Category: Formal Gender Theory

Jan Bergstra & Laurens BuijsAmsterdam Gender Theory Research Team A long-awaited review of transgender care for children and young adults as provided by Britain’s NHS National Health Service was released this week. The conclusions are scathing: diagnostics fall short, treatments lack evidence-base. In particular, hormone treatments and puberty blockers are under heavy fire: “thousands of…

Jan Bergstra & Laurens BuijsAmsterdam Gender Theory Research Team On April 8, 2024, “ Dignitas Infinita ” (below DI), and in it is written, among other things, about “gender theory.” We believe that the Vatican misses the mark here very obviously, and we do not understand why it does so. First, we note that the…

This article appeared in slightly modified form on March 20, 2023 in NRC UvA professor Jan Willem Duyvendak calls my criticism of non-binary gender in an opinion piece in NRC (March 1, 2023) “unscientific” and “politically motivated” (see also AGTRT-BF6). But in reality, current gender scholarship is precisely so ideological that all kinds of excesses…

Jan Bergstra & Laurens BuijsAmsterdam 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…

Jan Bergstra & Laurens BuijsAmsterdam Gender Theory Research Team There has been a recent commotion about new legislation in Scotland punishing misgendering. J.R. Rowling made herself heard by naming on X people who have a female gender identity and claim to be transgender, but whom Rowling claims are men (see also AGTRT-BF60). Rowling thereby criticized…

Jan Bergstra & Laurens BuijsAmsterdam Gender Theory Research Team A new book by Judith Butler, “Who is Afraid of Gender?” has recently been released. (abbreviated below as WIAOG). Butler is a strong proponent of co-essentialism: people freely determine their own gender, where gender would then be a fact rather than a choice. In WIAOG, Butler…