Epistemic Injustice in Brain Studies of (Trans)Gender Identity

Abstract

This study undertakes an analysis of the conceptualization of gender identity in neuroscientific studies of (trans)gender identity that contrast the brains of cisgender and transgender participants. The analysis focuses on instances of epistemic injustice that combine scientific deficiencies and the exclusion of relevant bodies of knowledge. The results of a content analysis show how the ignoring of biosocial, developmental, mosaicist, contextualist, and depathologizing approaches leads to internal conceptual inconsistencies, hermeneutical deficiencies and the upholding of questionable paradigms in the research field. Interviews with researchers involved in these brain studies reveal targeted and diffuse forms of testimonial injustice against alternative approaches, promoted by the hierarchical arrangements of research teams in combination with the careerist and economic logic of research. The analysis points to the exclusion of critical epistemologies of science and the historical oppression of trans people as epistemic agents as the underlying hermeneutical deficiencies.