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It’s Time for Women to Define Womanhood for Ourselves

Rosalyn Morris
4 min readJul 13, 2022

And no — its not being reactionary…

Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash

Women speak out a lot about the plight of being a woman in this world — and this applies to women anywhere we find ourselves in the world.

It used to be thought that American women, or Western women, had it better than women born other places in the world. Women in countries where women couldn’t work, learn to read, get divorced, go to school, bare their faces, and who experienced genital mutilation and other atrocities.

In America, women had issues, but they were tame compared to what women from other places suffered. I’m talking about American women, of all races, born after 1970. Sure women made less money than men, still had to deal with misogyny and patriarchy, but until recently at least women had autonomy of their body. For Black women, women of color, and other women who face disadvantages, things were worse than they were for white women, but they were bearable. Bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom weren’t snatched away until last month.

There’s also the issues of gender norms and expectations.

Women are expected to be one way, and one way only. This has not changed, and I’m not sure if it ever will…

Sure, you’re free to deviate to a certain extent, but all women are supposed to…

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