[AGTRT-BF61] Rach Cosker-Rowland’s fitting treatment account (FTA) has value for the concept engineering of formal gender

Jan Bergstra & Laurens Buijs
Amsterdam Gender Theory Research Team
Photo: Rach Cosker-Rowland

Structure of this blog

1. Introduction
2. Four accounts on gender
3. Which account passes the Frege-Geach test?
4. What is meant by “fitting”?
5. Conclusion

1. Introduction

In The Normativity of Gender (2024) appeared an extensive reflection by philosopher Rach Cosker-Rowland (University of Leeds) on the concept of gender. This text is distinctly difficult to read. It is a form of applied philosophy that looks at very subtle differences in dealing with very general categories.

In this article, Cosker-Rowland talks about gender-talk, or the way people talk about gender. She assumes that gender talk is essentially normative, but that it can be normative without moral or ethical considerations.

For example, the idea that exercise is good for health can be seen as a normative idea that is not necessarily also moral-ethical. Morality or ethics play no part in this. Something similar plays out with gender-talk, according to Coster-Rowland. Rather than designing a specific notion of gender according to concept engineering, The Normativity of Gender discusses the question of in what ways gender-talk can be the expression of a norm or of a set of norms.

In usual philosophical jargon, a view or “account” is sought from a problematic notion (in this case, gender, and particularly male and female). Account is the standard term in philosophy for an explanatory story about a phenomenon. And as it always is in philosophy: different accounts are in competition with each other for the same notion.

Central to the text are four accounts on gender, the fourth of which was added by Cosker-Rowland herself: the fitting treatment account (FTA). In this blog, we explore exactly what Cosker-Rowland means by this account, and to what extent this account is useful for Formal Gender Theory (FGT).

2. Four accounts on gender

Cosker-Rowland sees three views (accounts) of gender in the literature, and adds a fourth account in TNoG: the fitting treatment account (FTA).

1. Expressionist account: if A says that B is a woman then A is thereby expressing that A intends to treat B as a woman.
2. Contextuality account: if A says that B is a woman then that reflects that A is in a context in which it is obvious that B is a woman.
3. Ambiguity account: if A says B is a woman then that expresses that A uses (chooses) an interpretation of gender by which it is clear that B is a woman. (We use ambiguity here where TNoG speaks of polysemy.)
4. Fitting treatment account (FTA): if A says that B is a woman then A is thereby indicating that A considers it fitting (fitting) that B be treated as a woman.

These accounts concern gender categorization (what does A think about B) more than gender identity (what does B think about himself). Cosker-Rowland compares the various accounts and finds that of these four options, the FGA option (put forward as new in The Normativity of Gender) is the best option. That is, this is the option that poses the least theoretical problems, according to Cosker-Rowland.

A good account describes a diversity of notions of formal gender. Thus, both an essentialist’s notion of gender and a co-essentialist’s notion of gender are passed along the bar of each of these four accounts, and an account is better when it has greater validity. More precisely, we could do so with the set of notions of gender: gender-1900, gender-1975, gender-1985, gender-1987, gender-2000, gender-2005, gender-2015, gender-2025 from the ICE reference model described in AGTRT-BF54.

3. Which account passes the Frege-Geach test?

It is not easy to describe exactly which features of notions of gender come into focus with these four accounts. We try to sketch an idea of it.

The four accounts are not equivalent for Cosker-Rowland. The expressionist account is described as inadequate in The Normativity of Gender. Such an account may suffer from the Frege-Geach problem.

As an example of this, here is the following issue: suppose you have an account of “A says B is a woman,” do you also have an account of “A wonders if B is a woman”? And this is considered a serious issue in the literature.

The Frege-Geach problem always arises when you think that you have got to the heart of the matter with a very distinctive formulation (e.g., “A says that B is a woman”) while it turns out that assertions or questions close to it (in terms of language expression) still raise major conceptual problems.

To be clear, if A says that B is a woman then A is also saying, “I do know (somewhat) what a woman is.” If A asks if B is a woman, it is still possible that A actually has no idea of what you can mean by woman, and is actually looking for an answer to that general question.

Take the example “A wonders if B is a woman.” For each of the four accounts, we can now ask what A needs to do to answer that question.

• If A is following the expressionist account (more precisely, if A is well described by the expressionist account) then, with the question of whether B is a woman, A is searching within herself for a plan to treat B as a woman. But it is quite curious that in order to judge whether B is a woman, A must look to herself for a plan. This is a good example of the Frege-Geach problem.
• If A follows the contextuality account then, in asking whether B is a woman, A must primarily ask what is the context in which B is a woman (more precisely, what version of gender theory is used in the given context). This is fairly plausible.
• If A follows the ambiguity account then by asking whether B is a woman, A is primarily asking what interpretation of “woman” the audience for whom the statement is made adheres to.
• If A follows FTA then the question of whether B is a woman is simply the question of whether it is fitting to treat B as a woman (this is entirely unproblematic in Cosker-Rowland’s view).

We are not convinced that FTA wins out over the contextuality account. According to the idea of formal gender, answering the question, “Is B a woman?” goes as follows:

1. Identify which description/notion/concept of formal gender is authoritative in the given context;
2. Using that answer as a guide, determine whether B is male, female, or neutral;
3. Answer YES if in 2) the result was “female” and NO in the other two cases.

4. What is meant by “fitting”?

At FTA, we still find it difficult to understand what is meant by fitting; it can quickly be interpreted in different ways.

Elizabeth Barnes describes in Gender without gender identity: the case of cognitive disability (2022), for example, that a cognitively impaired person P who is physically female can legitimately be seen as female even when P is incapable of assigning herself a gender identity.

In such a case, it can indeed be said that in some circumstances it is appropriate(fitting) to still see P as a woman. But if men are called upon to fight in a pointless (or even morally wrong) war, it may actually be fitting to try to see a man as a woman and thus avoid recruitment.

What we do see something in it is to unleash FTA on concept engineering of formal gender. With a new definition of formal gender, the question is whether this description is appropriate (fitting) in the social context.

This is well explained using the ICE reference model we described in AGTRT-BF38, AGTRT-BF54, AGTRT-BF55 and AGTRT-BF56, among others. In light of the existence of people with gender dysphoria that is solvable with surgical/medical transition, for that reason it can be seen as “fitting” to move from gender-1900 to gender-1975. In turn, the success of gender transition as evidenced in gender-1975 may be a reason that the move to gender-1995 is seen as “fitting”; after all, this allows that success to be maintained.

In AGTRT-BF53 we discussed that Kirk-Gianinni uses Barnes’ observation to design a new notion of gender. And we see that in some examples the notion of gender thus created is more “fitting” than the earlier notion Kirk-Gianinni assumed.

5. Conclusion: the value of FTA for ICE.

For the time being, we conclude that the fitting treatment account (FTA) provides a new and useful description of trans inclusivity that addresses the objections raised by Tomas Bogardus in Why the trans inclusion problem cannot be solved (2022) to the notion of trans inclusivity mentioned in that paper are overcome:

A notion FG of formal gender is transinclusive if for each person P with gender identity female (male), when it is fitting to view P as female (male) it is also so that FG for P yields gender category female (male).

This definition is more manageable than the co-essentialist definition:

A notion FG of formal gender is transinclusive if for each person P with gender identity female (male), it is also the case that FG for P yields gender category female (male).

It seems that FTA as an account with ICE(incremental concept engineering, see e.g. blog AGTRT-BF56) of gender also works better than the other three options. Increasing transinclusiveness is usually a goal in this regard, and FTA provides a nice criterion for that, much better than the other three:

• The expressionist account falls off because whoever designs a notion of gender is not designing a plan to treat a person.
• The contextuality account falls off because you are just now designing a new context within which, at a later stage, claims such as “A says B is a woman” can be evaluated for validity.
• The same objection applies to the ambiguity account (which is, after all, very close to the contextuality account).