Jan Bergstra & Laurens Buijs
Amsterdam Gender Theory Research Team
In the UK, we are currently seeing the emergence of a gender critical movement that cuts across political parties. The cause of this is increasing resistance to the view that gender (of a person) is nothing more, or different, than a result of self-identification (by that person).
We call this co-essentialism (also called counter-essentialism or complementary essentialism): the view that self-identification (by a person P) of gender G must result in categorization (by “the system,” or the environment) of the person P as being of gender G. In this, biological characteristics need not play any role.
Co-essentialism is not the negation of the famous essentialism (the view that exclusively biological factors determine gender) but is another form of essentialism diametrically opposed to it. One can deny essentialism regarding gender without adopting co-essentialism. For more on co-essentialism, see AGTRT-M1.
Read more about the problems with co-essentialism in discussions of gender:
If a trans-inclusive notion of gender does not exist in theory, why do we want it in practice?
Gender critical we see as a spectrum of views between essentialism (rejected by critical gender theory) and co-essentialism (rejected by most who currently call themselves gender critical). This puts transexclusionary radical feminists (TERF) theorists outside the scope of gender critical, and gender critical becomes a school of thought (or spectrum of schools of thought) within critical gender theory. Surely, in terms of terminology, that is so simple, and no one has to object.
Thus, in this view, the gender-critical theorist accepts the existence of transgender persons, but not the definition of transgender that the Stonewall and GLAAD transactivists want to give it (namely, the definition according to co-essentialism, or the idea that if one says oneself that one is male, female or non-binary, that this is so regardless of one’s biological sex).
Read more about the problems with the radicalized trans movement:
Trans activism preaches inclusion to mask a systematic practice of exclusion
We believe that in the Netherlands there is also room for a gender-critical movement that does not, like the (extreme) TERF feminists, or the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church in Rome, want to turn back the clock completely and reject all forms of transgendering, but at the same time does want to resist gender erosion (see AGTRT-7), or the circular rendering meaningless of the notion of gender.
While a DGCM(Dutch Gender-Critical Movement) should also provide a platform for the extreme views that fall outside gender critical, it should clearly adhere to the demarcation of gender critical as described above. Obviously, it is not clear in advance of every version of gender theory whether or not it falls within the gender critical spectrum.
The ultimate goal is to collectively design a MotR(Middle of the Road, see also AGTRT-7) version of gender theory that many can relate to and that manages to avoid the various extremes.
A third extreme position has recently emerged that we described in AGTRT-12. We call that one the UK-EHRC position. In it, they abandon the legal use of gender and suggest that biological sex should then be used as a legal category. This excludes self-identification and self-categorization. That position, we believe, is going to create a lot of confusion and also ultimately runs the risk of moving in a direction of transexclusive thinking that we would consider too extreme.
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