#hermeneutical injustice

[tricky-pockets]

please I am begging

the egg post is still doing numbers and I'm still having fun being called a dumbass in an affectionate way, BUT

I also very sincerely regret not adding the real explanation for how I pledged a frat and didn't realize I was a dude: I DIDN'T KNOW ANY TRANS PEOPLE (or, well, maybe I did, but I didn't know I did). This was in like 2008. I didn't recognize myself as transgender because I barely even knew the word. Was I also oblivious? Absolutely. But it was also a product of our invisibility and otherization.

Anyway, go read Epistemic Injustice by Miranda Fricker, who presents (among other things) the following very useful concept:

Hermeneutical injustice is: the injustice of having some significant area of one’s social experience obscured from collective understanding owing to a structural identity prejudice in the collective hermeneutical resource.

Or, in other words: when you're part of a marginalized group and you don't get to be part of the conversation people are having about you, you can - through no fault of your own - end up lacking concepts crucial to making sense of your own experiences. And that makes it harder to share or explain those experiences to anyone else, which only compounds the problem.

This is why the words are actually kinda fuckin important.

[fountainpenchess]

It is possible to see how pre-emptive testimonial injustice and testimonial smothering contribute to ignorance regarding suicidal people's experiences, because their voices remain relatively absent from the public sphere or are transformed or adapted to be more "acceptable", in turn fostering hermeneutical injustice and leading to greater difficulty in theorizing suicidist oppression–and hence perpetuating the deadly silencing circle of epistemic violence.

— alexandre baril, suicidism: a new theoretical framework to conceptualize suicide from an anti-oppressive perspective 

[anendoandfriendo]

We don't think that people understand that not having the words to describe their own experiences actually IS its own special kind of hell, and also a literal form of oppression.

It's called hermeneutical injustice, so like YEAH — even if endogenics' concerns was the ability to have the word endogenic that is still very very bad and you are still a raging bigot, asshole.

[purgaytorysupremacy]

I would like everyone to know that I will be celebrating November 5th by presenting the draft outline of this paper to my graduate-level "uses and abuses of history" philosophy class

[generalburner]

Hey there, submitter here 👋 Now that it's long over and I can't influence anyone's answers, I wanted to share what the point of this was

(But before that let me concur with the disclaimers incognitopolls added. This poll is indeed trans inclusive, not about genitals, and disinterested in whether anyone is a "real" lesbian.)

So, personally, I'm a lesbian who is both not attracted any man and would never have sex with any man under any circumstances. 100% of all people who have ever heard that I was a lesbian and then still thought there was some chance I might like men have done so because they were homophobic, so I will go on assuming that anyone who does that to me in the future is being homophobic, regardless of the existence of lesbians who do have any interest in men. Seeing as the results here confirm my assumption that the majority of lesbians don't have any interest men or have very little interest in very limited circumstances, I think that's fair of me. I don't think that makes me an exclusionist or whatever.

There absolutely needs to be a word to refer to the concept of a woman who likes women but not men. The best word we have for that is "lesbian", regardless of if that doesn't describe 100% of all lesbians. Why does there need to be a word we can use when we mean a woman who likes women but not men? Well, I can't possibly give you a better explanation of the concept of hermeneutical injustice than cj the x did, so i'm just gonna splice in their explanation from a completely unrelated video here. (I'm linking to a short clip from it so I suggest you watch it if you care enough to be reading this.)

"The philosopher Miranda Fricker coined this concept of Hermeneutical Injustice. This is when you lack the social language to communicate what you are experiencing to other people, therefore isolating you in your experience, and rendering you unable to name it, understand it, share it with others, do something about it. If there's no socially understood name for the thing you're experiencing or if you do not know the name for the thing you're experiencing, you're damned to experience it alone, wondering if it's even real, if you even deserve to feel this way about this thing you can't even articulate."

The point isn't that you're an "invalid lesbian" or whatever if the meaning "woman who likes women but not men" doesn't fully apply to you. I myself am genderfluid. The point is that if someone tells you they're a lesbian, assuming that means they aren't interested in men at all is the right thing to do.

I made this poll because I just wanted to know how many other lesbians felt the way I do.

Just to be very, very clear: this blog supports trans women. This is not asking about genital preference, nor whether you would have sex with a trans person, nor if you're "really" a lesbian based on your answer. Sexuality is complex and there are countless reasons a person might choose to have sex with someone else.

Be polite in the comments/reblogs.

–

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[jellyfemmedyke]

Learning about Hermeneutical marginalization. it's when a group of people are prevented from participating in the creation of shared meanings and interpretations. This can lead to hermeneutical injustice, which is when people are denied the tools they need to understand their experiences. and this is just the google definition but it's cool, that makes so much sense. But then! I saw

Hermeneutical marginalization can be caused by identity prejudices, which can lead to people being unfairly excluded from social institutions which I think is really appropriate when it comes to trans men and intersex people right now, with how they're being forced out of conversations about abortion and reproductive health because of prejudices against their identity. Super interesting stuff. It seems like oh obviously moment. but really It's funny that it's hermeneutical injustice to not know about the concept. irony.

[givemearmstopraywith]

quick palestine fact sheet:

there are nearly 7 million palestinian refugees globally

1.5 million individuals live in the 58 recognized palestine refugee camps around palestine (i.e. in gaza, syria, east jerusalem, etc) recognized by the unrwa

67% of gaza's population are refugees

there are 905,000 registered palestine refugee children: 635,000 in gaza and 269,000 in the west bank

palestinian refugees frequently cannot access public health insurance and are barred from many professions; some areas bar them from education and formal work

in gaza poverty rates are nearly 82% and the unemployment rate is some of the highest in the world at nearl 47% as of august 2022

one recent study showed that 88% of palestinian children show signs of war-related post traumatic stress disorder

37% of adults in the gaza strip qualify for diagnosis for ptsd; however, this number should be approached cautiously, accounting for preconceptions about mental health, access to diagnosis, and hermeneutic injustice: the number is likely far higher

48,000 people in gaza have some form of a disability: more than one fifth of this number are children

palestinians are not allowed, by israeli law, to have citizenship; they have no freedom of movement, and can be subject to forced evictions, detention, and torture.

the per capita gdp of palestine is US$3,678 as of december 2021; this is in comparison to a gdp per capita of USD$52,000 in israel

palestine does not have a formal military. the us stopped aid to palestine, around $60 million, in 2019. palestinian security services receives around $27 million from the national budget.

hamas, a separate entity from the pss, receives around $300 million per year. in comparison, israel spends in excess of USD$23.6 billion annually on their military.

in the midst of disinformation campaigns by global powers, fight facts with facts- and with protests, rallying, donating, elevating the voices of palestinians. keep showing up. keep educating yourself and others. never give up hope. palestine will be free.

[theabigailthorn]

thank god for Girls’ Chat - in the darkest hour, Girls’ Chat is there. Medieval peasant women suffered in silence from a lack of Girls’ Chat, that’s hermeneutical injustice

[myalgicencephalomyelitiscfstom]

We’ve got a great guest blog today from Ella Barnard 🔥

Ella writes about the hermeneutical injustice of ME, why the right words don’t exist and how we can find them.

[fountainpenchess]

I contend that suicidal people experience both types of epistemic injustice, as well as hermeneutical marginalization. I argue that testimonial injustice is produced by interlocking sanist, suicidist and paternalist views that regard the judgment of suicidal people as irrational, incompetent, illegitimate or alienated and which destroy the suicidal subject's credibility. In that sense, suicidal people's voices are invalidated. Furthermore, as a group, suicidal people lack the conceptual tools necessary to understand their experiences outside the mainstream curative and preventative frameworks and to make them intelligible to others. As we saw above, no matter what model one uses to theorize suicidality, suicide is not considered a valid option and hence is not rendered intelligible or rational. This doesn't mean that suicidal people are not able to develop those analytical tools and don't have the capacity or agency to do so, but simply that there is a scarcity of theories, notions and concepts to help them conceptualize their experience as part of a larger system of oppression rather than an individual problem. To give an example, the fact that a suicidal person finds it difficult to reach out due to a multitude of reasons−fear of negative consequences and stigma, guilt at the idea of leaving their loved ones or "depriving" them from life insurance that doesn't apply in the case of suicide, the conviction they are being selfish or cowardly−demonstrates that it is difficult for suicidal people to conceptualize their personal experience as part of a larger oppressive system that produces violence and discrimination toward suicidal subjects. In addition, this hermeneutical injustice is partly founded on the fact that suicidal subjects experience hermeneutical marginalization. As demonstrated earlier, suicidal people are not (or very rarely) invited to contribute to knowledge construction on suicidality by either the fields of suicidology or critical suicidology. This makes the theorizing of suicidist oppression incredibly challenging for suicidal people, since no existing suicide-related discourses allow one to conceive this form of oppression.

— alexandre baril, suicidism: a new theoretical framework to conceptualize suicide from an anti-oppressive perspective (emphasis mine)

[librarycards]

What is epistemic violence?

To paraphrase Gayatri Spivak, the coiner of the term, epistemic violence is the systematic silencing of Othered (or, in Spivak's term, subaltern) groups via a refusal of the dominant group to hear them, and to understand their knowledge as legible or hearable at all. The effect of this is that marginal knowledges are iced out of dominant discourse.

More recently, philosopher Miranda Fricker has opened up new paths in this area with her book titled Epistemic Injustice. She describes two forms of epistemic injustice (testimonial, in which a knower's testimony is systematically delegitimized, and hermeneutic, in which a knower is not permitted the language with which to describe the conditions under which they live).

When I talk about epistemic injustice, I am thinking about Spivak and Fricker's more recent interventions. Spivak is also drawing on her reading of Foucault, who used the term "biopower" to describe the productive power of state efforts to make [populations] live (in conditions of silence, marginality, toil, etc.) and let them die (by knowingly abandoning the noncompliant –– including those who do not submit to the epistemic conditions required of them).

[orphiclovers]

The funniest thing is, and this has happened a dozen times, when I read other people's reviews on Novels and Manhwa I like, there's always this one phrase that keeps coming up: "It reminds me of BL" "this is basically BL" "this should have just been BL". there's been many instances and many contexts, but it's always on Heterosexual Romance stories. as someone who doesn't read BL often, it is a fascinating and strange thing to hear.

sometimes there's extra descriptors of genre and tropes added to "like [blank type of] BL" depending on the story, but at it's core, it's always a het story in comparison to Queer media. sometimes it's just a lighthearted joke, sometimes an insult.

it's not that I don't understand why people make this observation or that I think it isn't valid. I guess, if I had to make something about all of it it would be this:

When certain tropes, plot beats, dynamics, etc become popular and widespread in a genre they become intrinsically linked with it even when they're not a requirement. I'm not talking about genre conventions, more like trends in already established genres that contribute to the overall aesthetic or vibe of it (during that time period. of course the aesthetic is constantly evolving).

Even when employed in a story outside of that genre, someone who's familiar with the current trends can notice and point them out, and an author can intentionally or unintentionally use it to bridge the gap between two mutually exclusive genres, like heterosexual romance and homosexual romance.

It might seem ridiculous to say a completely heterosexual relationship "feels like BL". In the inverse scenario, that I've also seen happen even more often, you might want to scoff at anyone saying a Gay Relationship "feels straight". You might even want to call this homophobic.

However, I don't think it's something we should so easily dismiss as nonsense. If there's such a wide swath of people who are trying to put a name to this specific Experience they're having with a fictional object, it's worthy of exploration why this

happens.

clumsily attempting to call attention to something real they have noticed, except they lack the words to describe it, so they use the only terms available to them, which is straight and gay, even if it doesn't make sense with the definition... If I can be so presumptuous, I'd call it as of yet unadressed hermeneutical injustice. Maybe I'm making this post to open that conversation.

In the case of a gay relationship between two fictional men "feeling straight" to some people, it could be that they're noticing the aesthetics of Heterosexual Romance apply in this case (intentionally or unintentionally on the authors part).

It's cool! With writing it's entirely possible to blur the lines between two contradictory states, write a "straight relationship" between two men, or a "gay relationship" between a man and a woman. it's a unique ability of fiction to evoke something like this and I've seen it happen with increasing frequency.

it's a new emerging Trend, something else, newer and exciting, in the space of fiction.

it is also my favorite thing in the world and literally the only way I see my own real life experience get explored or talked about. I don't want to get into it too much, I'll only say that, in my experience, the currently used terms "straight" and "queer/gay" are... an unwieldy way to catagorize human sexuality that doesn't make any sense when I look at history or myself or other people, regardless of which one they identify with. reducing the complexities or pretending they don't exist or shouldn't be acknowledged isn't useful or wise.

I've gotten off topic, but yeah. That's a look into my thoughts.

[assaultmystic-archive]

if i had a criticism to make of a short history of transmisogyny, it would be that gill-peterson seems to shy from identifying transfeminised people on the historical record as trans women as a form of hermeneutic injustice, but not from identifying them as queer men - which at points she seems to treat as a matter of course. not approaching these labels with equal caution is an issue imo

the emphasis on the colonial/state apparatus as vehicle of transfeminisation is fantastically useful. her attention to culturally specific identities is particularly careful (it seems to me, an outsider).

still cant help but feel the baby has been thrown out with the bath water in her dismissal of the psychologistic queer theory approach (of which her criticisms are very much warranted). i mean this specifically with regard to the identities of people who would simply call themselves trans women, about whom she often has very little to say. but also more generally

am of the opinion that transmisogyny is in need of a treatment from a multiplicity of discursive fields - in that it transverses them. the rejection of one lens for another in the exploration of the process of transfeminisation, rather than embracing that need for that multiplicity, is a shortcoming. strikes me as academic in a very literal sense (emerges as a rhetorical move as a result of the pressure of the academy)

[biblebloodhound]

The Issue of Holy War (Deuteronomy 7:1-11)

No individual, group of people, or even an entire nation, can keep itself on a right, just, and good path if they are continually around others who harm people either verbally and/or physically.

Joshua’s military campaign against the five Amorite kings, by Gilliam van der Gouwen, 1728 When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you—and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you…

[jellyfemmedyke]

Hermeneutical injustice-a type of epistemic injustice that occurs when people are prevented from understanding or sharing their experiences

just putting this right here

[our-arospec-experience]

arospec fic writer experience: so you know the concept of hermeneutical injustice, where you don't have the words/concepts to make sense of and communicate your experiences? really feeling that tonight. i would like to get weirder about the way i write relationships but i still need more words for it. i will be the change i wish to see in the world but also damn, it is hard

god I feel that so hard