Bibliographie complète
Asexuality and epistemic injustice: a gendered perspective
Type de ressource
Auteur/contributeur
- Cuthbert, Karen (Auteur)
Titre
Asexuality and epistemic injustice: a gendered perspective
Résumé
Drawing on original qualitative research, I argue that the concept of ‘epistemic injustice’ proposed by the feminist philosopher Miranda Fricker, and located within a long genealogy of Black feminist scholarship, can be used sociologically to help understand the lived experiences of asexual people. I show how participants’ accounts of their asexual subjectivities were frequently denied, dismissed and over-written. However, I argue that these experiences were heavily gendered, in that asexual women were subject to epistemic injustices to a degree and in ways that their male counterparts were not, and that this must be understood within the power relations of hetero-patriarchy. These epistemic injustices revolved around old yet prevailing constructions of femininity and womanhood as ‘naturally’ asexual, passive, and lacking agency. When asexual men experienced epistemic injustice, this was rooted in familiar understandings of masculinity as necessitating an active and desiring sexuality. Using Fricker’s elucidation of hermeneutical and testimonial forms of epistemic injustice, I show how asexuality remains a culturally unfamiliar hermeneutical frame in a context of ‘compulsory sexuality’ but also how stories of asexuality are ‘heard’ based on the gendered (and unequal) distribution of testimonial credibility.
Publication
Journal of Gender Studies
Volume
31
Numéro
7
Pages
840-851
Date
2022
Langue
Anglais
Titre abrégé
Asexuality and epistemic injustice
Consulté le
21/01/2025 12:29
Catalogue de bibl.
WorldCat Discovery Service
Référence
Cuthbert, Karen. (2022). Asexuality and epistemic injustice: a gendered perspective. Journal of Gender Studies, 31(7), 840‑851. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2021.1966399
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