The Epistemic Injustice Expressed in “Normalizing” Surgery on Children with Intersex Traits

• Authors: Ziemińska Renata
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

I present the notion of epistemic injustice coined by Miranda Fricker and apply it to the situation of people with intersex traits, especially intersex children who are the subjects of “normalizing” surgery. Several studies from Polish hospitals show that both early “normalizing” surgery and the decision to postpone such surgery can result in harm to an intersex child. For this reason, I claim that “normalizing” surgery is only an expression of the epistemic hermeneutical injustice existing before the surgery and that its source is the lack of an empirically adequate notion of sex characteristics. The binary notion is too simple to grasp intersex traits, and this epistemic dysfunction turns into practical harm. In contrast to Morgan Carpenter, I defend the nonbinary gender category as being important to limiting “normalizing” surgery.

Keywords

EN

Miranda Fricker; epistemic injustice; children with intersex traits; early 'normalizing' surgery; binary notion of two sexes

• Publisher: Instytut Filozofii - Uniwersytet Jagielloński
• Journal: Diametros
• Year: 2020
• Volume: 17
• Issue: 66
• Pages: 14

Dates

published

2020-06

Contributors

author

Ziemińska Renata

• University of Szczecin

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Identifiers

DOI

10.33392/diam.1478

ISSN

1733-5566