Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I do not want to be protected. I want to be safe.”

The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy

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What are ways that women are not supposed to be? What are they not supposed to do? Mona Eltahawy interrogates social behavioral control of women and non-binary people through the framing of seven types of behavior that are understood to be in some way improper. Anger, Attention, Profanity, Ambition, Power, Violence, and Lust. In Seven Necessary Sins Elthawy asks one of the most important questions – Who does this benefit? The author argues not only that women and girls should engage in activities driven by […]

“Profanity is an essential tool in disrupting patriarchy and its rules. It is the verbal equivalent of civil disobedience.”

The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy

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Happy Women’s History Month in the US. Let’s talk about feminism and burning patriarchy to the ground, shall we? When I read ASKReview’s review of The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls in December 2021 I immediately threw it onto my to read list for 2022. A book described succinctly as “a call to action written by a queer woman of color” was absolutely something I want to read. There is much in the world that is fucking awful and the roots of that […]

Fuck The Patriarchy

The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy

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Best for: Women. People with women in their lives. Feminists. In a nutshell: Author and activist Eltahawy makes the case for the sins women should embrace as we seek to destroy the patriarch. Worth quoting: “I don’t want to be protected. I want to be free.” “I refuse to be civil with someone who refuses to acknowledge my humanity fully.” “But who indoctrinated those Republican white women? Who taught them to submit to patriarchy? Those are questions often reserved for Muslima women, but I demand […]

“The most subversive thing a woman can do is talk about her life as if it really matters.”

Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution by Mona Eltahawy

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In the first chapter of the book, Mona Eltahawy asks, “Why do they hate us?”, meaning societies in the Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East and their hatred of women. And then she writes, “They don’t hate us because of our freedoms, as the tired, post-9/11 American cliché had it. We have no freedoms because they hate us.” Eltahawy is not one to mince words, and to contend her use of the word ‘hate’ is impossible in the face of everything that […]



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