Knowledge as Embodied Experience

Sor Juana's work insists that knowledge about gender, justice, and human nature cannot be purely theoretical—it must be grounded in the actual lived conditions of people assigned female at birth. She wrote from her body, her confinement, her thwarted ambitions, arguing that this embodied knowledge was valid and crucial. This concept rejects the false separation between abstract intellect and embodied experience that has justified excluding people based on gender assignment from knowledge production. For those examining cisgender identity, this framework validates the knowledge contained in lived experience: what it means to be assigned female at birth in systems structured by male authority, what it means to navigate the gap between internal reality and external expectations. It legitimizes experience-based knowledge as philosophical and scientific, not mere anecdote. This shift transforms how individuals value their own understanding and recognize themselves as knowledge-makers rather than passive subjects of knowledge produced by others.