Bella-Rose Kelly

In recent literature on microaggression, various authors argue that the primary harm of microaggression is epistemic: it diminishes the victim’s capacity to make a knowledge claim because she is uncertain of the intention of the microaggressor. This view has been defended in one of two ways. According to one position, if a microaggression occurs, an epistemic injustice also occurs. According to the other, microaggressions have downstream effects that may cause epistemic injustice. In this paper I argue that current views on both positions are inadequate for conceptualizing the primary epistemic harm of microaggression. More specifically, I show, first, that the concepts of microaggression and epistemic injustice cannot apply to one and the same event as the first position would have it and, second, that the argument that epistemic injustice results from the downstream effects of a microaggression does not hold that the epistemic harm originates in the event of a microaggression. I bolster an alternative account: pragmatic factors related to a microaggressive event raise the stakes for the microaggressee to act upon an epistemic belief and frustrates knowledge formation. I argue this account of microaggression demonstrates that assailing structural causes of microaggression can alleviate such epistemic harms.

Cissexist perception involves a prejudicial judgment and an unmediated affective response, such as that of disgust, directed at the gendered aspects of another person. In this paper, I advance a view of how cissexist perception harms disabled people. On this view, there at least two morally problematic aspects of cissexist perception: that it has painful effects, and that it restricts bodily agency. I defend this claim through an analysis of a double bind faced by people subjected to cissexist perception: on the one hand, such individuals are pressured into avoiding certain environments to dodge dangerous predicaments that can arise on behalf of looking different from others; this constitutes unfair exclusion from an environment and under some conditions causes pain. On the other hand, to avoid dangerous predicaments, targets of cissexist perception are pressured into concealing their gender non-conformity to fit into certain environments; concealing frustrates their bodily agency. I conclude with remarks about how trans-affirming artwork may have the capacity to interrupt cissexist perception.