Social Epistemology A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy ISSN: 0269-1728 (Print) 1464-5297 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/tsep20 Binarism Grammatical Lacuna as an Ensemble of Diverse Epistemic Injustices Carla Carmona To cite this article: Carla Carmona (2023) Binarism Grammatical Lacuna as an Ensemble of Diverse Epistemic Injustices, Social Epistemology, 37:3, 339-363, DOI: 10.1080/02691728.2022.2103473 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2022.2103473 Published online: 30 Aug 2022. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 341 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 3 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tsep20 ARTICLE Binarism Grammatical Lacuna as an Ensemble of Diverse Epistemic Injustices Carla Carmona Department of Metaphysics and Contemporary Philosophy, Ethics and Political Philosophy, University of Seville, Seville, Spain ABSTRACT This paper characterizes a phenomenon I call ‘binarism grammatical lacuna’ (BGL). BGL occurs when non-binary sex and gender identities are forced to choose between being he or she by the grammar of a language owing to the sex/gender binary. Although hermeneutical injustice (HI) lies at its core, given that non-binary communities come up with hermeneutical devices to overcome unintelligibility and these tools are discredited, a variety of epistemic injustices, besides HI, intertwine in BGL. I address contributory injustice, pragmatic compe- tence injustice, testimonial injustice, and testimonial smothering. Section 1 introduces the phenomenon by portraying it as an ensem- ble of epistemic injustices. Section 2 elucidates the variety of HI at the core of BGL by examining the case of mainstream Spanish, and sec- tion 3 reveals it as producing the primary harm of HI. Section 4 studies the relationship between grammar, ideology, and language use, calling attention to the fact that grammatical lacunae are perfor- matively reenacted in daily speech acts. Section 5 explores the agen- tial dimension of BGL, examining responsibilities. In addition to addressing some of the forms of epistemic injustice that might inter- twine in BGL besides HI, I portray non-marginalized users of binary grammar when addressing non-binary people as hermeneutical misfirers. KEYWORDS Binarism; epistemic injustice; grammar; recognition 1. Introduction: Binarism Grammatical Lacuna This paper is a characterization of a phenomenon I call ‘binarism grammatical lacuna’ (BGL). In a nutshell, BGL occurs when a non-binary person is forced to choose between inappropriate grammatical options to refer to themselves, because of a socially enforced gender ideology that renders all gender and sex identities as reducible or translatable to he or she (or the equivalents in other languages). This sort of gender ideology is commonly referred to as a ‘gender binary’. However, in this paper, I refer to it as the ‘sex/gender binary’, with a view to explicitly including the experiences of non-binary intersex people. In order to resist BGL, non-binary communities develop their own grammatical devices. For instance, take the contemporary use of the singular ‘they’ as the standard English pronoun for any person whose gender is non-binary, unknown, or unspecified. Similarly, the adoption of the non-binary neopronoun hen in Swedish in 2015 can be understood as an institutional response to such gender-inclusive demands. In that sense, this paper aims to shed light on an insight CONTACT Carla Carmona ccarmona@us.es Department of Metaphysics and Contemporary Philosophy, Ethics and Political Philosophy, University of Seville Facultad de Filosofía, c/Camilo José Cela s/n, Seville 41018, Spain SOCIAL EPISTEMOLOGY 2023, VOL. 37, NO. 3, 339–363 https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2022.2103473 © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group that has motivated specific counterstrategies in the everyday linguistic practice of non-binary communities and those sensitive to their issues across languages for a long time, namely the need to develop and use non-binary pronouns. However, the domain of BGL is not reduced to pronoun usage. The degree to which, in using grammar, speakers assume a coincidence between grammatical gender and the sex of an individual referred to in a sentence varies across languages. Besides, this phenomenon is not universal. It might not exist at all, as in Finnish, or exist in a variety of degrees. It might be more pervasive than in English, as in Spanish or French, in which, in addition to third person singular pronouns, it appears in determinants, nouns and adjectives; or it might be even more present than in Spanish or French, as in Arabic, in which verbs also manifest gender. In other languages, such as Hindi, it might not manifest in pronoun usage, though nouns and adjectives agree in gender and verbs change to match the gender of the subject. Consequently, battling against BGL entails distinct strategies for each language. While non-binary pronoun usage is a relevant remedy in languages like English, in a language like Hindi an entirely new set of conjugation rules might need to be created to accommodate the needs of non-binary people. Other languages might require a combination of such non-binary devices. BGL is a complex phenomenon in which an ensemble of epistemic injustices intertwine: a lacuna in canonical grammar, which I understand as a variety of hermeneutical injustice (HI) (Fricker 2007), coexists with marginalized hermeneutical resources which do not receive deserved uptake, leaving plenty of room for other kinds of epistemic injustices. Some might wonder whether BGL can be said to lead to injustice when remedies are already in use. For instance, the use of ‘they’ in the singular ‘to refer to a person whose gender or sexual identity does not correspond to the traditional binary opposition of male and female’ (Oxford University Press 2020) is not only quite extended in certain contexts but also acknowledged in mainstream dictionaries. However, not all the uses of ‘they’ are accepted equally. While generally accepted after indefinite pronouns, it is criticized for being ungrammatical in formal contexts where it follows singular nouns (Oxford University Press 2020). Besides, the number of people who refuse to accept non-binary uses of ‘they’ in everyday contexts remains significant. 1 Regarding the presence of HI in BGL, my fundamental idea is that HI is not only committed in the conceptual realm, which is the focus of both Fricker (2007, esp. chap. 7) and subsequent literature (as examples, cf. Mason 2011; Dotson 2012; Poulhaus 2012; Medina 2013; or Stanley 2015, 125–177). Though nothing in Fricker’s characterization of HI as stemming from ‘a gap in collective hermeneutical resources’ (Fricker 2007, 6) dictates that HI should be about concepts, the truth is that the discussion of HI has focused attention on conceptual-based HIs. Observe that Fricker (2007, esp. 148–151)’s examples, regarding the concepts of ‘sexual harassment’ and ‘postnatal depression’, are instances of conceptual-based HIs. In addition, some of her formulations suggest the conceptual nature of HI; for instance, when she portrays hermeneutical gaps as ‘blanks where there should be the name of an experience’ (Fricker 2007, 160, my emphasis). By contrast, I call attention to the fact that HI also exists in cases in which the mismatch between language and reality takes place in the domain of grammar. Moreover, though Fricker’s initial characterization of HI was linked to the difficulties in verbalizing and understanding temporary experiences resulting from certain actions or events, BGL sheds light on the fact that HI might also be inflicted when an individual’s reality, such as being of a particular gender-related identity, is not duly understood and acknowledged by other people (Fricker and Jenkins 2017). Accordingly, BGL contributes to the extension of the category of HI. The kind of HI present in BGL is likely to be partial. Observe that ‘a complex society often contains diverse publics with heterogeneous interpretative resources and practices’ (Medina 2013, 101). Consequently, an existing hermeneutical gap does not necessarily cover the whole social fabric (see also Mason 2011; Dotson 2012; Poulhaus 2012). Medina (2013, 91) defines HI as ‘the kind of injustice that appears when there are wrongful interpretative obstacles that affect people differently in how they are silenced, that is, in their ability to express themselves and to be understood’. One 340 C. CARMONA might be unable to make sense of that experience to oneself, others, or both. This describes the phenomenon of BGL well: non-binary people are, at least in certain languages, grammatically disadvantaged to make sense of their experiences, whether to themselves, others, or both. Consequently, battling against BGL requires structural change, that is, second-order change (Dotson 2012, esp. 29–31). Besides second-order change, dealing with BGL also entails first- and third-order changes (Dotson 2012, esp. 26–28, 31–35), as BGL is an ensemble of diverse epistemic injustices. Most obviously, BGL might lead to contributory injustice (CI) (Dotson 2012), as non-binary people are not allowed to contribute to the mainstream imaginary with the hermeneutical resources that they have developed to make sense of their experiences. In BGL, CI often intertwines with pragmatic competence injustice (PCI) (Padilla Cruz 2018). Besides failing to use non-binary hermeneutical resources, non- marginalized knowers are likely to question the pragmatic abilities of non-binary grammar users and underestimate their competence as language users and ultimately as knowers. Furthermore, the dismissal of their use of such resources could be understood as a form of testimonial injustice (TI). In TI (Fricker 2007), a piece of testimony does not get deserved uptake. I argue that TI also occurs when the non-binary grammatical devices actualized in a piece of testimony do not receive deserved uptake, as they communicate, implicitly, relevant information regarding the social identities of those who employ them. This is the kind of thing that occurs when one ignores the fact that one’s interlocutor goes by non-binary pronouns and misgenders them by using binary grammar to address them. Likewise, non-binary people might truncate their testimony by using binary grammar, despite not feeling represented by it, to refer to themselves or other members of their communities with audiences that fail to show the relevant testimonial competence. In other words, BGL might lead to instances of testimonial smothering (TS) (Dotson 2011). Current research hasn’t examined how many non-binary people exist, or how many of them prefer non-binary grammatical devices. Due to their novelty, the usage of non-binary grammatical devices has not yet been studied extensively. It is the use of non-binary pronouns that has received the most attention, though the academic studies that exist vary considerably from one language to another. Recent research supports the claim that a significant number of individuals identify as non- binary (ANU Counselling Center 2017; Flores et al. 2016; Government Equalities Office 2018; James et al. 2016, 45; Titman 2014) and that they use pronouns or pronoun combinations that fall outside of the sex/gender binary (Argyriou 2021; Cordoba 2020; Government Equalities Office 2018; Hekanaho 2020; Interact n.d.; James et al. 2016; Sakurai 2017; Saltzburg and Davis 2010; The Trevor Project 2020, 2021a, 2021b). Surveys conducted in 2020 (Hekanaho 2020; The Trevor Project 2021b, 1) also show that the number of people who identify as non-binary is larger among the youth, that it is increasing, and that the majority of non-binary youth uses pronouns outside of the gender binary, such as ‘they’ or neopronouns such as ‘xe’. That is not to say that all non-binary people are reluctant to identify with canonical grammatical genders. However, a recent survey (Hekanaho 2020, 220–223) on pronouns in English finds that, among non-binary gender identities, more than 80% 2 reported that ‘ they was an appropriate pronoun’, and 50% reported that it was the only pronoun they used. By contrast, only 6.9% reported using only ‘he’ or ‘she’. The numbers among the youth are also revealing. In a survey conducted among U.S. non-binary youth, about 90% reported using ‘they’, and 33% of them reported using it exclusively. By contrast, only 3% used exclusively ‘he’ and only 2% exclusively ‘she’. Another relevant figure is that 35% of Generation Z (those aged 13 to 21 in 2018) knows someone who uses gender- neutral pronouns (The Trevor Project 2021b). These numbers include, but are not limited to, non-binary transgender and intersex individuals. However, these studies, which target gender, are often insensitive to the possible intersex status of the individuals surveyed. 3 Intersex people can have any gender. Like ‘transgender’, ‘intersex’ is not a synonym of ‘non-binary’ (Hanssen 2017; Hekanaho 2020; The Trevor Project 2021b, 1). However, some intersex individuals are non-binary and use pronouns other than ‘he’ or ‘she’ (Interact n.d.). Between 0.05% and 1.7% of the world population is born intersex (Fausto-Sterling 2000). 4 Recent SOCIAL EPISTEMOLOGY 341 research conducted in Australia shows that 25% of the intersex individuals surveyed had current sex markers or gender identities other than female or male (Intersex Human Rights Australia 2021; Jones 2016). Among this percentage, there are a number who identify as non-binary and go by non-binary pronouns. However, there is some diversity regarding pronoun usage even among non-binary intersex individuals. For instance, Hanssen (2017) studies two cases of intersex US citizens who were granted a legal petition for non-binary gender status on legal documents. Though each of them identifies as intersex, both in terms of gender 5 and sex, one uses the female pronoun ‘she’, while the other goes by ‘they’. Pronoun usage in particular, and grammatical recognition of their sex/gender realities in general, plays an important role in the assemblage of non-binary identities and their wellbeing (Argyriou 2021; Cordoba 2020; Government Equalities Office 2018, esp. 208, 258; Hekanaho 2020, esp. 7; Interact n.d.; James et al. 2016, esp. 75, 84, 163, 169, 186, 222; Sakurai 2017; Saltzburg and Davis 2010; The Trevor Project 2020, 2021a, 2021b). An eloquent figure in respect of mental health is that ‘transgender and non-binary youth who reported having pronouns respected by all of the people they lived with attempted suicide at half the rate of those who did not have their pronouns respected by anyone with whom they lived’ (The Trevor Project 2021a, 2). In what follows, section 2 elucidates the presence of HI in the phenomenon of BGL by examining the difficulties experienced by non-binary people in the case of the actual mainstream use of Spanish. Section 3 explains that the variety of HI that is at the core of BGL produces the primary harm of HI, namely the prevention of the construction of selfhood. I argue that this form of HI stems from situated ignorance derived from binary sex and gender ideology and that, though it might be fueled with epistemic vices other than prejudice, it is generally imbued with identity prejudice, and that in such cases it is systematic. In addition, I claim that it contributes to oppression. Section 4 clarifies the relationship between grammar, ideology, and language use. First, I introduce a specific form of ideology that justifies actual language use and renders people insensitive to the appreciation of the interconnection between grammar and social realities, namely linguistic ideology. Then I explore further the concept of ideology, portray it as a practical orientation and claim that linguistic ideology is a manifestation of the sex/gender binary. Finally, by drawing attention to the relationship between language use and recognition, I explore the idea that hermeneutical lacunae are performa- tively reenacted in daily speech acts when we fail to acknowledge and adopt non-binary gramma- tical devices. Having shown the interaction between the structural and the agential realms in section 4.3, section 5 focuses on the agential dimension of BGL, examining responsibilities. First, I offer an overview of other forms of epistemic injustice that might intertwine in BGL besides HI, namely CI, PCI, TI, and TS. Secondly, I portray uses of binary grammar by dominant speakers to address non-binary people as instances of hermeneutical misfire (HM) since BGL also includes the phenomenon that wrong or distorted grammatical tools are employed by non-marginalized knowers to make sense of marginalized non-binary experiences. 2. Exploring HI in BGL: the Case of Peninsular Spanish The phenomenon of BGL in the use of Peninsular Spanish requires academic attention for at least two reasons: i) its grammatical complexity and ii) the level of confusion and reluctance generated by the use that non-binary communities and their allies make of marginalized non-binary gram- matical devices. We shall pay attention to the former in what follows in this section. As regards ii, it should be pointed out that even though in October 2020 the Royal Spanish Academy included ‘elle’, the third person singular neopronoun used by non-binary communities and their allies to address non-binary realities in Spanish, in its recently created Word Observatory – a platform that collects new terms and expressions used by speakers but that do not yet appear in the dictionary–, the institution withdrew it after a couple of days, claiming that its inclusion generated too much uncertainty. It is the purpose of this paper to clear up the confusion by drawing attention to what is at stake in such usages. 342 C. CARMONA We saw in section 1 that non-binary use of ‘they’ is not fully accepted, despite the fact that it has been in the English language since at least the 14th century, though it only became common in the late 20th century when masculine generics came under scrutiny on the grounds of sexism. The degree of resistance increases when the non-binary grammatical devices in question lack this kind of background, as is the case with neopronouns in English. 6 ‘Elle’ in Spanish suffers the same fate. To the best of my knowledge, unlike with the case of ‘they’ in English, empirical work is scarce and there exist no exhaustive studies concerning the actual use and acceptance of ‘elle’ in Spain or other Spanish speaking countries 7 (see Bonnin and Coronel (2021, esp. 3) and D’Andrea and Mendoza Posadas (2021, 321)). 8 In general, the studies that exist deal with the broad categories of ‘inclusive’ or ‘non-sexist’ language, 9 when what is understood by such categories varies from country to country. 10 For instance, a survey conducted in Argentina in 2020 by the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Disciplinas Proyectuales (Universidad Argentina de la Empresa) concluded that only 8% of the population used inclusive language very frequently or whenever possible (UADE 2020, 1). To the best of my ability, I have only been able to locate a few studies that mention the actual use and acceptance of the morpheme - e . The Argentinian report just mentioned states that masculine generics are used by 67% of those surveyed, that 26% go for options that make women visible and that only 8% use morpheme - e (UADE 2020, 3). Likewise, a recent study conducted by the Instituto de Ingeniería del Conocimiento (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) reveals that in Twitter morpheme - e is used by 17,98% as the preferred mark for inclusive language in Spanish. 11 Likewise, Kalinowski (2020a) conducted between 2007 and 2020 a corpus-based study of non-standard non-binary morphemes, including morpheme - e , among Argentinian Twitter users, finding that their use increased over time and that 33% of Argentine Twitter users employed a non-binary non-standard morpheme during 2019. As far as the Google search engine is concerned, in June 2020, it showed 2,94 million results on Spanish pages for ‘tod e s’, 1.17 million for ‘amigu e s’, 761 thousand for ‘niñ e s’ and 525 thousand for ‘nosotr e s’ (respectively, the inclusive forms in Spanish that employ morpheme - e for ‘everyone’, ‘friends’, ‘children’, and ‘we’) (Troncoso Flores 2021, 246). The research conducted is generally restricted to very specific populations, usually in educational contexts (as examples, see Happel, Dowzuk, and Díaz 2019; Jiménez Rodrigo, Román Onsalo, and Traverso Cortés 2011; or Nogueira 2021). 12 They show that women are more prone to use inclusive language, including morpheme - e , than men (see Gómez Carrillo, Tójar Hurtado, and Mena Rodríguez 2021, esp. 385; Happel, Dowzuk, and Díaz 2019, esp. 11; Jiménez Rodrigo, Román Onsalo, and Traverso Cortés 2011, esp. 180; or Tosi 2019). However, as such studies are usually insensitive to non-binary sex and gender identities, it is impossible to conclude from them how many non-binary Spanish speakers do use morpheme - e There is an exception: a survey (Bonnin and Coronel 2021) conducted in January 2020 in Argentina registers adoptability and acceptance of morpheme - e , though it does not register actual use. Out of the 4,205 participants, 1.6% are non-binary, 28.7% are male and 68.6% are female. 74.2% of respondents consider use of morpheme - e 13 acceptable, 17.6% find it ‘weird’ and 8.3% judge it unacceptable (Bonnin and Coronel 2021, 6). One remarkable conclusion of their study is that use of morpheme - e is more acceptable in the vocative position than in the middle of the sentence. 14 In addition, ‘[a]nalysis shows’, as Bonnin and Coronel (2021, 5) state, ‘a statistically significant associa- tion between gender and attitudes toward gender marks, especially in the case of non-binary respondents’. When analyzed according to gender, ‘non-binary respondents find it acceptable in vocative position by 84%, compared to 68.5% of men and 76.3% of women’, ‘it is found weird by 11.5% of non-binary, 20.9% of men and 16.4% of women’, and ‘it is unacceptable to 4.3% of non- binary, 10.6% of men and 7.3% of women’ (Bonnin and Coronel 2021, 6–7). Similarly, in a non- vocative position, there is higher acceptance among non-binary respondents (84%), than among men (56.2%) or women (67.9%) (Bonnin and Coronel 2021, 7). As far as adoptability is concerned, as with acceptability, positive attitudes are much higher than average in the case of non-binary SOCIAL EPISTEMOLOGY 343 respondents. 15 As regards the acceptability and the adoptability of generic masculine, 16 non-binary people and women ‘have more-than average negative attitudes than men, much higher in the case of non-binary’ (Bonnin and Coronel 2021, 8). 17 In Spanish, the grammatical lacuna at the core of BGL is more pervasive than in the case of English. In consequence, English speakers who start learning Spanish are often surprised as they feel that the language forces them to disclose their sex. English grammar only distinguishes between genders when assigning a feminine or masculine third person singular pronoun. In Spanish, feminine and masculine cases are also added to nouns, definite and indefinite articles, plural pronouns, and adjectives. This is the case despite the fact that, in principle, Spanish has three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. Let me explain this in more detail. The neuter is present in the pronominal system, as well as in the systems of determiners and demonstratives. The third person singular masculine, feminine and neuter pronouns are respectively él/ella/ello . Unlike ‘él’ and ‘ella’, ‘ello’ is not used in Spain today to refer to people: In the current language, ‘ello’ can have as antecedent sentences, pronouns or neutral noun groups and several nouns for things when considered together. [. . .] Its syntactic properties have been reduced over time and uses that were normal in the past have disappeared from current general Spanish. Among the functions that this pronoun can perform, the most common is that of a prepositional complement. [. . .] It functions very rarely as a subject (almost always in the written cultured language, and often with a connective value equivalent to ‘which’) (Royal Spanish Academy 2005a, my translation). One might wonder if the gender-neutral ‘ello’ would be a simple, existing remedy for the phenom- enon of BGL in Spanish. Unfortunately, it currently has dehumanizing and objectifying connotations. The neuter is generally used to refer to abstract concepts or ideas. As if that were not enough, in English, the closest form to using ‘ello’ in Spanish for non-binary people would be the use of ‘it’ 18 (D’Andrea and Mendoza Posadas 2021, 292). That is to say, using the existing gender-neutral pronoun ‘ello’ in Spanish is not an appropriate remedy for people who need and desire their non- binary agential and human identities to be reflected in their language’s grammar. This is evinced by Spanish-speaking non-binary people not adopting or preferring ‘ello’ as a pronoun, and by aca- demics not listing it as a possible remedy (as examples, see Acosta Matos 2018; García Meseguer 1976; Intersex Human Rights Australia 2021; Papadopoulos 2019; Rodríguez Iglesias 2018). Therefore, it is not lack of knowledge that prevents non-binary people from using ‘ello’. Spaniards are taught of its existence as early as primary school. They do not use it because they know their grammar well and consequently do not recognize themselves in it. For the sake of argument, one could argue that, if ‘ello’ became systematically used by non-binary people in Spain today, hopefully one day its dehumanizing and objectifying connotations would vanish. However, non-binary people need appropriate and respectful recognition in our grammar now. Moreover, the use of ‘ello’ would not be a sufficient countermeasure either, since it would leave other aspects of the phenomenon of BGL in Spanish unresolved, namely the fact that it also concerns nouns, adjectives and determiners. In fact, the neopronoun ‘elle’ is the result of the application of a non-binary device that is capable of dealing simultaneously with these other problems: the use of morpheme - e . Besides, the ending -o is generally perceived as masculine (Nissen 2002, 255), as it is already in use as the most common masculine agreement-marker. In addition, ‘the fact that nouns do not have a neutral gender and that no adjective has particular forms to agree in this way with pronouns are factors that indicate that the neuter is not a proper third gender in Spanish, comparable to the other two, but rather the exponent of a grammatical class of words that designate certain abstract notions’ (Royal Spanish Academy 2009, 195, my translation). These are sufficient reasons to believe that there exists a grammatical lacuna. Someone might also object that the phenomenon of BGL does not apply to Spanish, as the gender that most linguists distinguish is the ‘unmarked’, or ‘inclusive’ gender, which is used to refer to objects and people who need not solely be considered say ‘masculine’, and the ‘marked’, ‘exclusive’ or ‘non-inclusive’ gender, which is used only to refer to objects and people who are 344 C. CARMONA considered say ‘feminine’. From that perspective, one could argue that the sole correspondence with sexed gender is to be found in the ‘marked’, ‘exclusive’ or ‘non-inclusive’ gender, but only on certain occasions and in particular cases, such as with animated beings. Given that in the nouns that designate animated beings, the grammatical masculine is not only used to refer to individuals of the masculine sex, but also to designate the class, that is, all individuals of the species, without distinction of sex, one could claim that non-binary people could seek refuge in the ‘unmarked’ function of the masculine. However, plenty of studies show that masculine generics lead to male bias and the invisibility of women and non-binary people (as examples, for the case of Spanish see Bengoechea Bartolomé (2014); Calvo Fajardo (2017, esp. 63–65); Chávez Fajardo (2019); Nissen (2002); or Papadopoulos (2019); and for the use of generics in general see Saul and Díaz-León (2018, esp. 2–6)). The situation is aggravated in the case of non-binary people, as many of the alternatives to the ‘unmarked’ function of the masculine remain committed to a binary paradigm (see my ‘Las, les, los: Una aproximación wittgensteiniano-(brandomiano)hegeliana al lenguaje inclusivo en el contexto español’ (Carmona 2022 (forthcoming)) or Hekanaho (2020)). We can also learn much from actual language use. The acceptability of ‘he’ as an unmarked pronoun is contested: in Hekanaho (2020, esp. 131), while the generic use of ‘they’ was almost unanimously found acceptable by all (binary and non-binary) respondents, the generic use of ‘he’ was accepted only by about a third. Regarding the view that grammatical gender in Spanish has nothing to do with ‘masculinity' or ‘femininity’, let me add that the Spanish noun system reveals that, in the case of animated beings, with the exception of generic references, so-called epicene nouns and a few counterexamples, there exists a correspondence between grammatical gender and the sex of the referent: Nouns in Spanish can be masculine or feminine. When the noun designates animated beings, most commonly there is a specific form for each of the two grammatical genders, in correspondence with the biological distinction of sexes (Royal Spanish Academy 2005b, my translation). 19 As Nissen (2002, 254) explains, acknowledging a few counterexamples, this extends to human beings: If generic references and so-called epicene nouns are not taken into consideration, feminine and masculine nouns referring to human beings in the majority of cases reflect the distinction between females and males. In sum, human beings are most commonly assigned a grammatical gender “in agreement with traditional societal stereotypes about human biology – the idea that ‘males’ are masculine and ‘females’ are feminine” (Papadopoulos 2019, 4), which in itself rests on a binary understanding of sex. For Spanish, agreement-markers concerning gender are, in most cases, the morpheme -o (masculine) and the morpheme -a (feminine) (Nissen 2002, esp. 254). In consequence, non-binary people have felt the need to employ -e as a non-binary gender morpheme and introduce ‘elle’ as a third person singular pronoun to address their non-binary realities. However, though the use of the morpheme - e responds to an existing lacuna in canonical grammar, there is a widespread unwillingness to accept its use. 20 For instance, the Dictionary of the Spanish Language , monitored by the Royal Spanish Academy and the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language, does not register ‘elle’, although it is already in use among non-binary communities. Most Spaniards fail to see the use of -e as a hermeneutical tool to fill an existing gap in the mainstream collective imagination. As in the case of ‘they’ in English, some people, knowing what such devices entail, either refuse to adopt them or feel too lazy to bother. However, unawareness plays the biggest part in preserving the lacuna. There are Spaniards who are completely unaware of these devices and others who are only relatively aware because they don’t find such usages fully intelligible. Sensitivity and awareness vary from country to country. The collective social understanding in Spain is particularly unaware 21 compared to those of Argentina and Chile, where the use of -e is more widespread. SOCIAL EPISTEMOLOGY 345 For example, I only became exposed to the use of -e in the university context. Identifying as a pansexual agender endosex woman, I am a Spain-based academic close to my forties. Generally, my students know of its usage, though it is only a minority who uses it. Faculty members generally know of such linguistic uses, though they rarely understand them as hermeneutical tools. Accordingly, only a few use the morpheme, particularly gender studies researchers. In that respect, this paper addresses the necessity to call certain things regarding social understanding by their name, namely the need to acknowledge non-binary grammatical devices, such as the morpheme - e in Spanish, as hermeneutical tools 3. A First Approximation to the Ethical Consequences and Harms of BGL The use of - e in Spanish is a clear example of the fact that for BGL to take place the experience in question does not need to be unintelligible for the marginalized group. Underprivileged groups develop their own hermeneutical devices to make sense of their lives. Nevertheless, ‘even when people are not entirely excluded from participation, their communicative agency may be con- strained or compromised in important ways; and the appreciation of their contributions may not be on a par with that of others’ (Medina 2013, 91). For example, marginalized communities might encounter listeners who, although willing to listen, do not understand their use of grammar. BGL is ethically problematic. One of the purposes of this paper is to argue that it stems from situated ignorance derived from binary sex and gender ideology (Costello 2020), which we will refer to as the sex/gender binary. Section 4 depicts the sex/gender binary as the practical orientation, sometimes taking explicit form, which derives from social practices being built on the assumption of sex/gender as binary. Speaking in terms of ignorance might sound con- troversial. For that reason, it is important to elaborate the kind of ignorance that would be involved. We learn from Dotson (2011, 248) that ‘situated ignorance is a kind of unknowing that is prompted by social positioning that fosters significant epistemic differences among diverse groups’. Someone who feels at home in the sex/gender binary might fail to notice those aspects of reality that call binarism into question. This kind of ignorance is pernicious, ‘a reliable ignorance or a counterfactual incompetence that, in a given context, is harmful’ (Dotson 2011, 242): situated knowers ‘consistently fail to track certain truths’ and ‘this failure to track the truth also happens to cause harm’ (Dotson 2011, 241). Reformulating in terms of binarism Charles W. Mills’ characterization of white ignorance (2017, 107), we could characterize ‘binary ignorance’ as a binary-vision, a binary optic ‘that must be resisted in its framing doxastic and conceptual perspective on reality’. Binary ignorance puts in practice a binary epistemology. Let us write ‘binary’ where Mills wrote ‘white’, and ‘non-binarism’, ‘gender- queerness’ and ‘sex/gender’ where he wrote ‘blackness’, ‘redness’ and ‘racial’: [Binary] ignorance has been able to flourish all of these years because a [binary] epistemology of ignorance has safeguarded it against the dangers of an illuminating [non-binarism] or [gender-queerness], protecting those who for [‘sex/gender’] reasons have needed not to know (Mills 2007, 35). This kind of epistemology renders those under its influence insensitive to non-binary communities as well as to their own insensitivity: in addition to their inability to perceive alternatives, those swayed by the sex/gender binary are unable to perceive their own inability (Medina 2013, 75). Binary epistemology approaches sex as if it was binary and purely biological. For instance, when discussing (and disapproving of) the use of marginalized gender morphemes such as -@ , -e or -x , the Royal Spanish Academy (2018, 15, penultimate line) explicitly refers to ‘both sexes’. Everyday epistemology in the West has similar failures. Take the example of Argentinian film XXY directed by Lucía Puenzo, which tells the story of Alex, a 15-year-old intersex person, raised as a girl by their parents. Alex and their parents live in a village in Uruguay to which their parents have relocated to protect Alex from binary sex and gender ideology. At the start of the film, the family has visitors: 346 C. CARMONA a surgeon, his wife and their son Álvaro. Alex’s mother has invited them with the secret purpose of discussing sex reassignment surgery for Alex. As it happens, Alex and Álvaro have anal sex with Alex as the penetrative partner. Álvaro is initially shocked: Álvaro: Explain it to me. You are not . . . Alex: I am both. Álvaro: But that cannot be. Alex: Are you going to tell me what I can or cannot be? Álvaro: But do you like men or women? Alex: I do not know. Observe that the sex/gender binary is instantiated by Álvaro. In response, Alex’s epistemic voice claims the existence of their marginalized knowing. Álvaro also has a clear need to know about Alex’s sexual orientation, as their encounter has made him come face to face with his own sexual identity and gender. Binary sex and gender ideology means precisely avoiding this kind of disruptive experience of one’s identity. The ongoing conversation between Alex’s parents about Alex being old enough to choose between being a man or a woman is equally revealing. When their father actually tells Alex that he will take care of them until they can choose, Alex confronts his binary epistemology with the question ‘And if there is nothing to choose?’. Fricker defines HI as ‘the injustice of having some significant area of one’s social experience obscured from collective understanding owing to a structural identity prejudice in the collective hermeneutical resource’ (Fricker 2007, 155, my emphasis). Such a structural prejudice ‘affects people in virtue of their membership of a socially powerless group, and thus in virtue of an aspect of their social identity’ (Fricker 2007, 155). BGL is generally imbued with structural identity prejudice, to be explicit, non-binary sex and gender identity prejudice: negative attitudes toward non-binary sex and gender identities for not conforming to the sex/gender binary. BGL is a manifestation of a systematic loop that ‘is both caused by and gives rise to injustice’ (Haslanger 2017, 280). The epistemic injustices intertwined in BGL ‘are connected, via a common prejudice, with other forms of injustice’ (Fricker 2007, 27). Regarding the variety of HI at the core of BGL, prejudice tracks marginalized subjects ‘through a range of different social activities besides the hermeneutical’ (Fricker 2007, 156). For example, BGL turned something as simple as being granted a passport in 2014 Colorado into an ordeal for intersex rights activist and educator Dana Alix Zzyym. Dana was denied the legal document as they could not identify themself in the application form as either male or female and the U.S. State Department relied on a binary-only gender marker policy. Dana’s passport continued to be withheld throughout a long legal process: After more than four years of litigation, three missed advocacy opportunities abroad for Dana, and two passport denials (one after remand), the State Department maintains that if Dana wishes to secure a U.S. passport, Dana must incorrectly select a binary gender marker –‘M’ or ‘F’ – on their passport application. As a result, Dana, a law- abiding veteran, cannot leave the country they defended because they refuse to be untruthful about who they are (Zzyym 2019, 13). It was not until December 5th, 2020 that the Opinion of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals remanded ‘with instructions to vacate the State Department’s decision and reconsider Zzyym’s application for an intersex passport’ (United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit 2020, 41). Regarding their use of grammar to address themself, Dana made the following statement explicit in their appeal: “As a non- binary intersex person who is neither male nor female, Dana uses the singula