Epistemic Injustice and Testimonial Authority

Sor Juana was systematically denied intellectual credibility by those who believed women's minds were incapable of rigorous thought. She had to defend not just her ideas but her right to have ideas at all—what contemporary epistemology calls epistemic injustice. The chronically ill face analogous injustice: medical professionals dismiss symptom reports, psychologize pain, attribute experiences to anxiety rather than physiology, or claim to understand the patient's body better than the patient does. Sor Juana's model of resistance is asserting testimonial authority: insisting that your account of your own experience is fundamentally credible and that your understanding of your embodied reality has epistemic weight. This means trusting yourself when doctors gaslight you, valuing the knowledge generated by living inside your body, and refusing the position of passive object in medical discourse. Asserting this authority is not arrogance but justice—a refusal of the systematic dismissal that compounds suffering.