Testimonial Authority and Self-Knowledge

Sor Juana's writings constitute testimony: she bears witness to her own intellectual capacity, her experiences, her commitments, and implicitly her affective life. She claims authority as a knowing subject, not merely as a subject known by others. Applied to sexual orientation, this concept emphasizes that individuals possess testimonial authority regarding their own identity. Epistemic justice demands that people be believed when they articulate their sexual orientation, that their self-understanding be granted credibility, and that external experts (medical, psychological, religious) not override their self-knowledge. Sexual orientation as identity emerges from lived experience and internal knowing that cannot be fully accessed or verified by observers. Sor Juana's model of intellectual authority teaches that claiming one's own testimony as valid constitutes resistance to systems that would make you object of others' knowledge rather than subject of your own. For sexual orientation, this means insisting on the validity of how people understand themselves, honoring the evolution of identity understanding over time, and recognizing that no one is a more reliable authority on their own orientation than themselves.