The Refusal to Choose: Both/And Identity

Sor Juana refused to choose between religious devotion and secular intellectual work, between spiritual authority and feminist critique, between individual brilliance and collective responsibility. This both/and approach directly challenges intersectionality's nemesis: the demand that marginalized people resolve their complexity by choosing which identity matters most or which commitment takes priority. In practice, intersectionality requires holding contradictions: being both oppressed and privileged, both insider and outsider, both angry and strategic. Sor Juana's life demonstrates that this is not confusion but integrity—the refusal to be simplified for others' comfort or analytical convenience. The both/and framework validates that intersectional subjects experience genuine tensions that cannot and should not be resolved into neat hierarchies. This concept empowers people to assert their full complexity without apology, to change positions as context demands, and to resist reduction. It recognizes that multiplicity is not a problem to solve but a feature of intersectional consciousness that, once claimed, becomes a source of insight and power.