Silence, Censorship, and Suppressed Knowing

Sor Juana's archbishop ordered her to cease secular learning and return to purely spiritual work. Under pressure, she renounced her books and stopped writing. Her silencing was not accidental but structural—the institution that once sheltered her intellectual work ultimately demanded she disappear as a thinker. This concept examines how femininity is enforced not only through encouragement of 'feminine' traits but through active suppression of women's knowledge production. Silence is gendered: women are told to be quiet, their words are ignored or misinterpreted, their writings are destroyed. For contested femininity, this framework shows that the construction of femininity includes the systematic erasure of women's contributions. Deconstructing femininity requires bringing suppressed voices and writings back into visibility, and resisting the institutional demand that women renounce their intellectual agency.