The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

"A bold and uncompromising feminist manifesto that shows women and girls how to defy, disrupt, and destroy the patriarchy by embracing the qualities they've been trained to avoid. Seizing upon the energy of the #MeToo movement, feminist activist Mona Eltahawy advocates a muscular, out-loud approach to teaching women and girls to harness their power through what she calls the "seven necessary sins" that women and girls are not supposed to commit: to be angry, ambitious, profane, violent, attention-seeking, lustful, and powerful. All the necessary "sins" that women and girls require to erupt. Eltahawy knows that the patriarchy is alive and well, and she is fed the hell up: Sexually assaulted during hajj at the age of fifteen. Groped on the dance floor of a night club in Montreal at fifty. Countless other injustices in the years between. Illuminating her call to action are stories of activists and ordinary women around the world--from South Africa to China, Nigeria to India, Bosnia to Egypt--who are tapping into their inner fury and crossing the lines of race, class, faith, and gender that make it so hard for marginalized women to be heard. Rather than teaching women and girls to survive the poisonous system they have found themselves in, Eltahawy arms them to dismantle it. Brilliant, bold, and energetic, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls is a manifesto for all feminists in the fight against patriarchy"-- "In seven essays that combine memoir, polemic and cultural criticism, Mona Eltahawy explains how we must seize what she calls the feminist revolutionary moment that has galvanized women and queer people across the world through such movements as #MeToo, to support survivors of sexual assault and expose predators, the Irish women who successfully led a successful referendum to legalize abortion in their country, the South Korean women who have held the largest women's protests in their country against spycams that are used to invade their privacy, to the LGBTQ activists in India who pushed their Supreme Court to overturn British colonial era legislation criminalizing homosexuality"--