Bartolo Tabone, C., Garland, F. and Travis, M. orcid.org/0000-0001-6245-7354 (2024) Cultural Awareness of Intersex in Malta: Invisibility, Stigma and Epistemic Injustice. Social Sciences, 13 (3). 150. ISSN 2076-0760
Abstract
In 2015, Malta introduced ground-breaking legal reform designed to protect the bodily integrity of intersex infants in Malta. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with healthcare professionals, lawyers, policy-makers and advocates, this article considers the extent to which this reform has improved the cultural visibility and recognition of intersex people in Malta. Engaging with literature on epistemic injustice, this article provides new evidence for a cultural silence around intersex bodies that operates not only at a level of public knowledge but also at the individual and institutional levels. Our findings relate to three categories of visibility: political, cultural and medical. While the political visibility of intersex was an important factor in the introduction and shape of law reform in Malta, our respondents felt that the legislation had had very little effect on public understandings and familiarity with intersex issues. Moreover, respondents felt that many intersex people would be unlikely to know that they were intersex due to the limited conceptual and critical resources available to them: issues such as stigma and shame further encourage the epistemic silencing of intersex issues. The lack of cultural and medical visibility has significantly limited both the intended and hoped-for effect of the legislation. The article considers the broader implications of these results beyond Malta for those seeking to use the law to improve the lived experiences of intersex people.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | intersex; variations of sex characteristics; DSD; epistemic injustice; Malta; law; cultural visibility |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Law (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number British Academy SRG19\190990 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 01 Mar 2024 10:31 |
Last Modified: | 15 Mar 2024 16:29 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Identification Number: | 10.3390/socsci13030150 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:209762 |