Rights Articulation Without Waiting for Permission

Sor Juana did not wait for the Church or state to grant her the right to study and write. She claimed these rights by exercising them, building a library, corresponding with scholars, and producing work that established her intellectual authority. This model of rights articulation is crucial in intersectional contexts where marginalized people cannot afford to wait for permission that may never arrive. Rather than petitioning systems to recognize rights—a process that may be indefinite—the concept encourages asserting rights through practice: marginalized people create institutions, publish without gatekeepers' approval, teach each other, build economic systems, and establish authority through action. This is not lawlessness; it is the recognition that formal rights often follow lived assertion. Communities build power by creating the conditions they demand rather than asking powerful actors to grant them. Rights articulation without permission transforms marginalized people from supplicants into agents.