Quotes by Jessica Valenti

What’s the worst possible thing you can call a woman? Don’t hold back, now.You’re probably thinking of words like slut, whore, bitch, cunt (I told you not to hold back!), skank.Okay, now, what are the worst things you can call a guy? Fag, girl, bitch, pussy. I’ve even heard the term “mangina.”Notice anything? The worst thing you can call a girl is a girl. The worst thing you can call a guy is a girl. Being a woman is the ultimate insult. Now tell me that’s not royally fucked up.

..the hope I have for women: that we can start to see ourselves-and encourage men to see us-as more than just the sum of our sexual parts: not as virgins or whores, as mothers or girlfriends, or as existing only in relation to men, but as people with independent desires, hopes and abilities. But I know that this cant happen as long as American culture continues to inundate us with gender-role messages that place everyone-men and women-in an unnatural hierarchical order thats impossible to maintain without strife. For women to move forward, and for men to break free, we need to overcome the masculinity status quo-together.

Trusting women means also trusting them to find their way. This isn’t to say, of course, that I think women’s sexual choices are intrinsically “empowered” or “feminist.” I just believe that in a world that values women so little, and so specifically for their sexuality, we should be giving them the benefit of the doubt. Because in this kind of hostile culture, trusting womenis a radical act.

Trusting women means also trusting them to find their way. This isn’t to say, of course, that I think women’s sexual choices are intrinsically empowered or feminist. I just believe that in a world that values women so little, and so specifically for their sexuality, we should be giving them the benefit of the doubt. Because in this kind of hostile culture, trusting womenis a radical act.

Perhaps it’s true that in our sex-saturated culture it does take a certain amount of self-discipline to resist having sex, but restraint does not equal morality. And let’s be honest: if this were simply about resisting peer pressure and being strong, then the women who have sex because they actively want to — as appalling as that idea might be to those who advocate abstinence — wouldn’t be scorned. Because the “strength” involved in these women’s choice would be about doing what they want despite pressure to the contrary, not about resisting the sex act itself.

Value yourself for what the media doesnt - your intelligence, your street smarts, your ability to play a kick-ass game of pool, whatever. So long as its not just valuing yourself for your ability to look hot in a bikini and be available to men, its an improvement.

As Feministing.com commenter electron-Blue noted in response to the 2008 New York Times Magazine article “Students of Virginity,” on abstinence clubs at Ivy League colleges, “There were a WHOLE LOTTA us not having sex at Harvard . . . but none of us thought that that was special enough to start a club about it, for pete’s sake.

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 wont have sex, but rather that theyll have it without pleasure.

If being premenstrual is “innocence,” does that make those of us with periods guilty? And this really gets to the heart of the matter: These concerns arent about lost innocence; theyre about lost girlhood. The virginity movement doesnt want women to be adults. Despite the movements protestations about how this focus on innocence or preserving virginity is just a way of protecting girls, the truth is, it isnt a way to desexualize them. It simply positions their sexuality as “good”— worth talking about, protecting, and valuing—and womens sexuality, adult sexuality, as bad and wrong. The (perhaps) unintended consequences of this focus is that girls sexuality is sexualized and fetishized even further.

I think virginity is fine, just as I think having sex is fine. I dont really care what women do sexually, and neither should you. In fact, thats the point. I believe that a young womans decision to have sex, or not, shouldnt impact how shes seen as a moral actor.

By erasing any nuance and complexity about porn and sexuality, the virginity movement gives young women only two choices of who they can be sexually: sluts or not sluts. While the first choice doesnt seem attractive, I can guarantee you that most young women are going to go with the option that allows them to have sex. And theres no in-between identity for young women who are making smart, healthy choices in their sexual lives.

The desirable virgin is sexy but not sexual. Shes young, white, and skinny. Shes a cheerleader, a babysitter; shes accessible and eager to please (remember those ethics of passivity!). Shes never a woman of color. SHes never a low-income girl or a fat girl. Shes never disabled. Virgin is a designation for those who meet a certain standard of what women, especially young women, are supposed to look like. As for how these young women are supposed to act? A blank slate is best.

While falling in love is fun, its not everything, and its not the antidote to an unfulfilled life, despite what Reese Witherspoon movies may tell you.

For women especially, virginity has become the easy answer- the morality quick fix. You can be vapid, stupid, and unethical, but so long as youve never had sex, youre a good (i.e. moral) girl and therefore worthy of praise.

If you spend any amount of time doing media analysis, it’s clear that the most frenzied moral panic surrounding young women’s sexuality comes from the mainstream media, which loves to report about how promiscuous girls are, whether they’re acting up on spring break, getting caught topless on camera, or catching all kinds of STIs. Unsurprisingly, these types of articles and stories generally fail to mention that women are attending college at the highest rates in history, and that we’re the majority of undergraduate and master’s students. Well-educated and socially engaged women just don’t make for good headlines, it seems.

Women are raising children, picking up socks, and making sure you feel like a man by supporting you when you need it and looking sexy (but not trying too hard, because that would be pathetic). Were being independent and bad bitches while wearing fucking lipstick and heels so as not to offend your delicate aesthetic sensibility, yet even just the word feminist pisses you off. How dare we.

Because even subversive sarcasm adds a cool-girl nonchalance, an updated, sharper version of the expectation that women be forever pleasant, even as were eating shit.

I spoke on a panel once with a famous new age author/guru in leather pants and she said that the problem with women is that we dont speak from our power, but from a place of victimization. As if the traumas forced upon us could be shaken off with a steady voice- as if we had actual power to speak from.

Yes, we love the good men in our lives and sometimes, oftentimes, the bad ones too- but that were not in full revolution against the lot of them is pretty amazing when you consider this truth: men get to rape and kill women and still come home to a dinner cooked by one.

If we have no place to go where we can escape that reaction to our bodies, where is it that were not forced? The idea that these crimes are escapable is the blind optimism of men who dont understand what it means to live in a body that attracts a particular kind of attention with magnetic force.