Intersectional Identity and Harm Complexity

Sor Juana navigated multiple intersecting marginalities: woman, Mexican, mixed-race, intellectual, and religious. Her life demonstrates that harm and accountability cannot be understood through single lenses. Restorative justice frameworks that treat participants as having one relevant identity—victim or offender, poor or privileged—miss crucial dimensions of both harm and responsibility. A person may have caused harm while simultaneously experiencing systemic oppression; they may be marginalized in some contexts while holding power in others. True restoration requires holding this complexity. Practitioners must help communities understand how gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, and other identities intersect to shape both who gets harmed and how accountability functions. This prevents restorative justice from becoming a tool that protects privileged people or blames marginalized individuals for harms rooted in systemic injustice. Sor Juana's intellectual legacy insists that justice requires sophisticated, intersectional analysis that honors the full complexity of each person's social location and experience.