Top 100 Jessica Valenti Quotes
#1. There's something really terrible about having your BlackBerry next to your bed or having your laptop in the living room when you're talking to someone. The biggest source of stress in my life is the screen, the blogging.
Jessica Valenti
#2. The purpose of the word "slut" is: controlling women through shame and humiliation. Women's bodies are always the ones that are being vied over for control - whether it's rape, reproductive rights, or violence against women, it's our bodies that are the battleground, not men's.
Jessica Valenti
#3. I don't find the wave model very productive, because I think it kind of serves to fan the flames of generational tension, or make it seem like there's more generational tension than there actually is.
Jessica Valenti
#4. All women live in objectification the way fish live in water. - Catharine A. MacKinnon WHEN
Jessica Valenti
#5. The widely held belief that the heterosexual nuclear family is best for children has long been used as a smoke screen for homophobia and as a talking point to quash marriage-equality efforts.
Jessica Valenti
#6. Dismissing socialization and gender roles as piddling compared to this amorphous idea of 'maternal imperative' is part of the reason progress is stalled for family-friendly policies.
Jessica Valenti
#7. The studies about differences between the sexes that you see kind of get propped up in the media are more often than not denigrating women in some way, saying that women really don't have any spatial understanding, and that's why they can't park.
Jessica Valenti
#8. Women are brought up to believe you are going to be the better parent and you know what's best. I don't think that's necessarily true. As much as we have to ask men to step it up, we have to take a look at ourselves and be willing to give up some of that parental power.
Jessica Valenti
#9. In 2008, I was one of the young feminist whippersnappers who voted for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries - or as many of my older counterparts called me at the time, a traitor.
Jessica Valenti
#10. It's not always easy being a full-time feminist - especially as a young woman - when you're constantly being told that what you do is irrelevant. I'm on the defense all the time.
Jessica Valenti
#11. I've seen straight, partnered women explain their decision to stay at home by noting that childcare would have taken too much out of their paycheck - as if this cost was just theirs to bear!
Jessica Valenti
#12. I think feminism has always been global. I think there's feminism everywhere throughout the world.
Jessica Valenti
#13. So remember, this is definitely a screwed-if-you-do, screwed-if-you-don't situation. You just remember to say, Screw them.
Jessica Valenti
#14. My father took me aside one day soon after and told me this: The things you do in your twenties are just things you do. But as you approach thirty what you do starts to become who you are. And there are some things you do not want to be forever.
Jessica Valenti
#15. When you look hard enough and long enough at your own face, everything about it starts to seem hideous.
Jessica Valenti
#16. Because even subversive sarcasm adds a cool-girl nonchalance, an updated, sharper version of the expectation that women be forever pleasant, even as we're eating shit.
Jessica Valenti
#17. It seems odd that we continue to worry about the reputations of men who are accused of sexual wrong-doings.
Jessica Valenti
#18. I do think that we have this incredible opportunity because being on-line - the Internet is a relatively new space - we do have this incredible opportunity to change that dynamic, to make sure that women are present in all sorts of spaces, not just women-only spaces.
Jessica Valenti
#19. Social media is not just another way to connect feminist and activist voices - it amplifies our messages as well.
Jessica Valenti
#20. I grew up in Long Island City. When I was growing up, my parents owned a women's clothing store in Queens. It was for older women. I got my bras there, until I realized I didn't want those huge, taupe bras. Everything was beige, with massive amounts of hooks.
Jessica Valenti
#21. Another abstinence book claims, A woman is far more attracted by a man's personality, while a man is stimulated by sight. A man is usually less discriminating about those to whom he is physically attracted.
Jessica Valenti
#22. Antifeminists are the only ones who benefit from their version of working on women's behalf; in reality, they put other women at risk and fail to solve any larger problems.
Jessica Valenti
#23. One of the difficult things, especially about blogging, is that you put all of your personal out there, into the political. And what's been difficult, for me at least, is trying to keep some of the personal for myself.
Jessica Valenti
#24. Yes, the more successful you are - or the stronger, the more opinionated - the less you will be generally liked. All of a sudden people will think you're too braggy, too loud, too something. But the trade-off is undoubtedly worth it. Power and authenticity are worth it.
Jessica Valenti
#25. For women especially, virginity has become the easy answer- the morality quick fix. You can be vapid, stupid, and unethical, but so long as you've never had sex, you're a "good" (i.e. "moral) girl and therefore worthy of praise.
Jessica Valenti
#26. I always go with the dictionary definition of feminism, which is just social, political and economic equality for women.
Jessica Valenti
#27. I revisit old favorites like 'Buffy' and 'Battlestar Galactica' when I'm bored. I am obsessed with 'Scandal.' I love TV.
Jessica Valenti
#28. If you go to places like YouTube, it's a cesspool, and a lot of the comments are really horrifying and misogynist and harassing.
Jessica Valenti
#29. As much as I disagree with Sarah Palin, there's no denying that she was the victim of sexism.
Jessica Valenti
#30. Women who are harassed, at work, on the street, or even online, are subject to the same rigid purity standards as women who are sexually assaulted, Just by virtue of being out in public, we're overstepping certain boundaries.
Jessica Valenti
#31. Whether it's repro rights, violence against women, or just plain old vanilla sexism, most issues affecting women have one thing in common - they exist to keep women 'in their place.' To make sure that we're acting 'appropriately,' whatever that means.
Jessica Valenti
#32. When I started blogging in 2004, I responded to every comment no matter how nasty the reader was. I was generally polite, believing that these critics would be so charmed by my professionalism that they would see the error of their misogynist ways and swiftly run out to read a bell hooks book. Ha!
Jessica Valenti
#33. There is no public space for women; the whole world is a prison where you have to be constantly aware at all times that you're a potential victim. What's more terrifying is that it's not necessarily preventative.
Jessica Valenti
#34. When abstinence curricula contain information about sexual abuse or assault (though they often don't), the message is similar: The onus of preventing sexual assault is on girls, not on men.
Jessica Valenti
#35. When you ask most American parents why they want to have kids, it's to bring more joy into their lives. So, when you don't feel that all-encompassing joy, it must be that something is wrong with you. I think it's dissatisfaction that the expectation was different than the reality.
Jessica Valenti
#36. but there is a difference between loving someone and having the ability to feel that love.
Jessica Valenti
#37. There is something to be said for the power of figureheads. After Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, a record number of countries posted female ambassadors to the U.S. - some of whom have dubbed this 'the Hillary effect.'
Jessica Valenti
#38. Still, somehow, inexplicably, "man-hater" is a word tossed around with insouciance as if this was a real thing that did harm. Meanwhile we have no real word for men who kill women. Is the word just "men"?
Jessica Valenti
#39. While boys are taught that the things that make them men
good men
are universally accepted ethical ideals, women are led to believe that our moral compass lies somewhere between our legs. Literally.
Jessica Valenti
#40. The truth about parenting is that the reality of our lives needs to be enough.
Jessica Valenti
#41. I think that blogging and the Internet has completely changed feminism for ever, I think.
Jessica Valenti
#42. I'm really aware of how feminism and feminist rhetoric has been appropriated by the right.
Jessica Valenti
#43. Making women the sexual gatekeepers and telling men they just can't help themselves not only drives home the point that women's sexuality is unnatural, but also sets up a disturbing dynamic in which women are expected to be responsible for men's sexual behavior.
Jessica Valenti
#44. And really, how insulting is it that to suggest that the best thing women can do is raise other people to do incredible things? I'm betting some of those women would like to do great things of their own.
Jessica Valenti
#45. Men in their hearts hate women. It doesn't matter how much we love them. They hate us
Jessica Valenti
#46. Beautiful' is bullshit, a standard created to make women into good consumers, too busy wallowing in self-loathing to notice that we're second-class citizens.
Jessica Valenti
#47. The biggest thinker that's influenced my feminism is definitely Bell Hooks, who's a feminist cultural critic, because of her accessibility but also just because she's a genius.
Jessica Valenti
#48. After all, a right that can't be exercised is not very useful to anyone.
Jessica Valenti
#50. I think that almost all traditional institutions are sexist, and they're probably racist and homophobic, and they're all of these things. But a lot of them, like marriage, are too embedded into the culture to give up.
Jessica Valenti
#51. I don't get much career advice at all, and I would like some.
Jessica Valenti
#52. People seem to think, because of the way that the media has appropriated third-wave feminism or young feminism, that all young feminists are about is like pole dancing and girls gone wild and how empowering it is. Like they'll start calling anything feminist.
Jessica Valenti
#53. A huge part of keeping women in their place has to do with creating a really limited definition of what a 'real' woman is like. And a ton of that what-makes-a-woman nonsense is attached to motherhood. Apparently, by virtue of having ovaries and a uterus, women are automatic mommies or mommies-to-be.
Jessica Valenti
#54. There's nothing revolutionary about reinforcing the virgin/whore dichotomy.
Jessica Valenti
#55. You come to a point where you give up on holding yourself to a perfect feminist ideal - it just feels stifling.
Jessica Valenti
#56. In addition to shaming sexual-assault victims, positioning abstinence as women's domain further promotes the notion that it's women's morality that's on the line when it comes to sex, men just can't help themselves, so their ethics are safe from criticism.
Jessica Valenti
#57. When are we going to realize that hating other women - no matter how much money they have or how far they've fallen - is just as bad for ourselves as it is for anyone else?
Jessica Valenti
#58. Sex for pleasure, for fun, or even for building relationships is completely absent from our national conversation. Yet taking the joy out of sexuality is a surefire way to ensure not that young women won't have sex, but rather that they'll have it without pleasure.
Jessica Valenti
#59. Whether it appears in a story about a man killing his girlfriend while calling her a whore or in trying to battle conservative claims that emergency contraception or the HPV vaccine will make girls promiscuous, the purity myth in America underlies more misogyny than most people would like to admit
Jessica Valenti
#60. Wedding fever is one of the scariest diseases I have ever seen.
Jessica Valenti
#61. I think my biggest career mistake has been taking on too much. And I think this is kind of - I think it's related to the Internet world, where you're always multitasking and you have a million windows open and you feel like you can do a lot at the same time.
Jessica Valenti
#62. Robin Simon, a sociology professor at Florida State University and researcher on parenting and happiness, told The Daily Beast in 20083 that parents experience lower levels of emotional well-being, less frequent positive emotions and more frequent negative emotions than their childless peers.
Jessica Valenti
#63. Obviously Feministing is kind of a women's space in a certain way, even though we have a lot of male readership and people who don't identify as women.
Jessica Valenti
#64. When it comes to people who are saying really extreme things online, we have the tendency to think that they are just kooks, or that you shouldn't pay attention to them, you shouldn't take them seriously.
Jessica Valenti
#65. This is why I prefer Queens to any other place. The borough of my parents and small business owners is populated by people who know how to work around the system when it tries to fuck you.
Jessica Valenti
#66. By fetishizing youth and virginity, we're supporting a disturbing message: that really sexy women aren't women at all- they're girls.
Jessica Valenti
#67. You have to have your personal life, and at the end of the day I think what people forget, especially when you're online, is that you're a person too, right, and that you're not this ideal of feminism, that everything you do like feminism just like falls in your wake.
Jessica Valenti
#68. What's the difference between venerating women for being fuckable and putting them on a purity pedestal? In both cases, women's worth is contingent upon their ability to please men and to shape their sexual identities around what men want.
Jessica Valenti
#69. I do think that more people are feminists than they realize.
Jessica Valenti
#70. I'm glad that we have a history at all and that we can talk about feminist history. But I do think that it doesn't really pay attention to the complexity and the nuance that is feminist thought.
Jessica Valenti
#71. Value yourself for what the media doesn't - your intelligence, your street smarts, your ability to play a kick-ass game of pool, whatever. So long as it's not just valuing yourself for your ability to look hot in a bikini and be available to men, it's an improvement.
Jessica Valenti
#73. I think that online harassment has become so ubiquitous on the Internet that a lot of women do feel safer, whatever that means, in spaces where they know like people are not going to bother them in that kind of way.
Jessica Valenti
#74. It's become impossible to enjoy most quality television shows because the hurt or endangered women device is so frequently used.
Jessica Valenti
#75. If you don't identify as a feminist, you're missing out on this whole community that's out there that could really help you with your work, help you with your personal life, and just give you support.
Jessica Valenti
#76. I think talking is as casual as blogging, and sometimes writing can be as casual as talking. My informal writing style is a political choice, because I want feminism to be more accessible.
Jessica Valenti
#77. It seems the word 'slut' can be applied to any activity that doesn't include knitting, praying, or sitting perfectly still lest any sudden movements be deemed whorish.
Jessica Valenti
#78. Hearing the Beastie Boys speak out against sexism made me feel like if these men who had once sung about getting girls to 'do the laundry' and 'clean up my room' could understand, maybe the rest of the world would follow suit. It made me hopeful in the best way.
Jessica Valenti
#79. Even the notion that women should have children at all is based on the idea that a woman's inherent and most important role is that of mother. Shockingly, men's 'innate' roles are a lot more fun than the ones bestowed on women.
Jessica Valenti
#80. The only purpose of an engagement ring is to show you 'belong' to someone, and your man makes bank.
Jessica Valenti
#81. According to the virginity movement, men have no self-control when it comes to anything sexual.
Jessica Valenti
#82. Idea at play here is that of "morality." When young women are taught about morality, there's not often talk of compassion, kindness, courage, or integrity. There is, however, a lot of talk about hymens
Jessica Valenti
#83. Instead of focusing on men and focusing on what we can do to prop them up, people seem really incredibly focused on the fact that women are doing well and maybe that's not such a good thing.
Jessica Valenti
#84. And there's an argument to be made that if intentional and thoughtful parenthood is an indicator of parental and family happiness, then having gay parents - parents who weren't able to "accidentally" have a child - may be, in fact, among the better circumstances there are for a child.
Jessica Valenti
#85. Wanting to be liked means being a supporting character in your own life, using the cues of the actors around you to determine your next line rather than your own script. It means that your self-worth will always be tied to what someone else thinks about you, forever out of your control.
Jessica Valenti
#86. I think that the ideal of parenting can make people unhappy. It's that this lie that they're being told by society that parenting is one thing - and when parenting is something completely different - that's what makes them unhappy.
Jessica Valenti
#87. I do think that there is a real crisis of masculinity that's happening in America. I think the problem is - the way it's being framed is that there's a problem with masculinity because women are too powerful, or women are taking up too much space.
Jessica Valenti
#88. I think that we're our own worst enemies in a lot of ways, especially when it comes to doing work where you're criticized a lot or doing work where there's a lot of hater directed at you; and to not constantly second-guess yourself.
Jessica Valenti
#89. There's no one right way to parent, and there's no magic combination of genders that produces the most well-adjusted child. We all do the best we can at loving our kids and building our families.
Jessica Valenti
#90. Idolizing virginity as a stand-in for women's morality means that nothing else matters- not what we accomplish, not what we think, not what we care about and work for. Just if/how/whom we have sex with. That's all.
Jessica Valenti
#91. We say "misogynist"; I've written that "misogyny kills," but the world falls flat on your tongue - it's too academic sounding, not raw or horrifying enough to relay the truth of what it means.
Jessica Valenti
#92. The cultural insistence that parenting is the 'most important' job in the world is a smart way to satiate unappreciated women without doing a damn thing for them.
Jessica Valenti
#93. I hope that by modeling feminism in my own life, work and relationships that it will haut become an organic part of my daughter's life. But I'm also fully prepared for her to become a Republican as a way to rebel as a teenager - that would be just my luck!
Jessica Valenti
#94. Something you hear a lot is that feminism dead. But if feminism is dead, why do people try so hard to kill it?
Jessica Valenti
#95. If your husband is cheating on you, it doesn't mean that you need to get prettier
it means he's a scumbag.
Jessica Valenti
#96. I think feminism is taking off. It's just not visible in the way that we would like it to be.
Jessica Valenti
#97. I've been thinking a lot about Lady Gaga and what she means for feminism. I think - I find her completely fascinating, and I really like what she has to say.
Jessica Valenti
#98. There's going to be biological differences between the genders. There's going to be biological differences between two women or two men. There's biological differences between all of us. My concern is, why are we so concerned about it?
Jessica Valenti
#99. I think the biggest obstacle I still have to overcome is myself, and just kind of struggling every day with what to do with the work and where to go next.
Jessica Valenti
#100. Men take what women make and claim it as their own.Men don't love childrenThey kill them in a heartbeat to hurt a woman
Jessica Valenti
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