Testimonial Injustice
Testimonial injustice is a form of epistemic injustice where speakers receive less credibility due to prejudice—when a hearer assigns a level of credibility to a speaker’s testimony that is lower than it should be, based on identity prejudice (Fricker, 2007).
In therapy, this manifests when a trauma survivor who is also neurodivergent, a person of color, disabled, or occupying multiple marginalized identities has their testimony systematically discounted.
Intersectional Testimonial Injustice
Section titled “Intersectional Testimonial Injustice”The problem intensifies when clients occupy multiple marginalized identities. Each marginalized identity further reduces the credibility assigned to the client’s testimony. A disabled trauma survivor of color may have their experiences invalidated not just because they’re a trauma survivor, but because they’re disabled, because they’re a person of color, and because they’re all of these things simultaneously.
References
Section titled “References”Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford University Press.