[AGTRT-BF30] Paradoxical support: Extinction Rebellion helps the PVV, and the trans movement helps anti-trans activism

Jan Bergstra & Laurens Buijs
Amsterdam Gender Theory Research Team

In previous blogs, we have put forward the notion of paradoxical support as a way of describing the effects, intentional or otherwise, of taking extreme positions. Paradoxical support we have observed at Extinction Rebellion Netherlands (XRNL). XRNL makes a strong contribution to the PVV’s political agenda by conveying (interpreted along paradoxical lines) the idea that the belief that the climate crisis is caused by human activity is also just an opinion (see AGTRT-BF26 for our arguments on this point). By making it clear that a position is also just an opinion, one legitimizes in a democracy that others have a different opinion on that same point. So does XRNL on the phenomenon of the climate crisis about which the PVV has a different view.

Read more about paradoxical support:
Progressive Holland plays into the hands of political opponents themselves

By radical transactivists we denote the principled gender co-essentialists who also translate their views into politics and action. Radical trans activists believe that legislation should be amended to simplify gender transition even further than it is today. They prefer to see gender transition as a step that any adult can take on their own accord and authority at any time, and also as a step that should be facilitated for young adults who repeatedly express a desire for transition.

Yet something goes wrong. Meanwhile, the radical transactivism of the principled gender co-essentialists is leading to a counter-movement. That countermovement is certainly not homogeneous. This includes people who are gender-critical but pro-trans, as well as those who are strongly anti-trans on the basis of principled gender essentialism. The principled gender-co-essentialists do find it so easy to characterize all their opponents as anti-trans, but that is completely unsubstantiated, and in doing so (with that lack of honesty and clarity) the principled gender-co-essentialists are actually reinforcing their opponents. After all, for the principled gender-co-essentialists, the accuracy of their own arguments apparently does not matter at all, as evidenced by their careless qualifications. And this loose handling of correctness of arguments can also be seen by anyone: the strength of one’s own arguments apparently does not matter, because the radical transactivists act with great self-confidence and prove themselves right on their own authority (by definition, so to speak).

Those who argue that gender transition should be simplified are thereby also arguing that gender transition as it exists within Dutch law to date is, in principle, a good thing. The principled gender-co-essentialists use arguments that are a development of those that emerged at the time (second half of the last century) to institutionalize gender transition. But precisely those arguments should now be modern and convincing on the table because in disagreement on that point, as far as we can see, lies precisely the beginning of the line of thinking of the principled gender essentialists. All this requires further clarification.

We have spent the past several months developing “formal gender theory” based on the following axiom (or assumption):

that in some circumstances gender transition is possible, useful, necessary, and therefore justified, and that for this reason the introduction of a legal basis for gender transition was and is an appropriate and preferably permanent reinforcement of the legal system.

We call this premise transrealism here. Our formal gender theory is designed with transrealism in mind.

Learn more about our formal gender theory:
Why gender science may pay more attention to formal gender

We assume that transrealism has a scientific basis. We also assume that denying trans realism on principle blocks (or at least greatly complicates) any possibility of debate with trans activists and also with moderately progressive pro-trans people.

But our observation is that the scientific basis of transrealism is not currently being made sufficiently explicit, and that it would be worth something if principled gender-co-essentialists would also pay attention to giving the underpinnings of transrealism more attention, that regardless of the fact that principled gender-co-essentialists see doubts about transrealism itself as a passed station.

In our view, the principled gender essentialists who are anti-trans from that conviction should invest time and energy in the arguments of their opponents. Making a caricature of that ultimately leads to nothing. An example of such a caricature is to sell the view that transactivists would hold that a person could change their own biological sex by will. This is precisely not how things are generally viewed in principled gender co-essentialism. The principled gender essentialists who are anti-trans from that conviction should take the trouble to understand what the role of a concept like gender (in our terminology formal gender) is in this debate, and why the use of the concept of (formal) gender and the term gender provides an understandable legitimation of current legislation (even if that legitimation does not convince everyone). This is also how the gender-critical movement can best make proposals for its improvement (see AGTRT-4), though certainly not as far-reaching proposals as are made in the bill now before us (and recently declared controversial).


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