Refusal as Bodily Practice

Sor Juana took a vow of silence near the end of her life, stopped writing, and returned her books. This was not passive resignation but active refusal: a bodily practice of saying no to systems that demanded her intellectual and emotional labor. Refusal as bodily practice means recognizing that your physical self has agency even when your voice is constrained. You can refuse through posture, through stepping back, through not showing up, through redirecting your bodily presence away from those who exploit it. For physical self-concept, this means understanding your body not as a commodity to be offered freely, but as a bounded territory you can protect. Refusal is not just mental—it lives in your flesh, your hesitation, your withdrawal. It is how marginalized people have historically preserved themselves. Learning to refuse with your whole body, not just your words, is an essential practice of reclaiming physical identity.