Undergraduate Highly Commended paper in the 2025 National Uehiro Oxford Essay Prize in Practical Ethics. By Artur Littner, University of Lancaster.
In this essay, I will present a case where a young man (Martin) is seemingly harmed by stigma surrounding male dancers. I will analyse this case using literature on epistemic injustice and link it to a concept of passing. This will allow me to make two important points on a wider scale:
- There are individuals who are hermeneutically dominant but also simultaneously marginalised
- These individuals are uniquely capable of bringing about epistemic justice because their existence challenges stereotypes
This will allow me to conceptualise a form of epistemic justice which encourages individuals to have the courage to give certain testimonies despite the risk of losing credibility. I will argue that ‘epistemic courage’ is a moral duty owed not only to wider social groups, but also to the individual themselves.
Case: We have a young man, Martin, who is a competitive ballroom dancer. He competes regularly in district and national dance competitions and has done this from a young age. Eventually, he and his female dance partner win at the IDTA (dance-governing body) UK Nationals competition, making them the best ballroom dance couple in the UK for their age and category. A huge achievement! But Martin did not tell his peers about this achievement. In fact, his peers do not even know that he is any type of a dancer.
Martin is not the only young man who never publicly acknowledges that he partakes and achieves success in ballroom dancing and other performing arts. Many young, male dancers that I have spoken to have felt like they had a moment of ‘coming out’ to their peers about their participation in it, assuming they hid the fact initially.
What Martin and others are worried about is the stigma surrounding male dancers, which can take many forms. A common one – and the one I will assume is true in Martin’s mind for the purposes of this essay – is a societal belief that men’s bodies should be used for instrumental rather than expressive ends, because to be expressive is to make attempts to be ‘seen’, which is shameful for men and associates them interchangeably with ‘femininity’ or being ‘gay’ (Bassetti, 2013). Presumably, for fear of a stigmatised perception of femininity or homosexuality, young male ballroom dancers, when asked about their hobbies, do not list ‘ballroom dance’ as one of them despite their devotion to it.
But what does this case have to do with epistemic injustice; why is Martin afraid of stigmatised perceptions? Martin would only suffer an injustice, epistemically speaking, if it was known that he was a ballroom dancer, he was judged based on that fact, and on that basis excluded from knowledge or production of knowledge. That in of itself is surely not Martin’s concern. Martin is not really concerned with being seen as a ballroom dancer per se, as that fact is not affecting him as a knower. Rather, Martin is concerned with the judgement aspect that comes with the stigma, i.e. that he is feminine or gay, regardless of whether he is these things. These are factors that will affect Martin negatively as a knower, and put him in a credibility deficit (Fricker, 2007).
To illustrate the above point, imagine the following: It is found out by his ‘masculine’ peers that Martin is a dancer and on that basis his peers make damaging assumptions, e.g. that he is excessively feminine. Martin may therefore fail to be identified as a knower in certain social interactions because he has deviated from the traditional view of manhood, i.e. his audience have assessed that he is feminine, so his assertions on traditionally masculine activities, let’s say fishing, carry less credibility. Martin’s ability to be a participant in the production of knowledge that he wishes to be rests on his being perceived as one who is capable of knowing and making contributions in the first place (Hookway, 2010).
This indicates quite a complex issue. Martin’s present and continued epistemic ‘inclusion’ within his group is contingent on his omission of any statement that would associate him with a different hermeneutical group, in this case the ‘feminine’. I believe that Martin passes to avoid this problem and maintain his ‘knower’ status in his group. Consider a scenario where a young man is traditionally masculine and is therefore assumed not to have an association with the feminine concept of dance (he has passed well). The young man disappears from perception as a dancer, leaving only ones who are feminine being seen as dancers, thereby perpetuating the stigma of dancing and femininity, which ironically reinforces the harmful stereotype of dance being ‘reserved for the feminine’ which Martin fears in the first place (Silvermint, 2018).
As well as perpetuating stigma, I believe that Martin’s passing contributes to two forms of hermeneutical injustice. One: it implicitly asserts that there is in the first place some fixed set of attributes and behaviours characteristic of women which has been determined by men, obscuring women’s own views of their attributes and characteristics, and two: it labels ‘feminine men’ as ‘gay’ because to be ‘feminine’ is to be seen as attempting to attract the ‘masculine’, which obscures ‘feminine’ men’s understanding of their sexuality because they will be perceived as ‘gay’. Further, because femininity is present in both instances, ultimately it is the traditional term ‘feminine’ which is obscuring in the first place; it points to the fact that women as a “subject group” are described by men who are the “hermeneutically powerful” group, in turn biasing a whole slew of social experiences (Fricker, 2007).
It is very difficult to distinguish Frickerian hermeneutical injustice and Pohlhausian wilful hermeneutical injustice in view of Martin’s actions, or indeed inactions. I argue that Martin, and male dancers more generally, could be doing both, i.e. when Martin interacts with those belonging to hermeneutically dominant groups, it may be that he passes to fit in, anticipating that he would otherwise be misunderstood and lose epistemic credibility. Conversely, when Martin interacts with those belonging to subject groups, i.e. ‘the feminine’, it may be that he passes as a traditionally masculine man because he refuses to be on the same page as ‘the feminine’, as that is the interpretative influence that he associates with a lower epistemic credibility. These two scenarios are consequentially indistinguishable, which makes it difficult to pinpoint exactly where we can ascribe willfulness to Martin’s act of passing. This is supported by the fact that Dotson herself concedes that producing evidence for practices of self-silencing is “difficult” and requires case-by-case analysis of each instance (Dotson, 2011).
Kwong inadvertently supports the idea of Martin living a sort of hermeneutical double-life. Martin is not challenging the close-mindedness of his hearers when he interacts with those belonging to hermeneutically powerful groups (Kwong, 2015). This much is true. But it does not necessarily follow that Martin accepts that close-mindedness for himself even if he never speaks up to challenge it. This is because it could also be true that Martin is open-minded when he is at his dance class, and it is not evident to others there that he accepts close-mindedness outside of that environment – in that sense Martin passes to some extent as both ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ depending on the environment. Because of this, it may be that Martin does indeed seek interdependence with the ‘feminine’, just not when he interacts with the hermeneutically dominant. From an optimistic viewpoint, one could argue that he wishes to be interdependent to some extent with both groups but struggles with this because both groups have different hermeneutic resources and tools.
Martin’s wanting to be on both sides and thus inability to ‘pick a side’ is in part a refutation of Pohlhaus’ idea that the marginally situated knower has a more holistic interpretation than the dominantly situated one (Pohlhaus, 2012) – instead, both are equally valid interpretations of the world qua their ability to fill the other’s hermeneutical lacunas and progress towards one complete understanding. Hence, I don’t think the divide between dominant and dominated groups is as clear-cut as portrayed in the literature on epistemic injustice.
In this sense, we should be careful to say that Martin deliberately becomes close-minded to the interpretations of marginally situated groups when he seeks interdependence with the hermeneutically dominant because we could equally turn around and say that Martin deliberately ‘closes’ his mind to hermeneutically dominant groups when he seeks interdependence with marginally situated groups. It’s just that to the former action we attribute ‘epistemic injustice’ and to the latter we attribute ‘epistemic justice’ because there is an imbalance of power between dominant and marginally situated groups. On this point, I want to clarify that I acknowledge that the close-mindedness of dominant groups is not equally as harmful as the close-mindedness of marginally situated groups (Fricker, 2007). The case does remain that dominant groups have a much more expansive hermeneutical ‘toolkit’ with which to understand the world, obscuring the experiences of the marginalised.
So, what are the Martins of the world to do in their predicament? Before attempting to answer this, it is important to explore one more avenue: The case in which Martin unfoundedly polices his own testimony. It may be that Martin’s peers would be perfectly willing to listen to his testimony regarding dance, and may even be awestruck and supportive, but Martin’s fear of stigma “does not hinge on the pernicious ignorance of a would-be audience” in the first place. Rather, it is merely the perceived anticipation of challenge that stops him from speaking out, which makes sense given that Martin has never ‘come out’ as a ballroom dancer and therefore cannot have faced stigma at any point (J. Y. Lee, 2021). On this basis, it would not be unreasonable to assume that he is a victim of anticipatory epistemic injustice. Furthermore, In Lee’s account of anticipatory injustice, individuals such as Martin who suffer from epistemic injustice “also inflict and perpetuate the injustice they experience” (ibid). This is exactly Silvermint’s point from earlier. Because there is not even a would-be perpetrator, there is a case to be made for Martin being simultaneously the perpetrator and victim of the policing of his own testimony.
Therefore, Martin’s passing may be due to a false worry as much as it could be a decision made in light of ways in which his peers have behaved in the past. It seems that Martin’s solution for the former scenario is much simpler than the solution for the latter one; Martin could easily get his answer with a little more courage in voicing his testimony. In the latter case, the leap of faith would be considerably greater if Martin suddenly ‘came out’ as a dancer. Still, considering the injustices that he perpetuates in not doing so (including his own), it seems to me that Martin could benefit from developing some epistemic virtue, something like an ‘epistemic courage’ to make that leap of faith.
To consciously develop epistemic courage is to some extent Martin’s responsibility as one who by default passes as a member of the hermeneutically dominant group but has experience of being marginally situated. In fact, the status of ‘passing by default’ puts him and others like him in a unique position to bring about change that could help unify group hermeneutics and level the hermeneutical playing field. This is because if paragon members of hermeneutically dominant groups are open and unashamed about their marginal standpoint then it would serve to illustrate to both groups that there is not an exclusive divide between a dominant and marginalised group, and that a ‘dual-hermeneutic’ is possible and legitimate. Lastly, epistemic courage in this case is not just a duty to a wider group to defeat stereotyping, but also a potential for an individual to openly acknowledge and do justice to their personal identity.
Bibliography:
- Bassetti, Chiara. “Male Dancing Body, Stigma and Normalising Processes. Playing with (Bodily) Signifieds/Ers of Masculinity.” Recherches Sociologiques et Anthropologiques, Université catholique de Louvain (Unité d’anthropologie et de sociologie), 2014
- Dotson, Kristie. “Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing.” Hypatia, vol. 26, no. 2, 2011, pp. 236–57. JSTOR
- Fricker, Miranda. Epistemic Injustice : Power and the Ethics of Knowing, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central
- Hookway, Christopher. “Some varieties of epistemic injustice: Reflections on Fricker.” Episteme, vol. 7, no. 2, 2010, pp. 151–163
- Lee, J. Y. “Anticipatory epistemic injustice.” Social Epistemology, vol. 35, no. 6, 2021, pp. 564–576
- Kwong, Jack M. C. “Epistemic Injustice and Open-Mindedness.” Hypatia, vol. 30, no. 2, 2015, pp. 337–51. JSTOR
- Pohlhaus, Gaile. “Relational Knowing and Epistemic Injustice: Toward a Theory of ‘Willful Hermeneutical Ignorance.’” Hypatia, vol. 27, no. 4, 2012, pp. 715–35. JSTOR
- Silvermint, Daniel. “PASSING AS PRIVILEGED.” Ergo (Ann Arbor, Mich.), vol. 5, no. 20201214, 2018, pp. 1–43.