The end of the GDR in 1990 also resulted in the erasure of human rights alternatives to capitalist West German norms developed before reunification. The idea of “socialist human rights” collapsed in tandem with SED rule, and many of its own proponents evolved into democrats who renounced their earlier work on the subject. East German dissidents and feminists – who advocated for conceptions of democratic rights and rights to bodily self-determination in conflict with those established in West Germany – were deemed to be deviant and marginalised. While some dissidents saw reunification as the ultimate triumph of the mass demonstrations of 1989, others saw it as a lost opportunity to create a better form of democracy and human rights.