Lesson 2.2: Media Effects & Public Attitudes

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In this topic, you will examine how sustained negative media coverage impacts public perceptions of feminist, queer, and trans movements. You'll consider how media frames these groups – as dangerous, illegitimate, or foreign – and how such narratives contribute to hostility, marginalisation, funding difficulties, or policy backlash. This topic also highlights how selective visibility and misrepresentation affect the legitimacy and safety of queer, feminist, and trans movements.

2. How framing produces hostility

2.4. GERMANY: Uneven vulnerabilities

This shifting focus of ‘anti-gender’ mobilisations produces uneven vulnerabilities within queer and feminist communities. In Germany, trans and non-binary participants consistently reported being positioned as the primary objects of public hostility. 

Trans visibility was experienced as ambivalent by the participants. On the one hand, it was characterised as unprecedented and hopeful, but on the other hand, it was associated with fear of being targeted, as GERFG1.2 explained:
“So, I do know that fear as well, but I do believe that lots of it is connected to the increasing visibility, which can absolutely have something positive, like it can be hard and frightening to be so visible right now, but there are also a lot of new possibilities that haven’t been there before.” (RESIST Project Report, Germany, p. 13)

Cornelia, a trans activist and a public figure in Germany, recounted that she was shot, in addition to other physical attacks on her home. During her interview she noted that “the violence, especially for visible people, is highly complex and very diverse and very active, the rise of the far-right is definitely notable”.

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