Gendered Silencing and the Politics of Voice

Sor Juana's struggle against imposed silence—silenced for her gender, her mixed racial identity, and her intellectual ambition—reveals how colonialism weaponizes gender to suppress decolonial thought. In postcolonial contexts, gendered silencing perpetuates colonial hierarchies by erasing women, non-binary, and racialized intellectuals from knowledge-making. Sor Juana's defiant publications and self-defense texts model how claiming voice becomes an act of decolonization. She wrote despite restrictions, creating spaces where her perspective could circulate and challenge authority. Modern decolonization must attend to whose voices are centered and whose are marginalized within liberation movements themselves. This concept insists that gender justice and decolonization are inseparable—true decolonization requires amplifying all silenced voices and dismantling the patriarchal structures that colonialism entrenched.