Tessa Brunnenmeyer, Southern Utah University
Often in public and civil discourse surrounding issues of sexual abuse, institutionally upheld power structures systematically discredit the testimonies of victims and inflate the credibility of the accused. Frequently, victims are offered less credibility as a knower or communicator of knowledge than their accused counterparts. By approaching this issue from the intersection of ethics and epistemology, I propose that we can better identify and understand the underlying structures that exist and influence the unfair treatment of the epistemic positions of victims and perpetrators. With help from Miranda Fricker’s model of “Epistemic Injustice” and Duncan Pritchard’s account of the epistemology of testimony, I argue that the unequal consideration of accounts of victims of abuse compared with their assailants is an issue of epistemic injustice through the devaluation of the knowledge of the victim. To better understand the application of this problem, I will apply this theoretical understanding of testimony and epistemic injustice to contemporary sexual assault and harassment investigation as well as the recent conversations and reform proposals of Title IX on college campuses.