The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls
This article contains affiliate links. I may be eligible for commission if you purchase any products in the provided links, at no additional cost to you.
Book Overview
Title: The Seven Necessary Sins for Women & Girls
Author: Mona Eltahawy
Length: About 180 pages, 8 chapters
Synopsis
Journalist and activist, Mona Eltahawy, courageously defies our foundations of society in this manifesto against the patriarchy. She uses her novel to challenge her readers to imagine what the world would have been like if girls were raised to embrace the same qualities that are encouraged in boys. Eltahawy takes it a step further by demanding that the responsibility to deconstruct the patriarchy and build a safer world for our women and girls falls upon us. In her manifesto, she outlines the Seven Necessary Sins we must all embody as women and girls in order to break free of the chains that the Patriarchy holds on us:
Anger
Attention
Profanity
Ambition
Power
Violence
Lust
As Eltahawy courageously recounts her own traumatic experiences with men, she deconstructs many commonly held limiting beliefs of how women should behave and what role they’re meant to play in society. From being sexually assaulted at Hajj at the age of fifteen to being groped on the dance floor in Montreal at the age of fifty, to being detained, ridiculed, and mistreated for being an advocate for women’s rights in all the ages in between, Eltahawy leads the charge of unapologetic women who refuse to answer to the patriarchy. A must-read by anyone looking to understand the world better and gain the power to make a difference.
See the Book on Amazon
Why I Read This Book
Have you ever had a literary craving? Like when you crave food, but for book worms?
I had a big, fat, juicy craving for something nonfiction, inspirational, and educational one night while watching Riverdale (random, I know). Watching the fictional high school characters each find their own way to passionately fight for social justice inspired me to fall deep into a book that evoked the same emotions in me as I saw on the show.
I went looking through my books at home, hoping to find something to satisfy the craving, but very pessimistic about being triumphant. By this point, I've already read or written off everything I own. I knew that what I was looking for wasn't in my collection.
Tell me why I found this book waiting for me at the top of the pile?
To my recollection, I have never seen this book before in my life and I have no idea where it came from. But, it was just sitting there, a perfect gift from the Universe. This book was everything I was looking for:
Nonfiction
Educational
Inspirational
Empowers me to make a change
I've never had a craving satisfied more effortlessly. I took my little gift from God and curled up on the couch for the rest of the evening, unknowingly embarking on a literary adventure that would leave me forever changed.
Emotions Evoked from This Book
I fell in love with the book by the end of the first page.
When I picked up the book, I had no idea the author was of Muslim decent, like me. As Eltahawy opens her novel with a story about being groped at Hajj (an Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest city in Islam), I immediately connected with her in a way that I hadn't with many public figures before:
Mona Eltahawy was just like me: a Muslim woman of color who has lived her life battling between the beautiful culture and religion she was born into and the aggressive and ignorant men that have used these things to gain power over women. Moreover, she was disobedient, outspoken, and radically obsessed with using her life to stand up against the oppression she's experienced and make a change.
Just. Like. Me.
I finished Eltahawy's 180 something page manifesto in one week. That's the quickest I've finished a book in a minute. Moreover, I was reading it while working on content for my month on Love & Dating (October 2023) - content that got extremely personal about my sex life.
In those moments of doubt and anxiety about whether I was being "too much" with my brand, the manifesto, gave me permission to be even more. Eltahawy showed me that it wasn't just my right to be angry, ambitious and seek attention, but that it was my responsibility to do so.
I finished reading the book as I released my article, What's So Wrong with Being a Hoe? Filled with fear as I posted about my sex life across all of my social media platforms (including LinkedIn), this book once again showed me that my negative emotions were instilled in me by the invisible system used to build our world - the patriarchy.
We have the right as women to be sexual beings - Eltahawy reminded me in her final chapter on Lust - and the only way to claim that right is to be defiantly sexual until the world has no choice but to accept that.
Reading her final worlds, I couldn't help but be filled with pride. Here I was, taking on the challenge of deconstructing the patriarchy with everything I have been building with The Hustle Legacy.
On a path like mine, books like these are the fuel that help keep me going. They remind me that my mission is one that many have taken on before me, many will take with me and many will continue on after me. They give me the strength to be courageous enough to show the world who I am and change the narrative in the process.
Why You Should Read It
There's no question that this book needs to be on your reading list. Aside from the power and permission Eltahawy gives you to live unapologetically, this manifesto will teach you more about the world that we live in.
If you're someone that is unaware of the Islamic culture and the struggles faced by modern Muslims, you absolutely must read this book. As a modern Muslim myself, I've always felt frustrated by the Western narrative of my religion. This book helps deconstruct that narrative of Muslim communities and explains how men have used the religion to gain power.
Muslim or not, this is important to understand. Educating yourself on Muslim history, struggles, culture, etc. paints a bigger picture of how our world came to be. With that knowledge, you'll be able to:
make more informed life decisions
make space for people in your life that are different from you, and
better understand how you can make an impact to change the world.
Furthermore, this is a book to empower our women and girls. Therefore, if you identify as a woman or girl who is looking for empowerment, then this is the next book you have got to pick up.
It doesn't matter who you are. If you are or have ever been a girl or woman in this world, then you have been oppressed by the patriarchy. Odds are, this has often left you feeling angry, frustrated, trapped, limited, unvalued.... like you're deemed as nothing more than a waste of space that can't do anything right.
This book flips that entire script. Aside from giving you permission to act up in the name of change, The 7 Necessary Sins of Women and Girls puts into words all of the ways this world has wronged our kind and gives a name to the evil we've felt our entire lives; The Patriarchy.
This book healed a part of me.
If you'r someone that's ever felt oppressed, I know it'll heal a part of you, too. Mona Eltahawy does a wonderful job in turning our ideas of helplessness into a demand for change.
If you have read this book or now plan to, let me know by leaving it in the comments below.
