The Performance of Humility as Power

Sor Juana repeatedly claimed inadequacy and sought permission to write, yet this rhetorical humility enabled her to occupy intellectual space otherwise forbidden to women. This paradoxical strategy illuminates how cisgender identity often functions through performances of naturalness and inevitability that actually consolidate power. Cisgender people frequently claim their identity as unpolitical, natural, and undeserving of examination—a form of strategic humility that protects cisgender dominance from scrutiny. Where Sor Juana used humility to access forbidden knowledge, cisgender culture uses it to avoid examination. This concept invites cisgender people to recognize their identity's false modesty: the claim that cisgender identity simply "is" rather than actively "performed" and "maintained." By recognizing humility as strategic, one can examine what work cisgender identity does politically and socially. This reveals how apparent neutrality actually serves power consolidation.