Justice as Central to Identity Rights

Sor Juana explicitly framed intellectual and identity rights as justice issues, not merely personal preferences. Justice—understood through her tradition as giving each person their due recognition and respect—fundamentally involves the right to claim and define your own name and identity. Across cultures, identity injustice appears when individuals are named against their will, denied recognition of their actual identities, or forced into categorical boxes that deny their complexity. Justice frameworks rooted in Sor Juana's tradition ask: Do people have the right to name themselves? Are their self-designations legally and socially recognized? Are institutions structured to allow people to exist as they define themselves, or do systems demand conformity to predetermined categories? This concept connects personal identity questions to larger systems: it is not merely a matter of preference but of justice when someone's chosen name is respected, their cultural identity recognized, their intellectual capacities acknowledged. This has direct application to legal systems, institutional policies, and everyday respect: recognizing someone's identity as they define it becomes a justice issue. Sor Juana's legacy insists that identity rights cannot be separated from broader struggles for human dignity and fair treatment.