A site of epistemic injustice
The rest of that section of the paper:
Freeman (2015) argues that contemporary pregnancy, in particular, has become a site of epistemic injustice through processes of medical professionals and technologies assuming power and epistemic authority over pregnancy and pregnant people, often denying or superseding the epistemic privilege, knowledge, and control that a pregnant person has over their own body and embodied pregnancy experience. Similarly, both MacKendrick (2018) and Waggoner (2017) clearly demonstrate how responsibilities for ensuring the health and well-being of embryos, fetuses, children, and families are forms of gendered precautionary labor in which “safety first” approaches result in additional social control over women and their everyday lives, often despite equivocal empirical evidence supporting the benefits of such precautions.
Oooh suddenly women appear. I did not see that coming. Where did the pregnant people go?
In this work, we argue that these forms of gendered precautionary labor and social control are not solely constrained to cisgender women, the context in which they have been explored almost exclusively in the empirical literature to date.
Oh good. Whew. No sooner are they mentioned, the bitches, than we’re told that they’re not the only ones who get pregnant and get told what to do by doctors, god damn it!
Is referring to that paper a cite of epistemic injustice?
No, it’s citational justice…
When translated out of the gobbledegook that could imply that us blokes can never get pregnant. Alternatively, it could mean that we can. It could also mean that all that beer I had for breakfast is what is making me feel crook right now. Alternatively, it could be morning sickness due to somehow managing to contract an accidental pregnancy.
That can happen. It says so in the Bible.
It’s all very confusing. I need a drink.
Oh now be fair, they went out of their way not to imply that you blokes can never get pregnant.
In my long ago student days I recall being told that the quality of one’s writing reflected the quality of one’s thinking. And yet it seems that more one ascends in academe a disconnect occurs.
Now that I’ve had time to unpack the paper, I have begun to question the epistemic authority of my urologist’s processes and technologies and gendered precautions regarding my swollen prostate. And my cardiologist’s authority and technology in the form of a cardiac artery stent over the embodied experience of my angina attack. Finally there is the precautionary social control in the form of an imposed diet for the embodied experience of my supposed Type 2 diabetes. I shall therefore break free of their overweening authority by having a large slice of pie a la mode.
Well at least your rationalizations and self-justification are in aid of an attainable goal. So we slip from epistemic authority to ontology. Having a slice of pie a la mode is possible because pie exists; changing sex is not possible because it can’t be done.
Mmmmmm, pie…..
I’ve never seen the word epistemic abused so badly.