Hermeneutical Injustice, Nonbinary Gender Identities and Category Invalidation

Abstract

This paper argues for category invalidation as a novel and distinct form of epistemic injustice that people who belong to a non-established social category face. This paper explores category invalidation in the context of nonbinary genders or people whose gender identity lies outside of the established gender binary, and who are placed in a marginalized position by virtue of their gender identity. Category invalidation is a form of hermeneutical injustice that consists of having one’s social experience obscured from collective understanding. Nonbinary people face category invalidation when their claims for their gender identity are met with a denial of the existence of the social category of nonbinary. While category invalidation stems from inaccurate and misinformed hermeneutical resources, it is also actively maintained by dominant knowers who refuse to adopt new and more accurate epistemic resources that marginalized knowers could provide. Category invalidation presents three harms to individuals, which are harms to self-conception, interpersonal harms and structural harms. This can result in diminished resources of self-understanding, not being treated as credible sources of information concerning their own gender and not being recognized as nonbinary on a legal or communal level.