Jan Bergstra & Laurens Buijs
Amsterdam Gender Theory Research Team
The concept of gender identity is by far the most complex and impenetrable notion in gender theory. Without a concept of gender identity, gender theory is hard to get going, but what exactly gender identity is is very difficult to put into words. To date, we have addressed conceptual questions of gender identity in the following texts: in report AGTRT-13 and in the following blogs: AGTRT-BF27, AGTRT-BF32, AGTRT-BF37, AGTRT-BF47, AGTRT-BF48, AGTRT-BF49, AGTRT-BF62, AGTRT-BF63, AGTRT-BF64 and AGTRT-BF69.
Read more about our search for a theory of gender identity:
In search of a theory of gender identity
It takes us quite a bit to arrive at a stable and understandable narrative on gender identity; those who read the aforementioned series of blogs can see for themselves. Also important here is that we want to have a convincing connection with ABGT, while in doing so ABGT should not import or adopt the perhaps rigid “logic” of FGT.
For the connection to ABGT, the notion of primary gender identity (PHI) is important (see AGTRT-BF47 and AGTRT-BF48). Indeed, ABGT distinguishes between primary and secondary gender identity (PGI and SGI). The PGI deals with the subjective perception of bodily gender (i.e., whether we feel physically male, female or neutral), while the SGI deals with androgyny in personality (i.e., how we seek balance between masculine, feminine and androgynous personality traits).
In this blog, we want to get a sharper picture of what the PHI is or could be from the perspective of formal gender theory. We use the following definition:
- Primary gender identity (PGI) if present, is a deep sense of being male, being female or being neutral, but this “primary” in relation to physical gender male, female and neutral.
Read more about the PGI:
Primary gender identity is about whether we feel male, female or neutral
A person’s PGI is male, female or neutral, and the latter includes not recognizing a PGI. If in P the PGI is male (female) and physical gender is female (male) then there is gender incongruence and perhaps gender dysphoria. If that is seen as a problem to be solved then there are several routes:
- Learning to live with this form of gender incongruity.
- Through affirmative therapy, make P’s body more like a female (male) body and thus align the gender experience (see AGTRT-BF83) with the PGI.
- Adjusting the PGI to female (male). Whether this trajectory is ever possible we do not know, whether it is desirable given that it would be possible we do not know either. In any case, there is no known tradition of medical (including psychiatry) and/or psychological treatment in this area.
When the PGI deviates from physical gender, then as a rule, gender identity also deviates from physical gender.
It is difficult for us to imagine that physical gender and gender identity correspond while the PHI differs. This seems to be a paradoxical condition that we may rule out.
But when a person’s PGI and physical gender P match, say female (male), then theoretically the gender identity can differ from that. This is the case, for example, when someone does not want to be a woman (man) for societal reasons, and those reasons are so strong that P does not see herself as a woman (man) for that reason.
In ABGT, in addition to the PGI, we distinguish an SGI (secondary gender identity), which relates to androgyny in personality. ABGT assumes the “normal case” that in a person P physical gender and PGI match. Whatever the situation with SGI, that will not be a reason to pursue gender transition; SGI is not a mechanism to problematize PGI.
Read more about the distinction between the PGI and the SGI:
The primary and secondary gender identity distinction makes room for androgyny
From FGT’s point of view, the PHI is of considerable importance. The following rule seems to be in play: in a MotR version of gender theory, only when there is a difference between the PHI and bodily gender in person P is there possibly a rationale for gender transition.
For a MotR version of FGT, the extreme limit (most extreme variant) of gender transition is a person P with say male PHI and female physical gender (also GAAB) where:
- The gender experience is female,
- No form of medical/hormonal treatment is possible or provides perspective for meaningful adaptation of the gender experience (to the PHI), and
- Only legal gender transition produces a situation after which P can live with the gender incongruence that still exists.
P is what is called “born in the wrong body,” but in such a way that affirmative therapy does not help enough.
Whether this situation can occur is not clear in advance, and whether in that case legal gender transition is also admitted (in light of the MotR version of FGT being used) is yet another matter, but here is a kind of “extreme case” in which we believe that the question of admission to legal gender transition can still have a positive answer (at least in the context of a MotR version of gender theory).
Co-essentialism will also argue for the permissibility of gender transition in cases where at P physical gender and PGI correspond, but gender identity differs.
ABGT is not about the phenomenon of gender transition, but (knowledge of) ABGT can be relevant to how a person approaches and determines their own PGI. ABGT can perhaps also sometimes help to “live with gender incongruence,” for example, in the circumstances of the (hypothetical) person P mentioned above. What ABGT can provide, for example, is relativization of the importance of the PGI through additional focus on the SGI (secondary gender identity).
From an ABGT point of view, a discrepancy between physical gender and PGI is an exception, but it is precisely for those exceptional cases that ABGT is important in principle because the notion of SGI is definitely not based on the assumption that PGI and physical gender correspond.
We note here that gender incongruence is seen as a medical problem, and then it is obvious that that problem, like most medical problems, is not solvable in all cases. The situation where a person has to live with gender incongruence thus inevitably arises. At that point, ABGT (viewed as an analytic psychological theory) could possibly, and after systematic further development, become of clinical significance.