Intersectional Identity and Rights

Sor Juana navigated overlapping constraints: as a woman, as a person of mixed heritage, as someone without institutional power. Her intellectual fight was inseparable from her broader struggle for dignity and voice. Disability rights similarly must be intersectional—recognizing that disabled people experience oppression differently based on race, gender, sexuality, class, and citizenship. A disabled woman of color faces barriers a disabled white man does not. Sor Juana's tradition teaches us that justice requires seeing the whole person and addressing interconnected systems of exclusion. Disability rights frameworks that ignore these intersections will fail the most marginalized disabled people and perpetuate other forms of injustice.