The Gendered Seizure of Intellectual Property

Sor Juana's struggle was explicitly gendered: as a woman, institutions claimed authority over her intellectual life that they would not claim over a man's. She was told learning was unseemly, that her writing should serve domestic purposes, that her ambitions exceeded her station. This gendered seizure of intellectual property reveals how libertarian justice requires attention to power dynamics. Property rights are hollow if only certain people can exercise them. In Sor Juana's tradition, recognizing gendered intellectual theft means acknowledging that women's right to learn, create, and publish has been systematically violated. Contemporary libertarian justice must address how property rights in intellectual work have been unequally protected, how women's knowledge has been appropriated without credit or compensation, and how freedom requires removing gendered barriers to intellectual ownership. This concept insists that property rights are incomplete without attention to who is permitted to claim them.