Knowledge as Self-Defense

Sor Juana wrote to defend her own authority and resist the institutional silencing imposed by the Church and society. For neurodivergent people, especially those multiply marginalized, knowledge becomes a weapon against medical dismissal and diagnostic injustice. Autistic women and people of color with ADHD are chronically misdiagnosed, disbelieved, and told their experiences are not real. Sor Juana's method—meticulous citation, rigorous argumentation, intellectual precision—models how to document one's own truth. This concept teaches neurodivergent individuals to become experts in their own neurology: reading research, tracking patterns, building personal evidence, and refusing to accept reductive professional judgment. Knowledge here is not abstract; it is a survival practice, a way to reclaim narrative authority from systems that deny your reality.