Intersectional Oppression: Humans and Animals

Sor Juana lived within overlapping systems of oppression: patriarchy, colonialism, and religious institutional control. She understood how these systems interconnected. Modern animal advocacy must employ similar intersectional analysis. Animal exploitation disproportionately affects poor and marginalized communities—both as laborers in dangerous industries and as residents near industrial farming and waste sites. The same colonial logics that justified enslaving human 'others' justified treating animals as resources. Racist pseudoscience and speciesism employ identical rhetorical moves: denying capacity, naturalizing hierarchy, claiming some beings exist for others' benefit. Sor Juana's integration of multiple justice concerns—she wrote about women, Indigenous peoples, and the enslaved—provides a model. Animal ethics cannot exist separately from human justice movements. Instead, we must recognize that liberation requires challenging all hierarchies of exploitation, building solidarity across species and communities, and resisting systems that profit from domination across all its forms.