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Mona Eltahawy

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2021-05-04

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2021-05-04

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1. “Well, you know, because I'm an anarchist feminist and I have all these questions that I want people to recognize, this is what I would do. I would give everyone universal basic income and I would make healthcare and education free in every level and I would ensure that every empty apartment, hotel room and house is there and open for any unhoused or homeless person. So there is enough money. No one should be poor. There is enough food. No one should be hungry. I would make sure food was available for everyone and there are enough homes. No one should be unhoused. I think once that would be the first thing I would do once we do all of those I can start building on them.”

   2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Black feminists in the United States have organized wonderfully. Black Lives Matter began on social media, on Facebook. So basically what I'm saying is that people who, because of patriarchy, were marginalized or not given a platform. Now no one is voiceless. I'm not saying voiceless. We all have a voice, but we don't always hear each other's voices and we have to ask why. And it's often because we're marginalized or not allowed a space on mainstream media or other platforms. Social media has become a platform. So for trans people, for fat people, for disabled people, for people basically all the people who have been marginalized by patriarchy have found ways to say, I count and I am here. Thanks to social media. So I'm a massive fan of social media. Yes, it's toxic. Yes, every other day I tell someone to fuck off on social media. But I also live on social media because I recognize all the spaces that it has basically kind of blossomed into thanks to people who”

   2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “I love social media, I live on social media, I live on Twitter, Instagram, you know, so, so much of social media. And the reason that I love it, as toxic as it can be sometimes, and I recognize that regimes around the world have used social media against us now. It's not just revolutionary movements, as we saw in various countries across North Africa and the Middle East, Southwest Asia. So social media is like any other kind of tool. It depends on how you use it and who is using it. But what social media has done is it has allowed, given a platform to people that didn't have a platform before, for people to come on and say, I count. And there are so many examples. There is an Indigenous woman in Canada called Dolores Schilling, who every day goes on social media and says, will you support me every day I come on here and talk about murdered and missing indigenous women? I would not have known about this movement if it weren't for social media.”

   2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “I don't see anything that patriarchy represents that has benefited now. Do I have privilege? I absolutely have privilege. I am an able-bodied cisgender woman who has enough money for her needs, who has shelter, who has enough food. I'm surrounded by privilege. So all those things, of course, have helped me, but many of them have also been in spite of patriarchy. So if I were to ask that question, I would change, did you benefit from patriarchy to do you recognize that you're a very privileged woman and that you have privileges that so many others don't have? Yes, I absolutely do. But whatever I've achieved, I believe I've achieved despite patriarchy.”

   2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “That's a good question, you know, because so before I answer that, I want to acknowledge that we have all been socialized by patriarchy. I often say that talking about patriarchy or asking people if they're aware of patriarchy is like asking a fish, what is water? And you know, a fish is like, and I know this is used in so many other analogies as well, but, you know, fish isn't going to know what water is because it's its everyday. And that's what patriarchy is. So I want to acknowledge that we all have been socialized by patriarchy. We've all internalized its messages and none of us, including me, feminist giant as I am, as I caught my newsletter, are completely free of patriarchy. But what I do is that I'm aware of it every day, and whenever I see the ways that I've internalized it, I actively try to unroot it or to get it out of me. And so is it because of or in spite of, I would say in spite of. I really would say in spite of because I can't,”

   2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “As we emerge, so many of us are still at home or in some kind of waiting period. I want us to emerge into a world that doesn't have that as a normal, that doesn't have as a normal one in four women are going to be sexually assaulted or sexually harassed in their life.”

   2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “The system is not working for us, so the statistics are terrible across the world. I thank the person whoever sent the question for sharing their story, and there are horrific stories like this all over the world, and every day, you know, there are at least one of every four women have been subjected to sexual assault. One of the things that happened in the UK after the Sarah Everard case is that so many women shared their experiences with sexual violence. You saw about how I think it was like 90% of young women in the UK had been subjected to sexual assault or harassment in their lifetime. And now you have a Me Too for schoolgirls where they go on a website and share their horrific stories. So it's like every age group, everywhere you go. This is not specific to a particular culture, religion or country, because patriarchy, that octopus is universal. So clearly our system is not working. And again, this is one of the things that I want to leave in what we call the before time, in what people call normal. Fuck that normal.”

   2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “So, but the essay I write an essay every week for feminist giant, this newsletter that I said that I write, and my essay last week was called Fuck the Police, and it was an intentionally provocative title because for so many reasons. But I mention a statistic that is very similar for the US, and out for every 1,000 cases of rape, only five result in a conviction that a prison sentence. So clearly, the system is wrong. And that's why I quote the feminist psychiatrist Judith Herman, who said that the legal system was designed to protect men from the superior power of the state, but not to protect women and children from the superior power of men. And that's why when people ask me, you know, you're inciting, when you talk about violence and fighting back, you're just inciting violence and violence begets violence. And my question to them is, well, what about the centuries of patriarchal violence, misogynist violence against us? That's what begets violence. That's what incites violence. Because clearly, as the questioner has brought up,”

   2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “where we do imagine what we were told impossible and work really hard to make it possible. So for me, poverty should not exist. We have enough money in the world where poverty should not exist, we have enough homes in the world that are empty by and large, where being unhoused or homeless should never be the case. We have enough food across the world where no one should be hungry. And, you know, usually when you say those kind of things, people laugh at you and say, ah, what kind of utopia is that? But this is a once in a lifetime opportunity where a global pandemic that has stopped and affected all of us, that hasn't happened in a century, if this is not the opportunity to imagine what we were told is impossible, then what is”

   2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Yeah, well, you know, people keep talking about going back to normal. I don't want to go back to normal. I say fuck normal because normal is that octopus. Normal is what brought us here because under that rubric of normal, we were told to accept so many things that should never have been acceptable. Now, the older I get, the more my feminism has led me to anarchism, and I'm an anarchist feminist. And often when you tell people I'm an anarchist, people laugh at you and say, well, you know, that's impossible. We're never going to get that. And so for me, the kind of the feminist revolution, the anarchist feminist revolution is making the impossible possible. And I think that's what the pandemic has helped us do, to imagine something other than that normal. My friends who are disabled are saying, ah, oh, so now we can have classes and meetings like this online, whereas when we ask for this as, you know, the disabled communities, you told us it was impossible. And, you know, so many other things that we were told were impossible have suddenly been shown to be, oh, quite possible. So I want this to be an opportunity.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “In just fighting the misogyny that the pandemic has revealed, I'm fighting, I'm interested in fighting the octopus that the pandemic has made especially brutal and violent. So yes, it is setting back gender equality and it's setting back for me the fight against patriarchy because patriarchy isn't just a fight against misogyny. Patriarchy is also saying there should not be people so hungry in the wealthiest, most powerful country in the world that they are stealing baby food so that they can keep their children alive.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Work that was done at home was never considered work and was never valued and was never paid. So women's unpaid labor, you know, for decades, feminist economists have been saying, you know, if we took into account the labor, the work that women do at home and we gave it a value, GDP would look very different. And now people who are privileged are working from home. That's considered a privilege, you know, and people who are called essential workers are working outside of the home and near the least value. So it's like it's an upside down kind of like equation. This is why I talk about the octopus called patriarchy because definitely a tentacle is capitalism. In the United States, there are more actually around the world. There are more billionaires now than there were before the pandemic. And in the US, the wealthiest, most powerful country in the world, there is more hunger and more poverty during the pandemic than before. So clearly the world that we had before the pandemic was wrong on so many levels. And as a feminist, I'm not investing.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “Well, I see that I think that one of the things that the pandemic has definitely revealed is what so many are calling the shadow pandemic or something that has always been a pandemic and was ignored, which is the pandemic of violence against women and girls that is specifically carried out at home. Home is a very dangerous place. So that, as I said earlier, 30% increase in violence against women and girls at home and many queer people too. And then when you look at the workforce, so many women have been pushed out of the workforce. When you look at why they've been pushed out, they've been pushed out because the industries that women have been pushed into in the workforce are those that have been affected the most during the pandemic. So retail, hospitality and care. So that also has to make us wonder, you know, what kind of jobs will women allowed to have and what kind of jobs? And also I want people to think about home because, you know, before the pandemic, any kind of”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Holds up any of those tentacles of the patriarchy and claims to be feminists at the same time. So I'm very intersectional as the, again, the law professor Kimberly Crenshaw said, you know, law professors are important in all these theories and terms that they come up with. She came up with the term intersectional feminism. And intersectional feminism basically is a way of looking at who is hurt the most by all of those tentacles and how can we fight those tentacles to ensure that no one is ignored. And if the trans community for some feminists is going to be sacrificed, these are not feminists that I will ever ally or be an accomplice with.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Okay, well, that's an interesting question because, you know, we often hear about white feminism, liberal feminism, neoliberal feminism, you know, things like that. And I actively identify as an intersectional feminist and also, and this kind of like, this is very specific to the US and the UK, but I'm sure it applies in many other places too. I'm also a trans ally and accomplice. So I'm a pro trans feminist. And I think that the feminist movement in the US and in the UK specifically are definitely split along those lines and it enrages me to see too many feminists in the UK and the US be transphobic and actively exclude trans people and gender non-conforming people. And I absolutely reject that. If that is called splitting the feminist movement, then I'm all for it because I want nothing to do with anyone who...”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “Right, well, you know, I'm learning from especially black feminists. First of all, I want everyone to read Black feminists because I think one of the things that I mentioned in the chapter on power is the Kumbahi River Collective, which was a collective of black socialist queer women, who said in the 1970s when black women are free, we will all be free. So I want people to imagine that black women are the ones who are at most risk of all those tentacles of the octopus.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “of her citizenship. I mean, just think about that. And on her chest is written the words, there will be millions of us because that for me is the revolution. And it's a painting by a friend, an artist friend of mine, an Iraqi Canadian artist called Nadeen Farage, and it was part of her exhibit called Naked Revolt about women in different parts of the world who use their bodies, topless or naked, as a form of protest.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “The picture behind me is actually of an Egyptian feminist activist. I'm going to put the camera back a bit so you can see it. There it is, and then I come back. So this is an Egyptian feminist activist called Aliya al-Mahdi, who in the year of the Egyptian Revolution 2011 took a picture of herself naked in her home and posted it on her blog. And this was, I think, end of October, beginning of November of 2011. There was more outrage directed at this young woman who was 21 years old at the time than at the Egyptian military which subjected seventeen Egyptian feminist female activists to so called virginity tests, a form of sexual assault, just for posing a picture of herself naked in her own home. Now she now lives in Sweden in political exile because of the backlash against her in Egypt and because a lawyer affiliated with the regime had raised a lawsuit to strip her of her Egyptian citizenship. So for choosing to strip, she was going to be stripped.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Is I own my body and the fun ways that I use my body against the patriarchy, they're all part of the revolution against patriarchy for me.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “Queering, yeah, as queering being queer, because I identify as queer. So queering all of that, taking all of these things and stop asking people, so when did you know you were queer or gay or bisexual and start like, you know, so many people in the LGBTQ community for you have been saying, well, why do you assume that anyone is not queer or heterosexual? But I love queering because, again, this is June Jordan now, one of my heroes, the black bisexual poet and feminist activist. She wrote an incredible essay about the power, the revolutionary power of being bisexual in the nineteen ninety. So, you know, this was decades ago. And she talks about how sexuality and sexual politics are central to any revolutionary movement. So lust is also a particular favorite of mine because for me, the heart of the revolution is consent and agency and the heart of that is saying, I own my body. And I have fun with my body, whether I shave my hair, whether, you know, I add more tattoos, whether I'm dancing, whatever.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Oh gosh. Well, I love profanity, obviously, you know, because as you can tell, I mean, I swear a lot and I enjoy swearing, but lust is also a big favorite of mine, and that's going to be the subject of one of my forthcoming books because I'm working on several book projects right now. Because I love the way that lust is not just about sex, but lust, the way that I write the chapter is about queering, queering things that we are also told to take for granted. So queering being straight or heteronormative, queering being monogamous or mononormative.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “Kind of come in, scramble the signals a bit, and then make you see things differently. So I'm not interested in being nice, polite or making people feel comfortable. I'm deliberately profane and I'm deliberately making you uncomfortable so that you can question all of these things you took for granted.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “You know, I get that all the time. I'm like, Mona, if you just stop wearing swearing less, Mona, if you just stop yelling, Mona, if you just smiled more, you know, all of, it's really interesting that while we fight these oppressions and these injustices, we are told to be nice, polite, quiet, not swear, all of those things. And those things, those demands are never made of patriarchy, of the people who are unjust and of the people who are violent against us and of those people who are partaking in all of those tentacles of the octopus. So it's really interesting that that onus is put on us and not the other way around. So I'm not interested in making people comfortable because I revel in the discomfort. Several times in the book I say that does this make you uncomfortable good? Because in that discomfort is where you begin to question your privilege first. Well, you realize that you have privilege and then you begin to question your privilege. And I consider discomfort a form of discombobulation where”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “Well, I mean, that's basically the kind of gist or the premise of the chapter on power because it's really important for me that”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “it over there because they benefit from that. So these white women who voted for Donald Trump, we often say they voted against their interests, but they actually voted to uphold their interests because their interests are the men in their family, their husbands, their brothers, their sons. Now, most of those Christian conservative white women in the United States are very happy with that, but they seem to think that it's Muslim women who are oppressed. So they're invested in pointing at Muslim women and saying, ha, look how oppressed you are. Going up to a Muslim woman in a headscarf in a supermarket and asking, did your husband make you do that? And they don't reflect that back to themselves and ask, did their husbands make them vote for Donald Trump? Who is the head of their household? How free are they? And what does their religious and political background teach them about the role of women? So in this essay, if Amy Connie Barrett was a Muslim, I basically unpack that hypocrisy and say exactly that this is about patriarchy, whether it's a new”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “I wrote an essay for feminist giant, which is the newsletter that I write called If Amy Coney Barrett was a Muslim. And Amy Cony Barrett was nominated for the Supreme Court by Donald Trump and she was confirmed. This woman comes from an extremely conservative extremist Catholic background. And if you read into her background and you just removed her name and removed who she was, I guarantee that most white Americans would say, ah, that sounds like a Saudi woman, you know, because they're in such denial about the kind of patriarchal and misogynist violence, even if it doesn't seem like violence to them, that they accept. And the theocracy too, and I call it theocracy in the United States, because I see what the Republican Party is doing and what white evangelicals have done to the United States, and it's theocracy, and it's theocracy in power, and it elected Donald Trump to basically be its president. But they don't see that because they only see”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “And that privilege that you live in is short-lived because I think what shocked so many women with the Sarah Everard case is that this happened to a white woman and it happened to a white woman by a police officer. Now, black women and women of color are murdered and ignored all the time, including in the UK. And white women, especially, expect the police to protect them. But the rest of us don't expect that protection from the police. So I think the Sarah Everard case and then the violent way that the vigil that was for Sarah Everard was broken up and then also the violence used against people in the Kilde Bill protests in the UK. This is a bill that's supposed to give the police even more powers in the UK. I think have shaken people enough, I hope, to remember that it's shit over here and not just over there.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “People be polite and kind of like patiently wait for white Australians to stop abusing and murdering them. Now, had I sat on that panel and talked about, you know, the list of shit over there, like, you know, in the way that they would have expected me to, about, oh, look what happens in Egypt or look what happens in Saudi Arabia, they would have been perfectly fine. But I was in Australian living rooms telling them, you are raping women at X-ray every day. And, you know, one woman is killed every week in Australia. So I was basically reminding people that it's shit over here. And for doing that, that episode isn't now banned. And this is the country now, Australia, where the Attorney General has been accused of sexual violence, where, you know, they have this horrendous scandal of sexual violence. So I think people are being deliberately, they're being disingenuous or they're living in denial. And my message to anyone who hasn't faced any kind of patriarchal abuses, you're really lucky.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “My response to that is I am not here to make you feel good about over here, and I don't want you to think that it's shit over there. I want you to know that it's shit everywhere because patriarchy exists everywhere because of that octopus called patriarchy is universal. And you know, a perfect example of that is I was in Australia in 2019 speaking on one of the most popular current affairs shows called Q&A. And it was an episode that coincided with a feminist festival. So it was a panel of feminists, women and a non-binary person who was also indigenous. That episode has since been banned, so it broadcasts live, but it was banned. And why was it banned? Because mostly white Australian men complained to the network that I incited violence by asking the question how many rapists must we kill before men stop raping women? And because I said fuck ten times and because the indigenous non-binary person who was on the panel said, you know, how long must indigenous”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “Protect women and children from the superior power of men. So for those people who say to me, you know, you should take it to the law and not take the law in your own hands. I tell them, well, the law does jack shit. Okay? That's the law for you. But then there's a professor of law and to think that a professor of law wrote this is really powerful called Mary Ann Franks. After I beat up that man in the club in Montreal, she contacted me and she said, read this article that I wrote for a law journal because I believe what you did tonight was a perfect example of optimal violence, and by optimal violence she means exactly this. When a man walks down the street and he sees another man, he thinks twice before he thinks, you know what, I'm going to beat him up because he thinks you know what this guy could fight back. But men never think twice when they abuse women, when they sexually assault women or think to do it. So I want patriarchy not”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “I'm glad I wrote that chapter now because this idea of retaliation to think that right now because of the pandemic there's been a thirty percent increase in intimate partner violence is a reminder that men don't fear retaliation and I'm sitting there thinking don't these men who abuse and beat women don't they ever stop to think you know she's in the kitchen all day she could poison me she's in the kitchen all day with all these really sharp instruments she could stab me to death while i sleep they never think that because patriarchy first of all enables them and protects them when they're violent against us and patriarchy has socialized them to not expect us to fight back and patriarchy has socialized us not to fight back and so i use two feminist kind of authorities in my chapter the first is the feminist psychiatrist judith herman who said that the legal system is designed to protect men from the superior power of the state but not”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “I absolutely do. You know, I wrote this book in 2018. It was published in North America in 2019. So way before the pandemic. But I think this particular chapter is so apt for what is happening now because across the world, there are women in lockdown and shelter in place with what I call their terrorists who are their partners and those partners subject them to what is sometimes called domestic abuse. I call it intimate partner terrorism. And the fact that there are women who are sheltering at home, which we're told is, you know, the safe place, you know, in the UK, Sarah Everard was abducted and murdered by a police officer while she was walking home and people are like, whoa, my God, you know, the streets are ours and we should be safe walking home. And this idea of outside being dangerous and home being safe, home is one of the most dangerous places for women, girls and queer people. And the pandemic has taught us that.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “Yeah, exactly. And it's really interesting. And I want people to stop and think about how patriarchy doesn't just control our bodies and what we can and can't do with our bodies. It controls our language. And every two or three weeks, a woman will swear somewhere. And the world turns upside down because she said, fuck or shit. And I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? There are crimes being committed against women every day. And language is what really got you upset. So I think we really have to, and that's what I tried to do with all the chapters here, take those things and just demand that people look at them differently”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “We would say you're racist for voting for Trump. And people would say, no, civility, civility, don't call people racist. And they would actually demand that we were civil in talking about things that were utterly uncivil. And so I say that I'm deliberately profane because I consider swearing and profanity the verbal equivalence of civil disobedience.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “So, when the Brits occupied Uganda, the anti-colonial movement there began to use whatever means they thought were right to liberate themselves from British occupation. And the occupiers actually demanded that they be polite. And they were like, fuck you. There is nothing polite about colonization and nothing polite about occupation. And it's that spirit that Stalin Nianzi continues today. And it's that spirit that I use to explain why I'm profane. There is nothing polite about patriarchy. There is nothing polite about violence against women. There is nothing polite about racism or any of the oppressions that the octopus, you know, the tentacles of the octopus. So to expect me to be polite as I'm fighting those oppressions is basically a way to maintain the authority of the oppressor, of the racist, of the patriarch. And that became like really crystal clear during the Trump regime, as I call it.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “Because I would get up on stage, and you know, I do a lot of public speaking, you know, before the pandemic, I used to travel like three quarters of the year I would travel. And I would see the way people would react just like you said, whenever I would swear, whenever I would use any kind of profanity. And I recognize the power in that. And I was like, what is that? And it really hit home. And that's why I spend about half of the chapter on profanity when I learned of the Ugandan feminist, Dr. Stela Nianzi, who was an academic and an activist who actually now lives in exile in Kenya because she's been imprisoned several times by the Ugandan dictatorship for being deliberately intentionally offensive and profane. And in reading more about her work and reading why she's profane, I learnt that, so there's an academic who I quote in the book who describes what Selenianzi does as a form of radical rudeness and its roots lie in British occupied Uganda.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “That this male Republican representative is not the first man who said this, but it stops with me because my parents raise me to speak out. And she just laid it all out. And I love that disruption. And I think that, you know, I appreciate all basically the shit that older women had to put up with, but we don't have to put up with it. And this is what I love about younger women who are determined not to put up with it. They say, yes, we know you put up with it and you're very courageous and strong and everything, but we're not putting up with it anymore.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “No, absolutely not. You know what you're saying reminds me of two things that I think are perfect illustrations. One is when the Me Too movement began in France, Catherine Deneuve, who's this older revered actress, she spoke out against it and she said, oh, come on, we've all gone through this. It's seduction. It's I don't know what. It's the way it is in France. And I couldn't believe it, you know, he is this, you know, icon of French cinema saying exactly that, you know, it happens. And basically he's kind of like we put up with it. But then the antithesis of that was when Alexandra, Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, you know, the youngest woman ever elected to the US Congress, she was called a fucking bitch by a male Republican representative. And she got up in the U.S. Congress and she gave this incredible speech that I believe will go down in like feminist history as a great example of feminist rhetoric in which she said, you know, I know I'm not the first woman who was called this. And I know.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “Locally, but I connect it to what happens globally. So what I'm doing with this curriculum is I'm collecting all of these feminists and these incredibly powerful things that they've said to show girls kind of like use them as milestones along the way so that girls can see that they have power and that they can change the world with that power that they're told they don't have. I want them to know they have it.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “Compiling this curriculum. So for two examples, one is the author Ursula Kaligin, who spoke, and I quote from a graduation speech that she gave at a women's college in the US, where she told these young women who are about to graduate that you are volcanoes. And when volcanoes erupt, they change the way the Earth looks. But she said, she told them, you have power in you and you don't know about this power in you. So I want to tap into this power that girls are told they don't have. And another one of my feminist heroes and icons is the black bisexual poet and feminist activist June Jordan, and she too spoke to a women's college in which she gave this wonderful speech about how as a feminist revolutionary activist, she's an internationalist who connects patriarchy to all the other oppressions that I describe in that octopus because she says as an activist I'm not just concerned with what happens.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “Well, I thought of this idea for the curriculum because I believe, I truly believe that we're all born with what I call a pilot light of rage that keeps us aware of injustices and allows us to be rightfully outraged at injustice because of course, you know, what's the reaction to injustice? It should be anger. But that pilot light of rage in girls is snuffed out as we grow up, you know, because we're told to be nice and polite and quiet and it's not good to be angry and to basically wait, wait for what basically for the man to take care of it. And so I thought, you know, what can we do so we can keep this pilot light of rage flaming in inside girls? And so I looked to feminist icons of mine and I mentioned some of the names in that chapter. And so what I've been doing is kind of like a magpie collecting all of these feminist icons and things they've said. And I'm truly literally kind of”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “I'm a very angry woman. I tell people this when people ask me what inspires you to write any particular thing. I tell them whatever has made me angry that day. And so I begin the book by saying I wrote this book the first sentence in the book is I wrote this book with enough rage to fuel a rocket. And I wrote it while I was high on kind of like the energy that I got from beating the fuck out of a man in a club in Montreal, Canada. And I had gone out dancing with my beloved. I was 50 years old, 5-0. And it's an important number to remember. And I'd gone out dancing because I had wanted to take care of myself after days of receiving.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “The junior, in if you like. And I say that because I think a lot of people think that anger is the beginning and the end. And a lot of books have been written recently about anger, especially women and anger. And yay, women have to be angry. But then, okay, what happens after the anger? And that's the point of the six sins that follow the anger.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “Absolutely. And also, just as a quick note as well, I mean, the title of the book is The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls. But I go to great lengths in the book itself to say that I'm very inclusive of the trans community and gender non-conforming communities. I mean, it's a catchy title, women and girls, but it's basically the aim of my book is anyone who is not a cisgender, heterosexual man and doesn't benefit from that octopus called patriarchy. So I deliberately use that structure because I'm obviously riffing off Christianity seven deadly sins. And clearly I don't think the sins that I have in my book are sins. They are virtues, not vices, but patriarchy tells us that they're vices, tells us that their sins, because I believe that these are the things that patriarchy doesn't want us to want to do or to be or to aspire to. So I go through the list, as you say, and the list is in ascending order of difficulty and importance with anger being kind of like,”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “Each one of those tentacles has a brain of its own, am I right in saying that, Helen? Absolutely. So it's very devious patriarchy is because it can move those tentacles independently of each other or in tandem with each other.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “Absolutely, this is why I want people to imagine the octopus, because when they imagine the octopus, they can see that there are a lot of men who will also be caught in the tentacles of the octopus. It's not just women who are hurt by patriarchy, and it's not just men who benefit from patriarchy because there are women who do benefit from patriarchy and benefit from being what I call foot soldiers of the patriarchy in the United States, for example. The majority of white women voters choose the Republican Party, which is known to be very misogynist, very homophobic, very racist. So there are women who benefit from patriarchy and there are men who are hurt by patriarchy. So what feminism, when people ask me, what is feminism then? I tell them feminism is the destruction of patriarchy because for me, feminism is a revolutionary movement that aims to liberate us from that octopus. And I want people to remember that as in real life octopi,”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “Now, I recognize the octopus is a beautiful creature. I really do. So, my apologies, octopus, but you're very useful for my analogy. So I want people to imagine an octopus and the head of that octopus is patriarchy. And each one of the eight tentacles is one of those oppressions that privilege male dominance. So one tentacle, for example, is white supremacy or racism, another is misogyny, another is capitalism, another is homophobia, transphobia, ableism, ageism. Those are all the oppressions that together privilege male dominance. And I want people to imagine who is squeezed between those tentacles. So depending on where you are and who you are and how marginalized you are, you will be squeezed by one, two, or possibly all eight of the tentacles.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “The textbook definition of patriarchy is usually systems of oppression that privilege male dominance, and I know that usually goes over many people's heads, and I'm often asked, like, who is the patriarchy? Because people think there's this like one particular man. Like, is it Donald Trump? Should I go? And like, if I get rid of Donald Trump is the patriarchy over and done with. And so I've come up with a metaphor or analogy, if you like, to better explain what the patriarchy is and how it works. And I liken a patriarchy to an octopus. So we might have a lot to discuss here, like the octopus and all other kind of sea creatures. You'll get me very austral if we got.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “Absolutely hello, Helen, it's a pleasure to be speaking with you about my book. And you know, I really wish we were together in the same room, but, you know, the times being as they are, I will start though the way that I usually start when I have events like this, and that is, hello, everyone, my name is Mona Altahawi. My pronouns are she, her, hers, and this is my declaration of faith. Fuck, the patriarchy. And in those three sentences, Helen, as basically like my agenda for the world. And that book obviously lays out the agenda and how I believe we can achieve it. But basically, in that declaration of faith, fuck the patriarchy. That is what I wake up to do every day.”

    2021-05-04 · Intelligence Squared · Mona Eltahawy on the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source