Property in One's Labor and Creative Output

Sor Juana's writings were produced by her labor—her years of study, her sleepless nights of composition, her intellectual struggle. Yet as a nun and a woman, she had limited claim to ownership and profit from her work. Property in one's labor is foundational to libertarian justice: you own what you make because you own yourself and your time. This principle directly opposes feudal structures (where lords claim peasants' output), slavery (where masters own slaves' work), patriarchal systems (where husbands own wives' property), and corporate appropriation (where employers claim workers' creative output). Sor Juana asserted her ownership implicitly by refusing to renounce her work or attribute it falsely. Applied today, this concept supports workers' ownership of their output, opposes wage-theft and intellectual appropriation, and defends the right of creators to control and profit from their work. It grounds property rights in the most immediate and inarguable form: what you make with your own hands and mind belongs to you. Sor Juana would have recognized that denying women ownership of their creative output is theft, no matter how it is justified by piety or tradition.