What does women’s autonomy mean to you? The autonomy to vote, to lead, to work, to be her own individual human being?
These are all very real and good examples.
But what about women’s autonomy to be abusers? Or sexual predators? Or criminals?
Why does society so readily deny women’s autonomy when she exercises it for wrongdoing?
What about the laws, policies and intervention strategies that deny women’s autonomy to do these things?
And what kind of woman does society allow? The saintly kind? The impossibly flawless and perpetually innocent vestige of purity?
An image as inhuman, unrealistic and unachievable as the ones we see in women’s beauty adverts and on magazine covers, even today?
So is it time society allowed women to truly choose how they live their lives?
Are we willing to see the flaws in their character, as we have in their stretch marks, wrinkles and body hair?
To give them the choice to be and do good, or the choice to do the opposite.
To play the hero, or be the villain.
For is that not what autonomy truly is?
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Sonja Starr https://tinyurl.com/ykxsbrun
Images by tengyart, Charles Deluvio, Stephany-Lorena, Name Gravity, Yang Miao and Deji Akinyele from Unsplash