Epistemic Justice and Whose Knowledge Counts

Sor Juana confronted epistemic injustice—a situation where her knowledge was delegitimized simply because it came from a woman in a male-centered institution. She couldn't claim authority about her own intellectual life without institutional permission. This concept applies to social media identity crises: you may find your own understanding of yourself constantly challenged or reframed by others' comments, interpretations, and judgments. Epistemic justice means recognizing that you have special access to knowledge about your own experience, intentions, and identity that no algorithm or audience can override. When social media floods you with external interpretations of who you are—based on your posts, your appearance, your choices—you're experiencing epistemic injustice if you begin to doubt your own self-knowledge in favor of the crowd's reading. Sor Juana's work insists on your right to be an authority on yourself. Defending this authority against the distributed judgment of social platforms becomes an act of intellectual and psychological integrity.