Mission

Mission of the AGTRT

The Amsterdam Gender Theory Research Team (AGTRT) aims to contribute to bridging the gap between “woke” co-essentialism and “anti-woke” essentialism, the two diametrically opposed trends in current social and scholarly debates on gender. Co-essentialism relies exclusively on self-identification to define gender, while essentialism is the belief that only biological factors determine gender.

Both Formal Gender Theory (FGT) and Androgyny-Based Gender Theory (ABGT) aim to open up more moderate gender critical positions that go beyond current polarization. In addition, we explore how FGT can be applied in theoretical sexology (TS), initially primarily in the theory of sexual orientation.

Classical and modern inspiration

We make an effort to base our work on both classical and recent research in the field of theory of gender and sexuality. As main authors from whom we take primary inspiration for FGT, we mention:

  • Elizabeth Barnes
  • Alex Byrne
  • Robin Dembroff
  • Tomas Bogardus
  • Sandra Bem
  • Katharine Jenkins
  • Mari Mikkola
  • Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini
  • Rach Cosker-Rowland
  • Talia Mae Bettcher

Key authors who inspire ABGT are:

  • Carl Jung
  • Emma Jung
  • Sigmund Freud
  • Marie-Louise Von Franz
  • Sabina Spielrein
  • Charles Darwin
  • Joan Roughgarden
  • June Singer
  • Bruno Latour
  • Robert Stoller
  • Gert Hekma
  • Judith Butler
  • David Graeber
  • Frans de Waal
  • Carel van Schaik