Jan Bergstra & Laurens Buijs
Amsterdam Gender Theory Research Team
Gender theory in Dutch ends up being too difficult a translation job, it turns out. We can think of little else but to propose that Dutch be expanded.
In addition to gender, male and female could also be used as part of Dutch, and we propose to do so. The terms “man” and “woman” in English generally refer to gender identity or social roles (more subjective, see also AGTRT-BF20), while “male” and “female” are biological terms related to gender (more objective).
Learn more about the distinction between sex and gender:
What is gender anyway, and why is biological sex not sufficient?
Gender as a term is ambiguous: it has several more specific meanings. Of these, the following five are central to gender theory:
- Bodily gender: sex, gender, English: bodily gender, or simply sex (see also AGTRT-BF42).
- Formal gender: short for gender, per convention the “default” meaning of gender (see also AGTRT-BF8).
- Legal gender: the gender assigned to a person at the marital status.
- Psychological gender: how a person feels as part of identity (see AGTRT-BF69), where the distinction between primary and secondary gender identity is important (see AGTRT-BF47).
- Social gender: gender as reflected in social roles, behaviors, norms and relationships.
It is obvious that gender categorization (or the assignment of gender) at the civil registry (i.e., the determination of legal gender) takes place partly on the basis of expert advice that is itself based on a currently accepted notion of formal gender. It cannot be ruled out that at some point the most widely accepted notion of formal gender may not match well with the practice of assigning gender at the civil registry. In such a situation, a change in the law may help.
Now we have the following concepts:
- Male: adult person with male formal gender,
- Female: adult person with female formal gender,
- Neutral person: adult person with neutral formal gender,
- Male: person with male physical gender,
- Female: person with female physical gender,
- Neutral: person with neutral physical gender.
Dutch has no useful alternatives for male and female, and that makes it almost impractical to put down gender theory properly in Dutch.
Obviously, essentialists (see mission) say that male and male, and female and female, respectively, need not be distinguished, but that position is precisely the definition of the essentialist position, and to undress the language to the point where that definition can no longer be properly formulated is impractical.
Male, female, and neutral are (formally) gender nouns. Male, female, and neutral are physical gender nouns. The formal gender nouns are also associated with pronouns, but the bodily gender nouns are not.
So it is the notion of (formal) gender that entails who is categorized as male or female.
In addition to these notions, gender identity still exists. Naturally, co-essentialists believe that gender (formally gender) and gender identity need not be distinguished, but that view is precisely what defines their position, and even for the co-essentialists, it ultimately does not pay to undress the language to the point where their position cannot be properly defined.
We note further that the concept of bodily gender changes over time but that change is very slow and not very controversial (see AGTRT-BF42).
The concept of formal gender changes incrementally, and that change varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. We propagate ICE (incremental concept engineering) as a method for designing versions of the concept formally gender (see AGTRT-BF56).
The concept of gender identity is also changing, but this is separate from jurisdictions and is more a matter of academic and philosophical debate (see AGTRT-BF69).