Jan Bergstra & Laurens Buijs
Amsterdam Gender Theory Research Team
Just as Trump positions himself as a democrat at heart, trans activism manages to position itself as a movement for inclusion. Those are both samples of successful deception.
It is notable that the former is indeed seen in progressive-liberal circles: there, there is broad consensus that Trump does not seem to care about proper procedures within a democratic rule of law. However, for the deception of transactivism, which has now gained a strikingly large following, there is a large blind spot in the same circles.
Transactivism aims to achieve the social inclusion of transgender people, excluding anyone with whom one disagrees. JK Rowling knows that better than anyone. At a recent exhibition on Harry Potter, her name is not even mentioned again.
Few writers have been given the honor of doing work that can even be put on display, and at the same time be the victim of such a fierce form of public exclusion.
The names of artists from the Third Reich still appear with their works, and for good reason. Those works are also found in museums, and rightfully so. Russian artists who sympathized with Stalin are still read and named, and rightly so, because facts are facts.
But transactivism wants to strike two blows: (a) show one leaves no means unused to achieve self-chosen goals, and (b) show that no one is so strong that she or he can withstand the aggressive cancelling of transactivism. This is reminiscent of how Navalny is treated in Russia.
Rowling’s views can be found on her website, among others, a text that we find all reasonable.
If even Rowling, with her status and financial-economic power, cannot resist transactivism, should others raise the flag? We believe not. Transactivism that seeks to kill any discussion and accepts no dissent is a disgrace to the pursuit of inclusion of any group.
Even in the Netherlands, exclusion is the practice of people and groups who claim to pursue inclusion. In an earlier blog, we noted that men do not appear to have managerial responsibilities in the Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies. The utterly outdated notion that gender studies would be the property of women may last longer than the equally outdated notion that men should primarily do the dishes in the household.
Read more about our analysis of the Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies:
Lack of diversity in gender studies hinders open discussion
An important act of cancel culture is to never admit to avoiding debate. In this way, the other does not get the chance to act clearly, and it is guaranteed that the legitimacy of the opponent in the debate need not be recognized under any circumstances. And one gets away with it.
Thus, in the social sciences at the UvA, one gets away with foolishly rejecting any proposal for a debate on gender theory, pretending that such proposals would not even have been made. But the opposite is true. Already after writing the first paper on formal gender theory(AGTRT-1), the proposal to engage in conversation was made along several lines.
Read more about our work on formal gender theory:
Why gender science may pay more attention to formal gender
Jan Bergstra, one of the authors of this blog, learned in the late 1960s from his father, who (he says) had this again from his time in the pre-war Corps in Utrecht: “going into the opponent’s arguments is a sign of weakness.” Not that his father adhered to that motto, but as a student he was taught that.
The transactivists (and their minions within the UvA) have learned that lesson well. But someday it will turn out that basically not responding to the opponent’s arguments (for example, by denying that the opponent would have arguments, or in any other way) is at least as much a sign of weakness.
Good arguments why one should not attribute any authority to the refusal of philosophical transactivists to avoid discussion under any circumstances are also in the fine contribution by Gijs van Oenen (EUR) in “On Education.
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