Jan Bergstra & Laurens Buijs
Amsterdam Gender Theory Research Team (AGTRT).
It is important for the preservation of academic freedom and pluralistic debate that opinions can differ with all good will. But this insight seems to be wasted on professionals in Dutch gender studies.
While worldwide gender theory is a hot topic and people are fighting formidable ideological conflicts, in the Netherlands the impression is created that an abstract sociological, anthropological and cultural approach to the phenomenon of gender is about it (among which we also count research on (de)colonization). As for topical issues, apparently the idea is that it is clear what one should think of them: being sufficiently transinclusive in every conceivable way is enough! No need to think about that, because the right vision speaks for itself.
We expressly deny that obviousness. There is nothing to suggest that scientific research on gender would have reached a stable and definitive point. To assume that stability is as nonsensical as the view in the 1970s or so was that by the experience in Eastern Europe it was clear what the relevance and potentiality of socialism would be.
Professional academic gender theory in the Netherlands functions one-sidedly, with a manifest disregard for lines of current research that can call into question seemingly established positions.
We cite the research of Tomas Bogardus (see AGTRT-1 for comments on it). There seems to be a kind of omerta in the circles of professional academic gender theory in the Netherlands: the silencing to death of any dissident noise. And if only everyone who “disagrees” now finds in practice that being dissident is de facto cancelling, then in practice the dissidents pose no danger.
We do not want to moralize about this. The point is, however, that gender theory is too important even for the Netherlands to be managed and owned in that way as private property by a group of people who, for simplicity’s sake, put down their own views as normative, even if they do so implicitly.
Earlier we described that the Dutch Research School of Gender Studies (NOG) with a management structure whose board (including advisory board) consists of 19 women and 0 men has an obvious diversity problem (see AGTRT-BF9). It can’t be that gender studies is still just another word for women’s studies, can it? If one sees it that way then one should change it. To an environment where diversity matters so little, a plea for substantive diversity is perhaps out of place. But then one should not be surprised when that same environment (NOG and gender studies in the Netherlands) no longer exudes any authority.
Read more about the lack of diversity in gender studies:
Lack of diversity in gender studies hinders open discussion
Our advice is this: throw open the case, recognize that gender theory is an active field with a multitude of disputes in which a multitude of positions are defended and worked on. Recognize that the study of this is relevant, and that to give the impression that the principles would now be clear is putting the cart before the horse.
Say goodbye to canceling people you disagree with as an academic paradigm. See that the people who are so cancelled can only say with Nietzsche: Was mich nicht umbringt macht mich stärker.
See that acting on behalf of “gender studies” also carries with it a responsibility to actually practice that discipline, and to do so in the breadth in which that discipline exists. Recognize that a research school cannot and should not portray one-sidedness in such a glaring way. Recognize that for people to practice gender theory in the Netherlands, it is necessary for structures like the NOG to change or disappear.
One could claim that male researchers in the Netherlands do not write about gender, but it is not like that: Niko Besnier is an example of a (until recently working in the Netherlands) male author with an extensive body of work that addresses issues of (social) gender. In particular, Besnier examines gender from an anthropological point of view. Incidentally, he was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant in 2012 in which gender plays an important role.
Just last year, the Amsterdam court slammed the UvA for the way Besnier was fired. But unfortunately, under Dutch labor law, the district judge hardly has any authority to reverse a wrongful dismissal.
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