Intersectional Oppression and Moral Consistency

Sor Juana's life embodied the intersections of multiple oppressions—as a woman, as a colonial subject, as someone outside rigid social structures—yet she maintained intellectual coherence across her critiques. Modern animal rights theory builds on this intersectional insight: the systems that exploit animals often overlap with those that exploit marginalized humans. Factory farming devastates indigenous lands, patriarchal control parallels the subjugation of animals, racism and speciesism share justificatory logic. Sor Juana's refusal to compartmentalize her resistance models a holistic ethical stance. Her tradition calls for moral consistency—if we oppose domination based on identity, we cannot selectively ignore domination based on species. The concept challenges the false separation between human and animal liberation. By examining how power operates across multiple axes, Sor Juana's framework reveals that genuine justice requires confronting all forms of systematic subordination simultaneously, not treating animal rights as secondary or separate from human dignity struggles.