The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls Quotes

“What would the world look like if girls were taught they were volcanoes, whose erruptions were a thing of beauty, a power to behold, a force not to be trifled with?”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“It is cruel to abandon women and girls to a culture they had no say in ratifying and to a religion they had no say in interpreting, and which in many cases practically demands they worship men: from a male god to their fathers to their husbands—the literal patriarchs.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“Racism and bigotry are not polite, and I refuse to be polite in my fight against them.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“Patriarchy refuses to believe that girls and young women can be angry, attention-seeking, profane, ambitious, powerful, violent, and lustful.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“White supremacy promises white women protection from the imagined danger of men of color in return for their loyalty. But the truth is, women around the world are hurt the most by men they know: current or former partners or relatives. In other words, the greater danger for white women who vote for far-right groups is their own misogynists.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“Saudi women who support the guardianship system - they sadly exist - are foot soldiers of the patriarchy in the same way that white American women voters who voted for Trump uphold white supremacy and its attendant misogyny. Both groups of women mistakenly believe their proximity to power in their respective countries will protect them from the worst ravages of patriarchy.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“It is revolutionary to say “I count” when patriarchy demands that you must be “modest” and “humble.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“Profanity is an essential tool in disrupting patriarchy and its rules. It is the verbal equivalent of civil disobedience.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“Women who do not ask for permission are powerful.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“Christianity preaches the Seven Deadly Sins. The Gospel of Mona presents instead the seven necessary sins women and girls need to employ to defy, disobey, and disrupt the patriarchy: anger, attention, profanity, ambition, power, violence, and lust. I call them “sins,” but of course they are not. They are what women and girls are not supposed to be or do or want. They are condemned as “sins” by a patriarchy that demands we acquiesce to, not destroy, its dictates.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“patriarchy is not about men, that feminism is not about “hating men.” Patriarchy is about power, and feminism is about destroying patriarchy.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“Encouraging white women to see themselves as higher up the ladder—the hierarchy—of oppressions and injustices employed by patriarchy to maintain itself must be seen for the ruse that it is. Those women might be benefitting from proximity to white power, but nothing protects women from patriarchy. We must dismantle the hierarchies that patriarchy uses, not aim to climb our way up its ladder of injustices.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“It is hard enough to fight patriarchy. That fight is made harder by rules that constantly work against us, goalposts that endlessly shift, and women who sign up to do patriarchy’s bidding. The last remind us that patriarchy is not about men, that feminism is not about “hating men.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“What would the world look like if girls were taught they were volcanoes, whose eruptions were a thing of beauty, a power to behold and a force not to be trifled with? What if instead of breaking their wildness like a rancher tames a bronco, we taught girls the importance and power of being dangerous?”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“Patriarchy is so universal and normalized that it is like asking a fish What is water?”
― Mona Eltahawy, Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“Men cannot sit back and say, 'Well, I'm not rich and powerful; that's not me.' It is you - if you are not actively dismantling the patriarchy, you are factually benefiting from it. Are you uncomfortable? Good. You should be. Discomfort is a reminder that privilege is being questioned, and this revolutionary moment is one in which we must defy, disobey, and disrupt the patriarchy, everywhere.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“Anger is important in girls because waiting for patriarchy to self-correct, to do the right thing, to do the moral thing, has got us not very far. Anger is a first step to putting patriarchy on notice that we are done waiting.”
― Mona Eltahawy, Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“Patriarchy wants to control vaginas, but it also wants to control who has the right to even say the word “vagina.” Not only that, patriarchy screams “decorum” when we dare to fight back.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“Patriarchy keeps us terrified, demanding from us an endless supply of patience, passivity, and obedience, as it pathologiezes and snuffs out our justifiable rage.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“Too many religions are patriarchal and imbued with misogyny. Because of this I am often asked how I can be a Muslim feminist. My response is that I am both of Muslim descent and a feminist, and the two identities are not connected. One does not depend on the other.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“Freedom is astonishing and breathtaking. Freedom is terrifying when those who insist on that freedom are those whose submission you have been socialized into believing is your bequeathed right”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“...it is imperative to understand how civility, decorum, manners and the like are used to uphold authority...and that we are urged to acqquiesce as a form of maintaining that authority. Whether we are urged to be civil to racists or polite to patriarchy, the goal is the same: to maintain the power of the racist, to maintain the power of the patriarchy.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“Am I considered successful if I have $300 in my account? I know that I am supposed to feel embarrassed to have such a small amount of money, especially at my age, but why? Must I be wealthy for my ambition to be considered worthy of all the years I have poured into it? It has never been my goal to be wealthy. Does that mean I am less ambitious than I thought?”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“Not every woman is my ally or my sister simply by virtue of being a woman. We are sisters and comrades when we share a fight against patriarchy. Patriarchy throws all its efforts at disempowering us. I do not consider as a sister or a comrade anyone who aids in that disempowerment.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“We must dismantle the hierarchies that patriarchy uses, not aim to climb our way up its ladder of injustices.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“White supremacy, whether in the US or Europe, is absolutely patriarchal—those far-right parties offer no gender equality...white women who vote for those parties are examples of women who accept crumbs thrown to them in return for limited power in the form of protection and privilege gained via proximity to powerful white men. They whip up xenophobia among white women voters by pitting immigrants against white families, portraying refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants as a drain on resources that should go instead to those white families. They want white women to have more white babies.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“Conservatism goes hand in hand with patriarchy, and it must be remembered that conservatism benefits men while reserving cruelty for women and men who reject its strict codes of conduct.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“I own my body: not the temple, not the church, not the mosque, not any other house of worship. It is my right to have sex whenever I choose, with whomever I choose—obviously, with their consent. It is my right to have sex with a woman or a man; with multiple women or multiple men, cis- or transgender; and with people whose gender identity is fluid or nonbinary. It is my right to decide how I express my sexuality, as it is the right of every consenting adult. How consenting adults express their sexuality is nobody’s business because the keywords here are “consenting” and “adults.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“Ask yourself who you don't see and understand why you don't see them and understand how important attention is for them. We use attention as a way to arm ourselves against the invisibility that patriarchy wants to impose on us.”
― Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

“It is cis-heteropatriarchy that insists on the right to use vaginas to insult and also insist on prohibiting women from cursing, even though our body parts are being used to fuel profanity. It is a world in which “vaginas,” “pussies,” and “cunts” are words that are deemed inherently female and at the same time inherently profane.”
― Mona Eltahawy, Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls