The idea of an in-group and an out-group contributes to persistent injustice even in the best governed nations. Even the best governments are run by people, and those people each have their own sets of beliefs and prejudices. Denmark has held the highest rank on the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index since 2014 (World Justice Project, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019). This Index is created from a comprehensive survey on how the rule of law is perceived in countries around the world, weighing responses from both experts and the general public. It includes data on eight themes with 44 total indicators for each of 126 countries as of 2019. It is one of the best methods available to determine which countries are the most just. For this reason, I will focus this essay on examples of injustice in Denmark.
While Danish society has been grounded in the idea of solidarity, the concept may only apply to those deemed “Danish enough” (Duru et. al., 2018). Public assistance has been guaranteed to those in need by Denmark’s constitution since 1849, but it has become a tiered system in recent years (Duru et. al., 2018).
Another striking example of injustice for those classified as “other” is the treatment of intersex children. While some surgeries on these children are medically necessary to correct serious issues, many are performed for the sole purpose of making an infant’s genitals appear more normal (Amnesty International, 2017). One Danish surgeon claimed that the goal of a common surgery is that “the boy pees standing up, in a normal way.” (p.35).
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Amnesty International’s 2017 report is filled with statements from parents who were persuaded to have normalizing surgeries performed on their children, and individuals who were subjected to these surgeries themselves. Some are happy with their individual outcomes, many others feel that the surgeries harmed them, but almost all of the interviewees agree that these non-emergency procedures should only occur once the individual is old enough to give full consent (Amnesty International, 2017).
Despite these concerns, cosmetic surgeries are still being performed on Danish infants with ambiguous sexual characteristics (Amnesty International, 2017). This is simply because parents and doctors are so concerned that children conform to the idea of a “normal” sex. Many parents worried that without normalizing surgery their child would be ostracized or bullied. Weighing the benefits and risks, they chose procedure that could lead to pain, sexual dysfunction, and nerve damage for the chance that their child would not be seen as “other.”
