Alexander Korte and the Debate Over Trans Youth: When Skepticism Becomes a Political Program
- Lizbeth
- 22 hours ago
- 7 min read
Anyone in Germany looking for voices warning about trans youth, puberty blockers, or gender self-determination will quickly come across Alexander Korte. The Munich child and adolescent psychiatrist is regularly presented as an expert. His positions deserve pushback, not because criticism of medical developments is forbidden, but because his public arguments often rely on mistrust, distortion, and outdated ways of thinking. This becomes especially relevant because he does not speak from the margins, but from within the orbit of one of Germany’s most prestigious universities.
Why Alexander Korte is more than just one individual opinion
Since 2010, Alexander Korte has served as senior attending physician at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics, and Psychotherapy at LMU University Hospital.¹ He is also a board-certified specialist in child and adolescent psychiatry and psychotherapy with an additional qualification in sexual medicine, and he serves on the board of the German Society for Sexual Medicine, Sexual Therapy, and Sexual Science.²
That is not a minor detail. LMU Munich is one of the best-known universities in Germany, especially in medicine. Anyone working there in a senior position automatically benefits from institutional credibility. When someone in that role speaks publicly, the media, politicians, and the public listen differently.
That is exactly why two levels need to be distinguished. Alexander Korte is, of course, entitled to express his own professional opinions. At the same time, his institutional role means that those statements carry more weight than private commentary.
The basic pattern of his public positions
Trans youth often do not appear in his framing primarily as people with identities and distress that should be taken seriously, but rather as symptoms of broader social dynamics. Again and again, words such as hype, trend, influence, seduction, or misdevelopment hover in the background.
In January 2019, in a Spiegel interview, he drew attention to the large number of adolescents who wanted to change their gender.² In December 2019, in an interview with the feminist magazine Emma, he explicitly warned of a “trans hype.”³ Then, in a 2022 interview with taz, he said that in certain circles, it is “hip to be trans.”¹
That is more than just a pointed phrase. It is a frame. A personal and often painful process is turned into a fashion trend. Self-discovery becomes imitation. Identity becomes group dynamics.
Frames like these run deep. They shape how parents, teachers, therapists, and politicians perceive trans youth.
When girls in particular are called into question
What is striking is that Korte’s line of argument often focuses on adolescents who were assigned female at birth. In interviews, he names menstruation, sexualization, body conflict, social role expectations, or lack of sexual experience as possible reasons behind a desire to transition.³
This focus also appears in his academic work. In 2023, together with Gisela Gille, he published an article in the journal Sexuologie titled *“Elective Affinities? Trans Identification and Anorexia Nervosa as Maladaptive Attempts to Resolve Developmental Conflicts in Female Adolescence.”*² The title speaks for itself: trans identification and a life-threatening eating disorder are treated as structurally comparable phenomena.
This recalls a very old social pattern. When young people who are seen as girls speak about themselves, their words are more often psychologized, relativized, or dismissed as a phase.
Suddenly, the question is no longer who this person is, but what is supposedly lurking behind what they say.
The problem is not that psychological co-factors are considered. That is part of good diagnostic care. The problem arises when adolescents who are read as female are treated as structurally less credible than others.
At that point, medicine easily becomes a tool of moral authority.
The attempt to pathologize being trans
Korte’s statements become especially troubling where he compares gender dysphoria with anorexia nervosa and speaks of a distorted body image. In the 2022 taz interview, he said verbatim: “Both phenomena share a distorted body image. An anorexic girl also suffers brutally from her imagined being too fat. With children who have gender dysphoria, we are inclined to unquestioningly accept this unspeakable narrative of being ‘born in the wrong body.’ What nonsense!”¹
Of course, popular shorthand phrases like “born in the wrong body” may be criticized. Many trans people themselves use them only with reservations because they flatten complex experiences.
But the step from criticizing a phrase to pathologizing an identity is a small one. When trans identity is portrayed primarily as a perception problem, the whole picture shifts. Then it is no longer about accompanying people in their reality, but about fundamentally doubting that reality.
Telling the story of puberty blockers only as a threat
Korte has been critical of puberty blockers for years. Naming the risks of medical interventions is legitimate and necessary. Medicine requires informed consent, careful weighing of options, and restraint.
It becomes problematic when almost only the risks are made visible while the possible relief they may offer is systematically pushed into the background.
Puberty blockers are not a trivial intervention. But neither are they automatically evidence of medical scandal. International guidelines, such as those of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, describe them as a possible option in carefully assessed individual cases.
Anyone who argues almost exclusively through deterrence does not create balance. They create fear.
His role in Germany: compatible with conservative culture wars
In Germany, a familiar pattern has emerged in recent years. Positions that once seemed fringe are made socially acceptable through individual professionals with academic titles.
Alexander Korte is an example of that. One especially concrete example is the dossier “Ideology Instead of Biology in Public Broadcasting,” which he co-authored in 2022 with several other academics. It became the basis for a Welt article published on June 1, 2022, which among other things criticized the children’s program Die Sendung mit der Maus. A broad alliance of medical, political, and queer groups in Munich then published a public rebuttal. The critics argued that the dossier introduced self-defined terms, presented study findings without context, and passed off isolated observations as supposed scientific consensus.⁴ Sven Lehmann, then the Federal Government’s Commissioner for Queer Affairs, also publicly described the piece as scientifically unsound and accused it of homophobia and transphobia.²
In addition, in November 2020, Korte was invited as the only medical expert to a hearing in the German Bundestag on the Transsexuals Act.⁵ There, he spoke out against the planned Self-Determination Act. The fact that he was presented in that political moment as the medical voice illustrates his institutional impact especially clearly.
His book Behind the Rainbow, published in 2024, continues this pattern. In it, he describes trans identity as a “new identification template” that meets a group of “vulnerable adolescents,” and he warns against trans-affirming treatment, which he describes as being based on false assumptions.⁶ This shows that his patterns of argument are not the result of an early interview gone wrong, but part of a consistent publishing program.
This creates a troubling dynamic. A doctor formulates skepticism. Culture warriors turn it into proof. Politicians adopt the catchphrases. The people affected pay the price.
That does not automatically mean that every one of his statements is consciously politically motivated. But public impact matters. And that impact clearly extends far beyond medicine.
The response from within the profession
Korte’s positions have not gone unchallenged within the field. As early as 2019, several professional colleagues criticized his Spiegel interview in an open letter. They argued that his positions were “concerning in light of current medical standards” and could stigmatize, discriminate against, and unsettle people seeking treatment.² Deutschlandfunk observed that Korte is regularly quoted by the media without it being made clear that some of his views are outsider positions.²
That matters because it shows that skepticism toward his views is not coming only from affected people or activists, but from within the medical profession itself.
The special responsibility of LMU Munich
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and LMU University Hospital are not automatically responsible for every private or public statement made by individual employees. Science depends on plurality.
But major institutions are responsible for standards.
When senior staff members repeatedly attract attention with statements that many affected people experience as delegitimizing, and when those statements are challenged from within the profession itself, a fair question arises: how visible are up-to-date, evidence-based, and carefully affirmative models of care at the same institution? And what steps is the institution taking to make clear that trans youth are not an ideological projection screen, but patients entitled to respectful care?
Silence has an effect too. Especially at prestigious institutions, it helps shape what is seen as professionally legitimate.
What modern guidelines do differently
Current medical guidelines work differently from alarmist debates.
The German AWMF guidelines on gender incongruence in childhood and adolescence emphasize self-determination, careful diagnostics, individualized support, and the avoidance of harm.
The starting point is not: How do we stop this?
It is: What does this young person specifically need?
That is a fundamental difference.
Why this has real consequences
When adolescents keep hearing everywhere that they are victims of a trend, confused, influenced, or badly advised, many wait longer before seeking help. Some hide. Some develop greater distress. Some lose trust in medical systems.
Debates are never just debates.
They help determine whether young people find support, or first learn to mistrust themselves.
Conclusion
Alexander Korte is not an insignificant fringe figure, but a publicly visible voice with institutional weight from Munich. That is exactly why his arguments must be critically examined.
Not because criticism of transition is forbidden. But because his recurring narratives often produce more doubt about people’s identities than help for human beings.
Germany does not need activism without standards in this debate, nor skepticism as dogma.
Germany needs smart, humane, evidence-based care.
And universities such as LMU should be places where exactly that becomes visible.
Yours, Lizbeth
Sources
taz, Mai 2022: Interview mit Alexander Korte, "Es ist hip, trans zu sein". https://taz.de/Jugendpsychiater-ueber-Transidentitaet/!5845336/
Wikipedia-Eintrag Alexander Korte (mit Belegen zu Spiegel-Interview 2019, offenem Brief der Kolleg:innen, Deutschlandfunk-Kritik, Queer-Beauftragtem, DGSMTW-Vorstandstätigkeit, Publikationsliste inkl. Sexuologie-Aufsatz 2023). https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Korte
Emma, Dezember 2019: Interview mit Alexander Korte, "Was richten wir da an?". https://www.emma.de/artikel/was-richten-wir-da-337375
Kritische Medizin München, 2022: Richtigstellung zum Dossier "Ideologie statt Biologie im ÖRR". https://kritischemedizinmuenchen.de/trans-in-der-medizin-veroeffentichung-einer-richtigstellung/
Deutsches Ärzteblatt, November 2020: Kontroverse zur Ausweitung der sexuellen Selbstbestimmung zwischen Ärzten und Juristen. https://www.aerzteblatt.de/nachrichten/117968
Kohlhammer Verlag, 2024: Alexander Korte, "Hinter dem Regenbogen". https://elibrary.kohlhammer.de/book/10.17433/978-3-17-045589-4
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