[AGTRT-BF87] Transgender politics: striving to maintain “trans acceptance”

Jan Bergstra & Laurens Buijs
Amsterdam Gender Theory Research Team

For incomprehensible reasons, transgender activists (transactivists) want to give the impression that it is completely unnecessary, stupid and foolish to even consider for a second the arguments put forward by opponents of their positions (see also AGTRT-BF12 and AGTRT-BF85).

Read more about the arrogance of transactivism:
Valentijn de Hingh and the (self-claimed) rights of the frontline transactivist

Perhaps that form of disinterest is modern; in any case, we saw it among UvA sociologists as well (see AGTRT-BF40). There we saw no inclination to discuss gender. Fine, it can be done that way, but then one shouldn’t be surprised if one’s own arguments aren’t looked at very closely either.

We noted in an earlier blog that the biggest threat to the position of transgender people right now is the trans movement itself. They are taking flight so forward and experimenting with transgender rights in such a way that there is a danger of eroding social and political support for original transgender rights as well (see AGTRT-BF86).

Read more about the difference between experimental and original transgender rights:
Trans activism increasingly experiments with transgender rights, putting original rights at risk

We have drawn up a few hypotheses about how transgender politics will fare in the coming years, and trans activists could also benefit from them. We also have some principles of our own.

Principles of AGTRT on transgender politics:

  1. It is important that in the long run, at least, the possibility of becoming transgender remains. It is also significant that a transsexual is (and is called) transgender and that a transman is a man and a transwoman is a woman. In other words, it is important that gender transition (read: transition in terms of formal gender, see AGTRT-BF20) remains possible and that gender (read: formal gender) is and remains the defining characteristic for gender nouns male, female and neutral (see AGTRT-BF75 for the term “gender noun”).
  1. It is also important to avoid overly strict medical requirements for gender transition: in some cases, meeting such strict requirements is neither feasible nor desirable.
  1. The notion of gender (formally gender) depends on the jurisdiction valid in a particular place and time. Formal gender is a political concept with a bodily background. Thus, formal gender differs from physical gender which is precisely not a political concept (but again a concept with a scientific background).
  1. The theoretical background of the concept of formal gender is philosophical in nature. Concept engineering leads step by step to modifications of the notion of gender that is dominant in a given jurisdiction.
  1. In addition to male, female and neutral, there is male, female and neutral. Those terms are missing from Dutch but are just as much needed as gender and pronoun, terms that have already migrated from English to Dutch. Male, female, and neutral are related to physical gender just as male, female, and neutral are related to physical gender.
  1. In addition to formal gender and physical gender, there is also psycho-social gender, and there we use the terms masculine, feminine and neutrine.

AGTRT’s hypotheses on transgender politics:

  1. The assumption of co-essentialism, namely that gender identity alone determines formal gender, provokes a great deal of opposition. This is not a temporary issue. This opposition has several grounds/forms, we will mention four:
    • Negative experiences with individuals who made the transition to formally gender woman based on their own claim of female gender identity (the argument of Kathleen Stock and others),
    • The argument that in this way the concepts of man and woman are eroded (what we call gender erosion in AGTRT-7). This is an argument of Tomas Bogardus, for example, as well as Katherine Jenkins. This argument goes hand in hand with the belief that gender erosion is socially undesirable.
    • The argument that even from philosophy is not conceivable that the concepts of man and woman disappear so easily via subjectivation (which Alex Byrne, for example, points out with his claims AHF and AHM).
    • Not being convinced by the vague and incomprehensible characterization of (formal) gender as socially constructed, for example, in the style of Judith Butler.
  1. Prolonged and unyielding pursuit of the victory of co-essentialism (“you can say what your formal gender is”) will be counterproductive, and will damage social acceptance of gender transition. This is thus very much at odds with defending the interests of transgender persons.
  1. Organizations like Stonewall and the Transgender Network in the Netherlands are not the obvious advocates for those who are pursuing or have gone through a gender transition. It is not possible to represent the interests of transgender people on the one hand and, on the other, to want to determine for oneself who are transgender. It is hard to understand why these organizations do not see this contradiction in terms themselves.

    But surely it is not trivial: those who “collect for the poor” do (or at least did in earlier times) good work, but those who would then subsequently pocket the money out of the conviction of being poor themselves were making a mistake in doing so (even if on closer inspection they turned out to be poor themselves). Stonewall and transgender network make exactly such a mistake. Those who want to stand up for the interests of a group cannot and should not be the only ones to define the boundaries of that group. It is incomprehensible that Stonewall and transgender network do not see that to misunderstand such a boundary opens the door to dictatorship and intolerance.
  1. Formal gender theory(FGT) is a theoretical tool whose goals include protecting the interests of transgender people. We believe that this claim on our part is more defensible than the corresponding claim on the part of Stonewall and the Transgender Network. We are not convinced of the veracity of those claims.
  1. FGT provides an option for theoretical underpinning of trans acceptance: the social acceptance of gender transition, where a man can become a woman and also vice versa. This gender transition then involves a transition whose plausibility is explicitly assessed positively on the basis of a currently well-supported notion of formal gender, while acceptance must be evidenced by the fact that legal gender also moves with that transition.
  1. Right now, trans acceptance may be uncontroversial and such a tool is not yet of much importance, but it is precisely because of the unthinking pushing (in a co-essentialist direction) of trans activists that a formidable counter-movement is going to emerge which then creates the need for a tool like FGT.
  1. First-generation trans acceptance involves acceptance of gender transition based on morphological and hormonal characteristics (what was once called transsexing ). Second-generation trans acceptance refers to individuals who did have the goal of transitioning in the same way but were unable to succeed for whatever reason, such as physical complications from medical treatment or psychological complications that could not be ignored. We do not have a clear definition of third-generation trans acceptance at this time, but that should come.

    Striving to maintain and globally strengthen trans acceptance, on the basis of a constantly well-thought-out concept of gender, must become a fundamental premise of trans activists.
  1. The need for (justification of) first-generation trans acceptance requires a non-trivial moral/ethical argument. Medical science alone is not enough, and neither is philosophy with it. The argument has an ethical dimension and in that sense is not simply compelling. But it is strong, just not so strong that it can endure gender erosion. Gender erosion undermines first-generation trans acceptance.
  1. Transactivists must recognize that maintaining and broadening first-generation trans acceptance is already a formidable challenge, one with a high risk of harm.