We are so excited to have @larafreidenfelds.bsky.social back writing with us! Lara is one of our new writers-in-residence. She will be publishing a series of articles over the next year for NC.

Such an important piece. Thank you, @larafreidenfelds.bsky.social.

discipline and control other women's childbearing. But it sure seems like it would get us better health care and better cultural and economic support for childbearing.

romanticizing menstrual seclusion and "moon huts" -- but it did present this thought experiment, of what our culture might look like if female bodies were normal/normative.
I don't think it would solve everything, since women have proven plenty willing to

people normally go through menopause, and people need treatments appropriate to that life transition.
I was recently telling a reporter about 1970s cultural feminism, which celebrated (and often essentialized) women's physical and psychological differences from men. Some of it got kind of silly --

easy to take for granted. But think about it for a minute: what if women's bodies were normative, and men's were deviations from that norm? We'd say that people menstruate, and people get pregnant and give birth, except for some people who don't have the capacity for those processes. We'd say that

if we don't, we can't address any body parts or processes that men don't have.
Medical textbooks have traditionally used male bodies to represent "people" and women's bodies only when they need to talk about female reproductive anatomy. This way of thinking is a core theme of patriarchy, and it is

That's so awesome :). So many things can be exciting when the world's so new to you! Such a cutie.

Thank you so much! Can't wait to read your history of the female body when it's published!