Jan Bergstra & Laurens Buijs
Amsterdam Gender Theory Research Team
Using incremental concept engineering (ICE), we broadly mapped how the concept gender changed over time (see AGTRT-BF38). ICE forces participants to relate to the arguments given in history in discussions about gender. It is a structured way to monitor the consistency of the totality of arguments in discussions about gender.
Learn more about our ICE methodology:
Understanding more about how the concept of gender has changed over time is helpful in the discussions at hand
We think that such an approach may well help close the trenches between essentialism and co-essentialism somewhat and create space for more moderate positions. Essentialism is the view that only biological factors determine gender; co-essentialism, on the contrary, assumes only self-identification (see AGTRT-BF42, among others).
Co-essentialism and ICE
The ICE methodology requires the following from researchers proposing co-essentialist policing on gender transition: (i) to rethink even the first steps of institutionalizing gender transition and provide them with an even now convincing argument, (ii) to work incrementally toward the co-essentialist understanding of gender, always providing justification for the steps taken, (iii) to properly analyze contradictions that come into view in the totality of the arguments for the different steps and to indicate why such contradictions do not undermine the credibility of the whole chain of steps.
But it is conceivable that a co-essentialist gender theorist might not want to go into this because he or she does not like the whole ICE methodology. In this blog we formulate such a position, which is on the one hand helpful for us to further map the applicability of ICE in discussions of gender, and otherwise meaningful because that position seems to actually occur.
We call the hypothetical position here “revisionist co-essentialism,” where revisionism refers to the possibility that even when medical procedures have been performed as part of a gender transition, that person’s transition can be retroactively recognized as a gender transition only if and because the person wanted to make that transition themselves.
Revisionist co-essentialism
Revisionist co-essentialism is revisionist in the following sense: morphological or hormonal gender transitions are recognized as gender transitions only on the basis of the person’s desires for gender transition. More in detail:
(i) Neither the medical/pharmaceutical procedures that have taken place nor the results that have been achieved play any role in the assessment of whether a person is transgender.
(ii) The medical/pharmaceutical acts that may have served a desire for gender transition at the time are now seen exclusively as health care acts. Such care may have the status of “affirmative therapy,” but the problem it solves or mitigates, such as gender dysphoria, is exclusively a medical/psychiatric problem and is entirely separate from the step of gender transition that takes place solely on the basis of a will of the patients involved (assuming they know what they are talking about). So: a man can medically/morphologically turn into a woman, but is only considered a woman if (and because) this individual so desires.
(iii) A desire to combat gender dysphoria is no more a reason for gender transition than a desire to experience winter sports vacations would be a reason for emigration. One has nothing to do with the other.
Anti-ICE
A supporter of revisionist co-essentialism is unable (and unwilling) to explain the need for morphological/hormonal gender transition (what Gender-1975 offers) from an earlier conception of gender (say Gender-1900) in which gender transition is not possible. Revisionist co-essentialism is diametrically opposed to ICE and assumes that gender transition as a phenomenon has evolved with the consequence that what was a valid instance of gender transition around 1975 is not necessarily still so today.
The anti-trans accusation
Revisionist co-essentialism sees a view in which gender transition must (or even can) be morphological/hormonal as completely outdated, and thus not an example of gender transition. From a revisionist co-essentialist perspective, a person who acknowledges only morphological/hormonal gender transitions is in fact anti-trans, and that qualification may be voiced loud and clear. For example, the revisionist co-essentialist may motivate the TERF accusation against J.K. Rowling.
It should be stated here, needless to say, that we ourselves are not adherents of revisionist co-essentialism. But revisionist co-essentialism does seem to occur, for example, among critics of J.K. Rowling. Revisionist co-essentialism is pre-eminently a position on gender theory that would be dismissive of ICE. The propagation of ICE is therefore a substantive, and not exclusively methodological or theoretically neutral choice, which really limits what positions one can achieve through concept engineering (style ICE).
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