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A review by jada
x+y: A New Formula For Overcoming Gender Bias by Eugenia Cheng
5.0
this was one of the best books I've read all year; I gained a new appreciation for math, a novel way of understanding gender and gender differences, and got concrete, actionable tips for self-improvement. One would think that a book covering all of those topics would feel a bit disjointed, but they dovetailed into each other surprisingly well.
One thing I absolutely loved was the fact that she explained her argument in quite mathematical terms. Often, when reading books (especially the feminist non-fiction I've been reading recently), they state their point like it's a foregone conclusion, not giving enough evidence about exactly how they got there. This book's emphasis on a mathematical approach (at least at the beginning, it got much less so as it progressed) was undoubtedly one of its greatest strengths. She debunked flawed arguments about the supposed inherent superiority of men in certain areas, exposing that their reasoning made unnecessary assumptions.
From this, she concluded that it is character traits, not necessarily gender, that leads to success, and her dream of a post-gender world, in which character traits and gender are decoupled, strikes me as being lowkey gender abolitionist, which I think is a pretty cool point of view to hold. Instead of categorising behaviour as masculine or feminine, Cheng argued that we should be more specific, and add another dimension (another prime example of mathematical thinking shining)coining the terms "ingressive" and "congressive". Initially, I believed that her claims made at the beginning of the book were a bit overhyped, but I was gladly proven wrong. This new way of thinking absolutely blew my mind, providing answers to questions I didn't know that I had, and is definitely something I have to consider in my personal life.
I wholeheartedly agree that we should do whatever we can to fight for a more congressive world, and I liked all her examples of ways in which our current world rewards ingressive thinking, and how it can be radically changed to promote congressivity.
One thing I absolutely loved was the fact that she explained her argument in quite mathematical terms. Often, when reading books (especially the feminist non-fiction I've been reading recently), they state their point like it's a foregone conclusion, not giving enough evidence about exactly how they got there. This book's emphasis on a mathematical approach (at least at the beginning, it got much less so as it progressed) was undoubtedly one of its greatest strengths. She debunked flawed arguments about the supposed inherent superiority of men in certain areas, exposing that their reasoning made unnecessary assumptions.
From this, she concluded that it is character traits, not necessarily gender, that leads to success, and her dream of a post-gender world, in which character traits and gender are decoupled, strikes me as being lowkey gender abolitionist, which I think is a pretty cool point of view to hold. Instead of categorising behaviour as masculine or feminine, Cheng argued that we should be more specific, and add another dimension (another prime example of mathematical thinking shining)coining the terms "ingressive" and "congressive". Initially, I believed that her claims made at the beginning of the book were a bit overhyped, but I was gladly proven wrong. This new way of thinking absolutely blew my mind, providing answers to questions I didn't know that I had, and is definitely something I have to consider in my personal life.
I wholeheartedly agree that we should do whatever we can to fight for a more congressive world, and I liked all her examples of ways in which our current world rewards ingressive thinking, and how it can be radically changed to promote congressivity.