When we become curious about the dissatisfying defaults in our world, we begin to recognize that most of them have social origins: Rules and systems were created by people. And that awareness gives us the courage to contemplate how we can change them.
1.contemplate：思考，想，to think about something seriously for a period of time.可以和consider做同义替换。
例句：Jack went on vacation to contemplate his future. 杰克去度假，仔细思考一下他的未来。
Before women gained the right to vote in America, many “had never before considered their degraded status as anything but natural,” historian Jean Baker observes. As the suffrage movement gained momentum, “a growing number of women were beginning to see that custom, religious precept, and law were in fact man-made and therefore reversible.”
2.degrade：贬低或羞辱某人，to treat someone without respect and make them lose respect for themselves.
例句：How can you degrade yourself by writing such trash? 你怎么能写这种垃圾作品来自贬身份呢？
3.suffrage：选举权，投票权，the right to vote in national elections,可以与前面的right to vote替换使用。
4.gain momentum：momentum是势头、动力的意思，gain/gather momentum作为固定搭配，在本文中可以解释为“壮大声势”，同时这个短语还有加速move faster的意思。
例句：The campaign for reform should start to gather momentum in the new year. 要求进行改革的运动在新的一年里声势应该会壮大。
相反，想表达维持势头可以用maintain momentum，而丧失冲劲可以用lose momentum.
5.reversible：可恢复原状，可逆的，a change that is reversible can be changed back to how it was before.
例句：A lot of chemical reactions are reversible. 很多化学反应都是可逆的。
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