Review: Educated by Tara Westover

(Sorry I took so long to write this, I've been working 24/7 😍)

Since it's been several weeks since I finished this book, I'm not the best equipped to write a comprehensive review. Instead, I'd like to focus on one aspect I found particularly resonant.

As many of you can tell from my reading history and my scribblings, I'm quite interested in feminism. I fell into this interest due to my experiences in the modern world, and naturally that led me to explore its history. Women's oppression in the past is much more blatant. You can point to the rights they were denied, the violence they faced, the choices they were never given. And it's easy to say, well things are no longer like that. You can vote (although... hello SAVE Act), you have financial rights (my grandma was 44 years old when women were first allowed to open their own credit cards, my mom 10), and you're... well no, you're not safe from violence.

But it's not just these explicit laws you can point to that define women's plight in society. It's social framework that's doing a significant amount of harm. It's the "innocent" emphasis on "nature" and "temperament" and blah blah fucking blah. Women are not more emotional, they're more emotionally intelligent, and it's not inherent to them biologically, it's taught and learned and worked for. Men are less emotionally intelligent and it's not inherent to them biologically, it's de-prioritized socially and disregarded. It is a skill they don't deem valuable, not a trait they don't possess. And it harms everyone on the planet.

The more we scream this into the void, the more it feels useless. If we can't make this change, should we even be trying?

But then you sit down a read a book like Educated and remember, yes. It is essential we not give up on this.

From the moment I had first understood that my brother Richard was a boy and I was a girl, I had wanted to exchange his future for mine. My future was motherhood; his was fatherhood. They sounded similar but they were not. To be one was to be a decider. To preside. To call the family to order. To be the other was to be among those called.

You may say, Emily, this passage speaks not of emotional intelligence, but the domestic dynamic. And I say, if one were truly emotionally intelligent, they would recognize the harm this dynamic creates. The inability to recognize that your partner is a human with their own ambitions is a failure of emotional intelligence. And this failing isn't committed instantaneously, it doesn't always happen on purpose. It happens slowly every day between average men and women. It's one overlooked expression of desire, then one offer to compromise, etc. and suddenly women find themselves trapped in a reality they never wanted. And their husbands are none the wiser.

I carried the books to my room and read through the night. I loved the fiery pages of Mary Wollstoncraft, but there was a single line written by John Stuart Mill that, when I read it, moved the world: 'It is a subject on which nothing final can be known.' The subject Mill had in mind was the nature of women. Mill claimed that women have been coaxed, cajoled, shoved and squashed into a series of feminine contortions for so many centuries, that it is now quite impossible to define their natural abilities or aspirations.

Blood rushed to my brain; I felt an animating surge of adrenaline, of possibility, of a frontier being pushed outward. Of the nature of women, nothing final can be known. Never had I found such comfort in a void, in the black absence of knowledge. It seemed to say: whatever you are, you are woman.

It's important to recognize the role gender has played in history. But to be honest, I think gender should have no role in society. Yes, there are characteristics of both genders that are positive but... those are not separate from positive characteristics of people. This societal segregation only causes harm. To both men and women.

Needless to say, I picked up a copy of John Stuart Mill straight after finishing.