Refusal as Corporeal Practice

Sor Juana refused many things: remarriage proposals, religious pressure to abandon writing, the demand that she efface herself. Her refusals were corporeal—she withheld her body from certain spaces, she moved through the convent in ways that protected her autonomy, she made her physical presence matter through strategic absence. This concept reframes body-identity not as passive display but as active practice. Refusal is embodied. You refuse through how you stand, what you consent to touch you, where you go, what you wear, how you move. In cultures that train women especially to be accommodating, refusal is an advanced physical literacy. It means knowing what your body genuinely wants versus what it has been conditioned to accept. When physical self-concept includes the right and capacity to refuse—to say no with your whole body—it becomes a practice of freedom and self-definition.