The Burden of Respectability and Permission

Sor Juana had to justify her right to learn, write, and think in ways her male counterparts never did. She wrote elaborate defenses of female education, crafted her persona carefully, and still faced suppression. This reveals a brutal truth: Libertarian justice cannot exist only in theory. When certain groups must perpetually seek permission (from families, institutions, authorities) to exercise what should be inherent rights, the effective freedom of those groups is diminished by the burden itself. Every letter of justification Sor Juana wrote consumed time and energy that could have gone to her actual work. In modern contexts, this appears as the hidden tax on minority entrepreneurs, female scholars, or colonized peoples who must over-perform, over-justify, and over-credential themselves to claim what the privileged take for granted. Libertarian justice requires not just removing formal barriers but recognizing the asymmetric burden of proof. Genuine property freedom means that no one should have to write an apology for their own existence or right to create. Sor Juana's legacy includes this hard lesson: freedom is incomplete when some must ask permission.