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jessica_rose13's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
madhamster's review
5.0
I'm going to sit on this for a while, to process the gentle, yet radical approach to reworking everything. From personal responses to comments, to political and structural changes, everything is ripe for change.
laurapk's review against another edition
3.0
Eugenia Cheng challenges successfully our understanding of gendered thinking, but I found the book a bit hard to follow at times. The mathematical parts were not the problem, especially when Cheng uses multiple dimensions to represent more clearly a complex problem (the imaginary numbers and the root problems results were quite interesting parallels to our over simplification of 'male' vs 'female' traits on one or more dimensions). Rather the problem for me was the non-mathematical part. I felt there weren't enough arguments (or the same arguments were repeated too much) for her congressive society manifesto.
Briefly, Chent argues that we can group actions into 'ingressive' (competition dominated) and 'congressive' (cooperation dominated). She makes a valid point that competition would normally be required for resources that are limited, and that our society creates the illusion of scarcity for resources that are not only abundant, but also grow when they are shared, such as education. (I would say though that while education is not a limited resource, the number of teachers and the time they can offer to students are limited resources; the rise of online educational platform greatly alleviates these restrections). Therefore an ingressive society that pits people against each other sooner than it's actually needed stifles shier, more congressive people who don't fair well in high competition scenarios. I agree with her point, but she didn't really prove that ingressivity was intrinsically bad. I agree with her that we are obsessed with competition and winning, but casting ingressivity as always bad didn't seem very believable either. I'm currently also reading Testosterone Rex, and I believe Cordelia Fine makes a better argument for what I suspect Cheng was trying to say: that there is no reason why nature would have handed down hard blueprints for maleness and femaleness. Primates and humans are highly adaptable species, which have succeeded based largely on group dynamics. The argument that 'nature wants us to be this way and not that' is dumb, since flexibility is our biggest asset. An ingressive society is not necessarily better, and current events seem to suggest that we're harming each other more with our obsession for competition and winning. Society and biology is flexible and aptitudes overlap a lot between the two genders (not to mention the people falling outside the binary distribution). Her example of the baboon society that changed drastically within one generation (due to an epidemic of tuberculosis exacerbated by aggressive competition) perfectly illustrates her argument. Unfortunately not all her arguments are as easy to follow, and it's a pity, because I believe this to be a very important book.
Briefly, Chent argues that we can group actions into 'ingressive' (competition dominated) and 'congressive' (cooperation dominated). She makes a valid point that competition would normally be required for resources that are limited, and that our society creates the illusion of scarcity for resources that are not only abundant, but also grow when they are shared, such as education. (I would say though that while education is not a limited resource, the number of teachers and the time they can offer to students are limited resources; the rise of online educational platform greatly alleviates these restrections). Therefore an ingressive society that pits people against each other sooner than it's actually needed stifles shier, more congressive people who don't fair well in high competition scenarios. I agree with her point, but she didn't really prove that ingressivity was intrinsically bad. I agree with her that we are obsessed with competition and winning, but casting ingressivity as always bad didn't seem very believable either. I'm currently also reading Testosterone Rex, and I believe Cordelia Fine makes a better argument for what I suspect Cheng was trying to say: that there is no reason why nature would have handed down hard blueprints for maleness and femaleness. Primates and humans are highly adaptable species, which have succeeded based largely on group dynamics. The argument that 'nature wants us to be this way and not that' is dumb, since flexibility is our biggest asset. An ingressive society is not necessarily better, and current events seem to suggest that we're harming each other more with our obsession for competition and winning. Society and biology is flexible and aptitudes overlap a lot between the two genders (not to mention the people falling outside the binary distribution). Her example of the baboon society that changed drastically within one generation (due to an epidemic of tuberculosis exacerbated by aggressive competition) perfectly illustrates her argument. Unfortunately not all her arguments are as easy to follow, and it's a pity, because I believe this to be a very important book.
lukiut's review
5.0
I have to preface this review by urging everyone to pick up this book and read it and by saying that it has become one of my favourite non-fiction books to ever exist on this planet!!!!
Okay, now back to your normally scheduled review...
I started this book as an audiobook ARC, but the format didn't work for me and I'm glad I managed to catch an e-book copy. Can't wait to get my hands on the physical one as soon as possible, so I can adnotate and underline and note the f out of this amazing piece of knowledge.
Although it may surely seem like it, this book is not about feminism, nor how to evolve as a female or any stuff like that. It is about equality, about changing the environment, leaving gendered thinking behind and how to start assessing people based on their abilities rather than their ingrained qualities.
I loved every piece of information in this book, but I think I didn't really enjoy the first half of it so much as a consequence of having read it audibly. The second part, however, turned into me highlighting and taking notes all throughout it, hands why I can not wait to reread it and make the most of it physically.
Besides introducing me to the 2 new terms of ingressive and congressive, the book also provided support for change, with examples of how you can change the environment, rather than the person, so as to suit both ingressive and congressive people.
I don't really know what else I could say, other than that I really recommend this book for absolutely everyone, but mostly for people that currently feel like they aren't going to succeed in life. You can and you will, you just have to change your environment.
Okay, now back to your normally scheduled review...
I started this book as an audiobook ARC, but the format didn't work for me and I'm glad I managed to catch an e-book copy. Can't wait to get my hands on the physical one as soon as possible, so I can adnotate and underline and note the f out of this amazing piece of knowledge.
Although it may surely seem like it, this book is not about feminism, nor how to evolve as a female or any stuff like that. It is about equality, about changing the environment, leaving gendered thinking behind and how to start assessing people based on their abilities rather than their ingrained qualities.
I loved every piece of information in this book, but I think I didn't really enjoy the first half of it so much as a consequence of having read it audibly. The second part, however, turned into me highlighting and taking notes all throughout it, hands why I can not wait to reread it and make the most of it physically.
Besides introducing me to the 2 new terms of ingressive and congressive, the book also provided support for change, with examples of how you can change the environment, rather than the person, so as to suit both ingressive and congressive people.
I don't really know what else I could say, other than that I really recommend this book for absolutely everyone, but mostly for people that currently feel like they aren't going to succeed in life. You can and you will, you just have to change your environment.
averyt121's review
2.0
I was incredibly frustrated with this book. I was hoping for something that would give me objective, mathematical ammunition to discuss the subjectivity of gender, critique the gender binary, go into the nuance of gender versus sex- I was instead given a vocabulary lesson in new two words that aren’t given direct and full-fledged definitions.
The author creates two new vocabulary words that she prescribes as the cure to gender inequality. “Congressive” and “ingressive” are established as the central thesis of addressing societal strife, but I spent the book lacking a concrete concept for each that didn’t just align with the much simpler, already existing dichotomy of either masculine/feminine or individualistic/collective.
The author states that these new words will create a blank slate for peoples’ understanding of gender and open their minds to an unbiased discussion of gender expectations, but fails to recognize that these words align too closely with already existing, loaded concepts. We do not exist in a vacuum and introducing these new concepts will not suddenly erase the bias already present in those learning the new words or open them up to new ideas about eliminating sexism.
It is fine to create new words to discuss sexism and gender, but focusing on finding new words to erase the context and assumptions of those that would otherwise doubt your argument is essentially tone policing. This is catering to those that do not want to listen to the argument while not even proving that doing so would even be beneficial to the cause overall. To me, this is the most glaring flaw in the entire argument. Why should these new words actually convince people of the necessity to change when they mean things that everyone already associates with gender or political ideology?
The author creates two new vocabulary words that she prescribes as the cure to gender inequality. “Congressive” and “ingressive” are established as the central thesis of addressing societal strife, but I spent the book lacking a concrete concept for each that didn’t just align with the much simpler, already existing dichotomy of either masculine/feminine or individualistic/collective.
The author states that these new words will create a blank slate for peoples’ understanding of gender and open their minds to an unbiased discussion of gender expectations, but fails to recognize that these words align too closely with already existing, loaded concepts. We do not exist in a vacuum and introducing these new concepts will not suddenly erase the bias already present in those learning the new words or open them up to new ideas about eliminating sexism.
It is fine to create new words to discuss sexism and gender, but focusing on finding new words to erase the context and assumptions of those that would otherwise doubt your argument is essentially tone policing. This is catering to those that do not want to listen to the argument while not even proving that doing so would even be beneficial to the cause overall. To me, this is the most glaring flaw in the entire argument. Why should these new words actually convince people of the necessity to change when they mean things that everyone already associates with gender or political ideology?
jvillanueva8's review
2.0
This was horrible, which is disappointing because I had such high hopes. The whole book felt like the classic situation where a STEM researcher decides they can solve a problem without acknowledging that there are entire fields of study devoted to it, so they sloppily execute a “solution” that ignores most of the relevant variables and context. Cheng did not deliver on the mathematical methods and thinking that was promised. This was a poorly written attempt to distill endlessly complex issues into two new invented words. At one point she even claims her writing is a response to “feminism that argues we need to change the whole system but doesn’t offer any suggestions for how to do so.” Perhaps we could turn to Gender Studies, Queer Theory, Sociology, Philosophy, literally any of the fields that grapple with these questions every day. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone.