The Right to Self-Definition

Throughout her life, Sor Juana resisted definitions of what a woman assigned female at birth should be, should want, should achieve. She redefined her role repeatedly—as scholar, as sister, as poet, as defender of women's intellectual rights—on her own terms rather than accepting prescribed categories. This concept addresses a fundamental issue in examining cisgender identity: the tension between externally imposed definitions and self-determined meaning-making. Society assigns gender at birth and attaches elaborate expectations to that assignment, but the individual can refuse those meanings and create their own. Sor Juana's example shows both the liberation and the cost of this refusal. For contemporary individuals examining cisgender identity, this framework empowers active choice-making about what one's gender assignment will mean for one's life, relationships, and work. It distinguishes between accepting a biological assignment and accepting the cultural meanings attached to it, opening space for authentic identity construction within (or against) cisgender systems.