Intersecting Identities and Strategic Visibility

Sor Juana was a woman, a person of mixed racial heritage in a colonial hierarchy, a nun within institutional religious authority, and an intellectual in a society skeptical of female scholarship. Each identity position carried different risks and possibilities. She strategically navigated visibility: claiming intellectual authority while affirming religious humility, using her nun's habit as shield and credential. For those examining cisgender identity, Sor Juana's example demonstrates that gender identity never exists in isolation. Your cisgender identity intersects with race, class, sexuality, ability, religion, and other positions. These intersections create what scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw called "intersectionality"—where oppressions and privileges compound in non-additive ways. A cisgender woman's experience differs radically from a cisgender man's; a cisgender person of color faces different gender expectations than a cisgender white person. Sor Juana's strategic visibility teaches us to examine our cisgender identity through the lens of all our positions. Which aspects of our identity do we emphasize? Which do we protect? What becomes possible or impossible based on our intersecting locations?