variety of possibilities,” says Voß. And the ethnologist Susanne Schröter reports on alternatives to the dual gender, which have been normal outside Europe for centuries.

And the upgrading or devaluing of people that Voß is talking about has consequences: A large study has just shown that trans and non-binary people suffer from mental illnesses significantly more often than cis people. The causes: discrimination, gaps in the health system, fear.

What follows from this?

Unfortunately not much. The culture warriors on the right fail to recognize that the Leverkusen fans' banner was not a social debate on the topic of gender, but was simply intended to offend other people, primarily opposing football fans. The trans and non-binary people who are vilified en passent are simply collateral damage, as is so often the case.

One would like to see a fact-based debate in which several truths are allowed to coexist: The vast majority of people see themselves as male or female. There are people who do not identify as male or female, and neither is better or worse than the other.