Jan Bergstra & Laurens Buijs
Amsterdam Gender Theory Research Team
In a series of reports, messages and blogs, we have outlined our search for a MotR (middle of the road) version of formal gender theory (FGT) in order to achieve a workable compromise between the various extremes, particularly between gender essentialism and gender co-essentialism. In AGTRT-BF32, we proposed what we call a transmoderate version of FGT.
We see that proposal as one of a number of options for describing a MotR version of FGT. In other words, both in the direction of co-essentialism and in the direction of essentialism, the transmoderate version of FGT can be modified to obtain other versions of FGT that also deserve the designation MotR (because clearly a compromise between essentialism and co-essentialism) but which can be called less or hardly transmoderate.
MotR aims to delineate a search space (of versions of FGT) within which to try to reach an actual compromise. The compromise thus found may depend on the jurisdiction in which one works and thus may also take different forms in different countries.
We see the following views(requirements) as characteristic, and delineating, of MotR:
REQ-MotR1: Four notions of gender are distinguished: (i) formal gender, (ii) biological gender (same as biological sex, or biological gender), (iii) social gender, and (iv) psychological gender. We understand gender by default as formal gender, but we realize that many people read gender more as social gender. With any form of gender, there are three possibilities: male, female and neutral.
In formal gender, the tripartite division male, female, neutral is a design choice. In biological gender, the tripartite division has a natural scientific and medical background. With social gender, the tripartite division cannot be separated from social attitudes. In psychological gender, this can be seen as a (too?) far-reaching abstraction from a continuum of possibilities as seen in the context of androgyny (people always have a combination of male, female and neutral personality traits).
Formal gender is encountered in: information in passports and identity cards, admission criteria to facilities (including so-called “bathroom laws”), equality and equity policies.
REQ-MotR2: Both biological gender and formal gender provide a classification of people, and both of these classifications match in many individuals. But there may be differences. A person can change in terms of (formal) gender during life even though the biological gender remains the same.
REQ-MotR3: Man and woman are defined as follows: a man (woman) is an adult person with male (female) formal gender.
With this definition, MotR opposes the (extreme) positions of both essentialism and co-essentialism. Gender essentialism says: a man (woman) is a mature person of male (female) biological gender, while gender co-essentialism says that a man (woman) is a mature person of male (female) psychological gender. In describing co-essentialism, it can be noted that a very specific interpretation of psychological gender is at issue here: what a person sees as one’s own gender. This is called gender identity in the literature. We distinguish these from the male and female personality traits that emerge in androgyny. We described this in more detail in AGTRT-2.
REQ-MotR4: We denote a transition of a person from formal gender A to formal gender B (unequal A) as a gender transition (or transgendering). A transgender person is someone who has experienced a gender transition at least once.
REQ-MotR5: The notion of biological gender (biological sex) is not unambiguously defined. There are different views on this. Classic is the idea that at birth a biological sex is determined by visual inspection. We call that method here GAbTVI (gender assignment by traditional visual inspection). This creates a biological gender assigned at birth. We assume that a person can be AMAB(assigned male at birth), AFAB(assigned female at birth) or ANAB(assigned neutral at birth). A remarkable feature of GAbTVI is that this assignment of gender as we call it in AGTRT-1 is transition permissive: a person can change from male to female or vice versa as a result of medical/surgical interventions in terms of gender (as seen through GAbTVI). This process is called transsexing. Around 1975, transsexing was the most obvious (and really the only) form of transgendering. A requirement of MotR versions of FGT is that transsexing be accepted (from the perspective of GAbTVI) as a valid form of gender transition. This demand is far from simple among gender essentialists: they argue outwardly for a definition of biological gender that is more modern than GAbTVI for defining the notions of male and female. Many countries have legislation that complies with requirement MotR5, but that legislation is also constantly under attack.
REQ-MotR6: the notion of formal gender does not deviate (and is not going to deviate) from biological gender to the extent that there is no longer a biological background to formal gender. In other words, formal gender is used to solve or mitigate some of the problems posed by the social use of biological transmitter. Formal gender is not used to contest or deny the initially and intentionally biological background of the notion of formal gender. REQ-MotR6 explicitly distances itself from co-essentialism.
The REQ-MotR1-6 requirements package leaves many degrees of freedom open. Current legislation in NL complies with REQ-MotR1-6. But there is a strong desire among part of the transgender community to amend this law to simplify the process of transgendering. Strikingly, the criticism against it comes precisely not from people who think the current legislation is good enough, but from people who find the current legislation unsatisfactory on essentialist grounds.
Globally, there is still a lot of resistance to requirements like REQ-MotR1-6. Therefore, Dutch gender assignment legislation cannot be seen as a global compromise between gender essentialism and gender co-essentialism. Global adoption of current Dutch regulations would represent nothing less than a landslide in terms of dealing with gender and gender transition. But there is criticism of the Dutch legislation, and there is such criticism of similar legislation in other countries in Europe. Such criticism, to our knowledge, always comes from co-essentialist quarters.
The first question is what space the REQ-MotR1-6 requirements package now leaves open. That space is very large. Basically, it is all about the conditions that must be met in gender transition, first and foremost the transitions from male to female and female to male. Only after one provides clarity on that does it pay to look at the other transition options.
FGT rests on the assumption that a biological man (woman), that is, an adult with male (female) biological gender, need not necessarily be a man or a woman. In other words, the statements “a biological man is a man” and “a biological woman is a woman” are both not necessarily correct. The question then becomes what deviations are accepted here. These are possible curtailments and modifications of REQ-MotR1-6. We see three forms of this:
(i) Biological and behavioral factors. In AGTRT-5, we formulated additional conditions Cm and Cv with the following properties: the assertion “a biological man who also satisfies Cm is a man” and “a biological woman who also satisfies Cv is a woman.” In view of such constraints, one can limit transition options: transition from male gender to female gender is not possible for a biological male who also meets condition Cm, and transition from female gender to male gender is not possible for a biological female who also meets condition Cv. The conditions Cm and Cv we formulated are partly related to sexual orientation. Of course, not everyone is waiting for that because, for now, people like to hold on to the idea that gender and sexual orientation are independent of each other.
(ii) Weakening of transition requirements in the context of GAbTVI. In AGTRT-4, we described how in some cases the requirements of GAbTVI can be defensibly weakened, particularly in cases where a medically initiated transition cannot be fully completed due to medical limitations and there is really no good way back either.
(iii) The third type of additional constraints that one can add to REQ-MotR1-6 arises by requiring the person pursuing gender transition to endorse certain views and possibly accept future changes (further evolution) of those views.
We believe that (i), (ii) and (iii) above create a large bargaining space that can be used to reach a compromise between gender essentialism and gender co-essentialism. The transmoderate version of FGT that we proposed in AGTRT-BF32 is within this space, but also allows for many alternatives.
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