ABSTRACT

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.

摘要

借鉴原始的定性研究，我认为女权主义哲学家米兰达·弗里克提出的“认知不公正”概念位于黑人女权主义学术的悠久谱系中，可以在社会学上用来帮助理解无性恋者的生活经历。我展示了参与者对其无性主体的描述是如何经常被否认、驳回和重写的。然而，我认为这些经历严重性别化，因为无性恋女性在一定程度上和方式上遭受了认知上的不公正，而她们的男性同行则没有，而且必须在异性父权制的权力关系中理解这一点。这些认知上的不公正围绕着古老但盛行的女性气质和女性气质构建为“自然”无性、被动和缺乏代理。当无性恋男性经历认知上的不公正时，这植根于对男性气质的熟悉理解，即需要积极和渴望的性行为。使用弗里克对认知不公正的解释和证明形式的阐释，我展示了在“强迫性行为”的背景下，无性恋如何仍然是一种文化上不熟悉的解释框架，以及如何基于性别（和不平等）分布来“听到”无性恋的故事。见证的可信度。