Intersectional Oppression and Speciesism

Sor Juana navigated multiple oppressions as a woman, Indigenous person, and intellectual in a patriarchal colonial system. Her experience illuminates how speciesism—the systematic devaluation of non-human animals—operates alongside racism, sexism, and classism as expressions of the same dominating logic. Industrial animal agriculture disproportionately harms both animals and marginalized human communities, poisoning their environments and labor. The conceptual frameworks used to justify animal exploitation—that some beings exist for others' use—are identical to those justifying human slavery and subjugation. By examining this intersection, we see that liberating animals requires dismantling the hierarchical thinking that permits any group's oppression. Sor Juana's intersectional consciousness, though written into her defense of women's rights, extends naturally to animal liberation as a unified struggle against systems that deny dignity to the powerless, whether human or non-human.