The Defense Against Censorship as Property Defense

When Church authorities suppressed Sor Juana's scientific investigations and demanded she stop writing, they violated what Libertarian justice recognizes as property: her right to produce, circulate, and profit from her own words. Sor Juana's famous letter of self-defense articulates this implicitly—she asserts her right to inquire, to speak, and to have her ideas heard. Censorship, from this angle, is theft: it confiscates your expression before it leaves your hand. In Libertarian justice, censorship violates the most basic property claim—ownership of one's own output. Sor Juana's life demonstrates that censorship falls hardest on those already denied other property rights (women, colonized peoples, the poor). When you cannot own or control your words, you cannot build reputation, income, or legacy. Her resistance established a principle: freedom of expression is inseparable from property freedom. To censor is to expropriate; to protect speech is to defend property at its source.