“America’s first feminist”
Magda Aguirre

“Silly, you men so very adept at wrongly faulting womankind, not seeing you're alone to blame for faults you plant in woman mind. After you've won by urgent plea the right to tarnish her good name, you still expect her to behave, you that coaxed her into shame.” This are two stanzas from my favorite poem, “Stubborn Men”, that was written by a brave nun in the 1660, when women did not have the chance to read and write, especially humiliate men. Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz was brave and intelligent enough to do it all, and therefore she is my icon of inspiration.
Through out history I have read and heard about many women that have changed the world from Cleopatra, Rosie the Riveter, Indira Gandhi to Hillary Clinton they have all been feminist icons of strength and intelligence supporting the fact “We can do it”; but non of them influence me like Sor Juana. I still remember the first time I saw her image printed in the cover of the book Poems, Protest and a Dream. It really got my attention seeing a nun sitting down in a library and with the word Protest as part of the title. I opened it and read, “What happy mean could there be for the woman who catches your eye, if, unresponsive, she offends, yet whose complaisance you decry?” I have never read something so strong against men from a woman’s perspective. It was my mom who introduced me to Sor Juana.
Sor Juana was born in Mexico, 1649 in a time when men dominated society, and a women’s highest achievement in life was to give birth. Sor Juana was a very determined and disciplined girl that always did the impossible to reach her goals. At the age of three she convinced a teacher to give her reading lessons, but when her mother found out she forced her to stop. But by the age of 6, Juana had taught herself to read and write. When she was ten her aunt hired a Latin scholar for her, but after ten or eleven lessons, Juana surpassed what the scholar could teach her and continued learning by herself. When she was a teenager she met the Mexican governor, who protected her and allowed her to go to the university. In 1669, she entered the convent where she could keep on learning and writing. She taught the other girls to not allow themselves to be manipulated by men because there is no intellectual difference.
Even though I have never lived through any type of physical abuses, I hate injustices, and just like Sor Juana, I want to find a way to help out the women that still to this day are being abused and oppressed by men and in other places by the same sexist (Machista) society. This is a problem not only affecting the women but their children, and everything converts into a vicious cycle, that affects all of us. Sor Juana together with my mom have given me enough courage to over come my fears, to do well in school so that one day I can become a social worker and help people live better and healthy live, the same way Sor Juana has helped me.
There are millions of cases of abused women all around the world and there are so many organizations that need our help to make a huge difference. One of the organizations I plan to help is Amigos de las Mujeres de Juarez. This is an organization that works towards ending crimes towards women in Ciudad Juarez and provides support to the family members of the victims. Since 1993 more then 550 women have died between the ages 12-20 and 600 are still missing. In Iraq there is an under ground organization hidden from the government that helps sexual violence and domestic abuse victims called “underground railroad”. More then 72,000 women have become widows due to the war in Iraq, and are left without male protection, therefore have become free for all. Close to home every 9 seconds a woman reports being abused in the US.
Works Cited
Ramirez, Juana Ines. Poems, Protest, and a Dream. England: penguin books, 1997.
Hanke, lewis. Latin American History. New york: Markus Wiener Publishing Inc.,1992.
Montes, Fransico. Poesia Hispano-Americana. Mexico: Libreria Porrua, 1998.
Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a casa.http://www.mujeresdejuarez.org/, 9/14/09