Epistemic Justice and Gendered Knowledge Claims

Sor Juana's battles were fundamentally about epistemic justice—the right to be heard, believed, and recognized as a knower. When a bishop told her to stop writing theology, he wasn't merely restricting her activity; he was denying her epistemic authority based on her gender. She was subjected to what philosopher Miranda Fricker calls testimonial injustice: systematic credibility deficits assigned based on identity. For gender-diverse individuals, epistemic injustice is pervasive: trans people's accounts of their own gender are frequently dismissed, non-binary individuals' self-descriptions are called confused, and those exploring their identity are told they don't really know themselves. Sor Juana's tradition insists that part of gender justice is epistemic—the right to testify about one's own identity, to be believed about one's inner experience, to have that knowledge respected as valid. This concept centers that validating someone's gender identity means respecting their epistemic authority: they know their own gender better than external observers do.