THE SEVEN NECESSARY SINS FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS

A striking anti-patriarchal manifesto.

Written “with enough rage to fuel a rocket,” the second book from Egyptian American activist Eltahawy (Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution, 2015) presents a platform of female empowerment and gender equality supported by seven essential traits (anger, attention, profanity, ambition, power, violence, and lust) every woman should have in her feminist arsenal. The author advises women on how to individually resist and collectively deconstruct society’s “universal and normalized” patriarchal hierarchy by employing an interlocking series of “sins,” traditionally tabooed beliefs about women’s outward expressions of contrary opinion or personal power. Eltahawy’s opening is strong, with a chapter on how anger and rage are key components in the fight alongside ambition, sexual expression “outside the teachings of heteronormativity,” and an insistence that attention be paid to female voices instead of promoting efforts to silence them. The section on power seeks to engage women in business and social leadership. Eltahawy is at her most controversial when discussing what she believes are the leveling benefits of physical violence in the face of patriarchal crimes. Sprinkled throughout the narrative are moving personal stories, histories, and profiles that further reinforce her plan to dismantle the rampant injustices against women. The author’s prose is feverishly enthusiastic and laser-focused, powered by teenage emotional trauma from repeated sexual assaults while on pilgrimages to Mecca, where she was warned to stay silent but ultimately vocalized her outrage. She channels the rage about her violations toward the empowerment of other women in their embrace of feminism that is “robust, aggressive, and unapologetic…a feminism that defies, disobeys, and disrupts the patriarchy.” Her urgent narrative encourages women of all ages to resist classic compartmentalization and to raise their voices and demand equality within every sector of society. “Let us always tell girls they can be more than,” she writes.

A vociferous, highly motivational call to arms for the feminist movement.