Refusal of Imposed Domesticity

Sor Juana entered the convent partly to escape marriage and compulsory motherhood, choosing intellectual solitude over domestic servitude. She publicly defended women's right to remain unmarried and pursue learning—a radical refusal of her era's prescribed feminine role. Hijra and kothi individuals, often rejected or expelled from heteronormative family structures, similarly refuse domesticity as typically defined: bearing sons, serving husbands, conforming to caste-and-gender complementarity. Instead, many hijra build chosen families (guru-chela networks, communities), develop independent livelihoods (performance, sex work, begging, blessing), and claim social roles (midwife, ritual specialist, entertainment) rooted in their gender identity. This concept frames such refusal not as failure or loss but as conscious rejection of oppressive structures and creative assertion of alternative ways of living, belonging, and contributing to society.