Rights-Based Intersectionality and Dignity Claims

Sor Juana's self-defense of her intellectual work was rooted in assertions about women's rights to education, creative expression, and intellectual authority. Her approach to injustice was fundamentally rights-based: asserting what ought to be, not merely analyzing what is. In intersectional practice, rights-based framing complements systemic analysis by insisting that all people deserve recognition, resources, and power regardless of their position in multiple hierarchies. This means advocating for right to education, to bodily autonomy, to economic security, to cultural expression—understanding these as interconnected rights that enable human flourishing across all intersecting identities. Rights-based intersectionality avoids both the trap of pity and the false neutrality of pure analysis; it names what justice requires. It grounds intersectional work in affirmation of universal human dignity while acknowledging that this dignity is unevenly recognized and must be actively claimed and defended.