Embodied Knowledge and Lived Expertise

Sor Juana's writings emerged from her lived experience as a woman in colonial Mexico, making her perspective irreplaceable. This concept recognizes that cisgender people—especially women—hold embodied knowledge about gender that theoretical frameworks alone cannot capture. When a cisgender woman writes about womanhood, her lived experience is data. When a cisgender man examines masculinity from inside, his embodied knowledge matters. This is not essentialism; it is recognizing that living in a body marked by gender assignment produces knowledge systems that deserve respect. Sor Juana's intellectual work was inseparable from her gendered position. This framework validates cisgender people claiming expertise grounded in their lived experience while remaining open to learning from those with different embodied positions. Knowledge earned through living is legitimate scholarship.